The Week That Was

It has been a wee while between posts and plenty has happened in that time.

- Elizabeth Windsor celebrated sixty years as the head of state of the United Kindgom over the weekend. I have decided to refer to her as Elizabeth Windsor in the future as hereditary titles are disgusting and have no place in the 21st century. Some people want New Zealand to wait until Elizabeth Windsor passes before moving to a republic, but I say bugger that, it's time to remove this archaic institution. It would have been a great moment to start when...

- John Key met with Elizabeth Windsor this week. He gave her some Kapiti Cheese and she asked for a status update on the ChristChurch Cathedral, but didn't care to ask about the 200,000 children living in poverty in New Zealand ,the thousands deciding life is greener on the other side of the Tasman or the changes to the welfare system (You might think the world's largest welfare beneficiary would be interested in that sort of thing but I guess not).

- The Green Party had their AGM and celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Values Party. As they go from strength to strength in the polls they are preparing for a future in which they will be part of the government and not on the outside and how this will effect the consensus decision-making the have practiced.

- Education Minister Hekia Parata has been forced to back down over planned class size changes after practically every man and his dog came out against them. It has been one big embarrassment for the government and the questions now is will she stay or will she go?

There were some other small bits and pieces going on:
- Bronwyn Pullar was cleared of blackmail by the police and now ACC has some serious questions to answer.
- Philip Mountbatten was appointed to the Order of New Zealand. WTF???
- Robyn Malcolm tested over the legal limit at a random breath test.
- Vodafone wants to buy TelstraClear.
- In an attempt to deflect attention away from Hekia Parata, Paula Bennett announced the sterilisation of abusive parents (That may be a slight exaggeration).
- Christchurch got snowed on.
- and my man Julian Savea got named in the All Blacks' starting line-up for the first test against Ireland.

Lastly, its economy might be going to hell in a handbag but it's good to see Greek politicians are not letting that get in the way of an open and reasoned discourse:

WTF

A mate of mine has set me on to a press release from David Parker (pictured) the Labour Party Finance spokesman.

Entitled Nek minnit economics – disappointing growth means disappointing books.

I am slightly confused about the intention of this release. Are they trying to get down with the kids? Are they trying to paint John Key as the Nek Minnit guy? Or were they just hoping it sounded clever and catchy?

Whatever the actual reason, this is douche bag politics.

We the people

As reported by the Guardian, the people of North Carolina have decided to place themselves on the wrong side of history.

A constitutional amendment has been passed by a vote of 61% to 39% defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Unfortunately the amendment goes further than that and will have consequences for all manners of domestic partnerships.

Overall the trend in the states is towards marriage equality but it may a little longer in coming for North Carolinians.

The Guardian's Ana Maria Cox has a great piece on the North Carolina amendment, the overall context and what it means:

There are no pink processionals crowding the streets of Durham, and while my St Paul neighborhood sees a lot of pairs of women pushing one stroller down the street, I have yet to be invited to the big "WE ARE UNDERMINING THE FOUNDATIONS OF YOUR MORALITY" party, which social conservatives seem to imagine taking place just out of sight. The fact is, both of these initiatives are propelled less by the presence of an in-your-face homosexual "agenda" than by the gradual, inevitable, and growing normalization and acceptance of gays and lesbians as complete equals in our society.

The DomPost reports Thousands of Kiwis face Budget pay cut. Currently graduates lose ten cents in every dollar they earn over $19,084 to repay their student loan (I am one of these graduates) The government is set to increase this rate in the budget.

Mr Key would not be drawn on the new rate, but said it would raise "tens of millions of dollars".

Currently:

Figures supplied by Inland Revenue show that at the 10 per cent rate that applies now, $690.6million was received in student loan repayments in the year till June 30, 2011.

A one or two cent rise in the rate could pay back an extra seventy to one-hundred and forty million dollars.

Unfortunately some of the responses have been unable to keep things in perspective:

New Zealand Union of Students Associations president Pete Hodkinson said a lift in the repayment rate was a tax increase because it was taken straight out of pay, like PAYE.

Pete Hodkinson appears to be an idiot. My kiwisaver is also taken directly out of my pay, does he consider that a tax? Or how about the donations I make through payroll giving? Statistics show that graduates earn more than non-graduates and they should have to pay for their education which affords them this privilege. In times of economic uncertainty when we all have to tighten our belts there is no reason to exclude graduates.

Labour deputy leader Grant Robertson said the change would put more financial pressure on graduates. The rate should balance the need for loans to be paid off quickly with the need for graduates to meet their costs and be able to take out a mortgage. The increase put that at risk.

The financial pressure on graduates is tiny. Most graduates are single with no dependents and their biggest financial issue is buying shiny new toys. Graduates straight out of university cannot believe how much disposable income they have. There is little reason they cannot pay off their loans before taking out a mortgage. This is disappointing from Grant Robertson who I like.

A lot of the comments on Kiwiblog appear to focus on a number of factors.

1)Why are they not focusing on people overseas who are not making repayments? The government has been focusing on these people, reducing the repayment holiday, working with foreign governments to chase down people. Unfortunately these people are overseas and the government is limited in what they can do about it. I don't like a lot of the things this National Government is doing, but I can not fault them on this.

2)Who do students think pays for their interest free loans? I imagine most students don't spend a lot of time thinking about this question. But if they did they would probably reach the conclusions that it is taxpayers. Which in a few short years they will be and as university graduates earn more on average than non-graduates they pay more in tax on average as well.

Unfortunately the article also says:

Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce has also said changes would be made to student allowances. "We're really looking to make sure that we target the allowances to those in the early years of study and those families that can least afford it."

The change would not be dramatic, he said. The cost of allowances had risen to $600m a year, and the Government needed to curb that.

The parental income threshold for allowances was frozen this year and would probably be frozen for another three or four years. Loopholes in the definition of income would also be tightened.

I am in favour of a universal student allowance, although now is not the best time to implement it. However we should not be cutting the allowance from those who need it.

The Government has been taking a lot of heat over the last few weeks and the hits just keep on coming. Following the complaint to police over Sky City's 'anonymous' donation to John Banks' mayoralty complaint, it now appears John Banks received $50,000 from Kim Dotcom anonymously despite knowing about it, which doesn't quite make sense. This could ultimately lead to his resignation and the end of the ACT party, although this is unlikely to affect the Government's majority. Read the full article here on the New Zealand Herald website.

You could only have had a worse week if your name is David Shearer and you are a dead man walking less than six months into your new job.

The Drinking Age

Stuff.co.nz reports:

Support for returning the drinking age to 20 is gaining momentum as MPs face calls to address binge drinking.

I am not in favour of returning the drinking age to twenty. When you are 18 you are an adult and you should be allowed to buy a bottle of wine or a few beers. Or as Nikki Kaye puts it later in the article:

If someone can be elected to Parliament, get married or join the army, then they should be able to buy a bottle of wine

Alcohol Healthwatch support raising the drinking age, but their reasoning is a little suspect:

It is not about 18-year-olds, it is about 13-year-olds and making sure they don't begin drinking in their teens.

So maybe rather than punishing grown adults who want a drink we should look at preventing 13 year olds from getting access to alcohol.

Ginger News

A friend of mine has a job with a government department. I am not sure what he is supposed to be doing with his time but as far as I can tell, he spends most of it searching the internet for random articles and forwarding them on to others, me included.

Some might argue that he shouldn't be doing this and it shows again what is wrong with the public sector. But against this I say, the articles are really interesting and are always worth the read. They cover anything and everything, there is no rhyme or reason to them.

So what I thought I would do is share them with a wider audience. I call it Ginger News.

The first is an article from the New Yorker titled Born This Way. It looks at the genetic predisposition of political identity and is well worth the read.

Paid Parental Leave

Sue Moroney's Parental Leave and Employment Protection bill is getting a lot of air time at the moment, not least because the opposition has the numbers to pass it and the government will be forced to veto it.

I have been following the coverage on a number of blogs and there are few people arguing against it, rather they are arguing against the timing. What is really interesting is the nature of some of the comments on the blogs. A number of people seem to genuinely think that there tax dollars go directly to one single mum on the DPB, rather than being spent on a huge number of things in the public interest, many of which they benefit from.

One comment I read (I haven't been able to find it again unfortunately) was from a woman in her forties who had chosen not to have children and was a business owner, she felt if you couldn't avoid to take six months off after having children you shouldn't have them. She seems to be a little confused about the continued survival of the human race and what the entails. It also suggests that only the wealthy should be allowed to have children. I don't like the idea that having children is a human right, I prefer to think of it as a human privilege. But that privilege should be dependent on your ability to provide a loving and nuturing environment for your children, not how much money you have.

My favourite comment however is this one:

Fuck why don’t we all sit around home all day, let the brain dead liberal fucktards pay the bills, this shit makes me want to throw the towel in. These lefty fools would happily enslave us all to a future determined by the IMF and the commie fucks in the UN. Their is no free lunch. When my wife had our children she was working again in about two weeks, this country is turning into a fools paradise where reality belongs in another dimension and the grasshoppers play in the sun all day, it will end in tears.

I imagine this guy is constantly angry.

Out of touch, maybe just a little bit!

I have just been watching Back Benches on TVNZ 7 (Tboxed). At the end of each show they have a segment called I've been Thinking, where each guest is given thirty seconds to speak on a topic of their choice. The guest from National this week was Tim Macindoe, MP for Hamilton West. I have never met Tim Macindoe or heard anything from him before, but I can now comfortably say he is an idiot. To quote:

I've been thinking that it's time we got on top of our major problem with welfare dependency in this country

We have a number of major problems in this country, welfare dependency is not one of them. I am not stupid enough to argue that there is not a problem with welfare dependency but we need to keep it in perspective. Macindoe also states that we are spending twenty million dollars a day on welfare. I don't know if that figure is correct but the vast majority of it is being spent on people who genuinely need assistance.

Macindoe also wants to put in place the right support structures and the right incentives. The major incentive to get people off welfare is jobs. The lack of high wage jobs in this country is a major problem, it would be nice if Tim focused on that.

Follow the Money Zwei

In the course of today I have come across this opinion piece on stuff.co.nz by Patrick Smellie.

It looks at the rationalisation of Finance Industry Lobby Groups and includes some interesting points, including:

The Roundtable struggles not to get noticed, and suffers from its every utterance being automatically pigeon-holed as a daft fancy of the extreme right. Shaking off that image would make the Roundtable a more powerfully influential body, but reputations die hard.

Which suggests that the New Zealand Initiative may be as I feared a lobby group to advocate for the needs of corporations over people.

Follow the Money

The National Business Review reports on the formation of a new "libertarian think tank". It will be a merger of the Business Roundtable and the New Zealand Institute to form the New Zealand Initiative.

It appears to be styling itself as a "libertarian think tank" and let us hope that is what it is rather than a lobby group to advocate for the needs of corporations over people. With this in mind I am going to take a leaf out of George Monbiot's book and see if I can get to the sources of their funding.

I asked David Farrar earlier if they were likely to be releasing a full list of donors, his response as follows:

I'm not on the Board but the NZBR used to publish a list of all its members, and my expectation is that NZI will do the same. As far as I know they have members, not donors.

I have had a look on both the NZBR and NZI websites and they do publish a list of members. However this doesn't give an indication of how much membership costs or what they receive in corporate donations so it will be interesting to see if we can get our hands on this information.

Interestingly the NZBR has photos of quite a number of their members. Perhaps unsurprisingly it is not what I would call a particularly diverse group.