Double, double, toil and trouble...

One of my occasional correspondents, that bastion of personal human industry and frequent flyer miles, the Hon. Judith Tizard, has had a rough time of late.

Poor Judith. It's bad enough that she has to cope with the combined stresses of being an associate arts minister and minister of consumer affairs. In addition, Judith has the considerable responsibility of being patron of the Auckland gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual communities, and Helen Clark's closest personal friend. While Judith doesn't have to put up with the drudgery of living in the Prime Minister's home anymore, she does have to put up with taunts from the National Party about her work ethic. That kind of workload is enough to drive anybody to tears.

This is simply not fair. In almost eight years of ministerial, sub-cabinet office, Judith has been nothing if not loyal to Helen Clark. When other Labour MPs have shown disloyalty, Judith has been there to comfort the Prime Minister.

It just isn't on for Jonathan Coleman to refer to Judith Tizard's broomstick. While Coleman galavants around in the knowledge that his medical knowledge was acquired through a legitimate public learning institution, Tizard is correct that it is sexist and mean to bring up the vexed issue of the Minister's domestic duties. Judith wants the world to know that since becoming a minister outside cabinet, she has not touched a vacuum cleaner, a dust-cloth, made the bed, scrubbed the toilet, or done anything close to operating a broomstick.

On the other hand, Judith Tizard is an excellent cook. Being the quintessential entertainer, and as one of the unofficial hostesses at Premier House, she has developed a reputation for fine dining and food. Take this recipe of Judith's for French onion soup, a favourite in the Labour Party caucus:

JUDITH TIZARD'S "ONION SOUP" RECIPE
1 large black pot (if a pot is unavailable, a cauldron will suffice)
6 large brown onions, sliced thinly
2 gallons of dog stock
6 legs of toad
The hair of one albino monkey, or alternatively, one of Darren Hughes' eyebrows
3 fenny snake skins
Salt and pepper to taste
Babboon's blood optional.

EXCLUSIVE: Local Government Conference Announced

I am delighted to announce this afternoon a $15 million conference to take place at Waitangi, on the Chatham Islands, in the week of 5 October 2007.

The conference will be the largest ever gathering of local authority politicians and employees ever held in the Southern Hemisphere. The gathering will draw together some 1,200 local authority politicians across the 86 territorial local authorities in New Zealand, as well as some 25,000 people directly employed and contracted to local government.

Local government in New Zealand spends some $6 billion of ratepayers’ money annually, and consumes approximately 4% of GDP. The summit will bring together interested parties to discuss some of the most pressing issues of modern local government.

The three day conference will include keynote speakers of an international calibre on such innovative subjects as:

• How to Eliminate the Last White Straight Male from your Workplace—Local Government New Zealand Chair Basil Morrison
• The RMA, And How It’s Just Too Permissive of Sensible Development—Mayor Bob Harvey
• How to Railroad, and then Withdraw from, Massively Expensive Projects that the Public Doesn’t Want—Hon. Trevor Mallard
• Ministerial Vetoes: Why Judges are Bastards when they Overturn Them—Chris Carter
• How To Rort Ratepayers With Water Charges When You’ve Promised them Otherwise—Dr Bruce Hucker
• Ratepayers Views and How to Sideline Them—Open Panel Discussion
• Resisting Local Government Reform—Your Job Is More Important Than Their Money

The all expenses-paid conference will be free to all local government interested parties in New Zealand. The conference will take place the week before local government elections this year. Sponsored by a group of interested ratepayers, the $15 million summit will take place in the idyllic surroundings of Waitangi, on Chatham Islands. Conference attendees will be provided with free airplane transport to Waitangi, free airport transfers, outstanding conference and accommodation facilities, and fittingly sumptuous food and beverages on a local Chatham Islands theme.

Attendance by all local government mayors, elected councillors, community board members, senior management, middle-senior management, middle management, middle-junior management, senior-junior management, middle-junior management, associated management and related support staff is compulsory. Prospective candidates for local authority representation in 2007 are strongly invited to attend.

Conference organisers state that it is their desire to thank all the people involved in local government for the outstanding work that they do in guarding and maintaining ratepayers assets, and for the stellar work they do every year in adding value to the towns and cities in which they operate.

Conference organisers report that on the final day of the conference they will be holding a special fireworks display, of a kind never before seen in New Zealand. Following negotiations with Yuritkin Abdurakhmanov, the Associate Director of Black Market Sales in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the conference organisers have announced a particular treat for attendees. “We have spent some $25 million in addition to the conference expenses for some of the most eye-wateringly brilliant pyrotechnics available in the world today,” says Geoff Rateful, the chairman of the conference organising committee. “Some ratepayers might consider this to be an unnecessarily extravagant move. We believe, however, that local government members in New Zealand deserve every luxury we can provide for them.”

In unrelated news, the International Atomic Energy Agency has disclosed that an anonymous customer has recently spent $25 million on a “suitcase nuke” device in Tashkent. The vessel transporting the device was last spotted heading East from Lyttleton, New Zealand.

Just Good Friends

I have eleven Sarahs in my cellphone contacts list. One of them I vaguely remember as a former boss’ wife, who brought her husband meat rissoles into work one lunchtime. I ate the rissoles, got her number, and texted her every week for the next six months asking for more of the rissoles. She never delivered again. I don’t know why I still have her number.

The others I have known more intimately at various stages in the last couple of years. They never cooked me rissoles, and probably never will. With the exception of all but two, whom I have been seeing recently, I don’t think I will see them again. I would delete all their numbers, but I can never remember which ones are meaningful numbers, and which ones need to be trashed.

I am always suspicious of the proclivities of guys who claim to be straight, and yet have lots of chick friends. It has always occurred to me to be a total waste of time. Chicks, in the main, are not very smart, not very good at sport, overly emotional, frequently cranky, and really rather dull. They are, as a gender, prone to blaming others for their many errors, are incapable of taking responsibility, and refuse point-blank to continue a thought to its logical conclusion.

I have come to the inevitably stunning conclusion that chicks make passable girlfriends, good housemaids, and excellent mothers. But with few exceptions, not as friends. Which is why I have devised a system to classify the chicks I know into these three categories:

1. The older woman. Being an orphan, I have no shortage of women over the age of 35 who mother me. I send them cards on Mother’s day, and in return they cook me dinner when I am hungry. I expect them to scold me when I misbehave or speak rudely to others. I don’t expect them to tell me about their sex lives, because, frankly, thinking about your mother having sex is just sick. I’ve found that if I don’t forget a mother’s day, I can maintain long-term, platonic relationships with these maternal surrogates.
2. The housemaid. In this category I include secretaries, receptionists, waitresses, airline hostesses, nurses, and retail shopgirls. These are all jobs that a chick does best. In one of my local bars recently, a male waiter, whom I have nicknamed “Spike”, asked me what I wanted to drink. I looked at him sulkily, and then texted the three hot waitresses who were otherwise occupied with other customers, demanding that they look after me instead. I really don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect if I am paying exhorbitant prices for drinks in a bar with hot chicks that I will be served by them, rather than the spotty guy with stupid hair. These chicks exist in part for me to flirt with them, which I do excessively. But they also exist to serve, and in that respect, it is unwise to have sex with them.
   
   In my experience, the only possible consequence of shagging a chick is that at some point in the near future she will become extremely cranky with me. Since I have never taken to saliva-laden beverages, I’ve never thought it appropriate to seriously hit on a waitress. If I did start shagging a chick who worked in one of my bars, either she would have to stop working at the bar, or I would have to find a new one to drink at. I don’t like going to new bars, so that rules that option out. In that sense, these chicks are not friends. They are hot acquaintances who serve my immediate needs. I do not keep their cellphone numbers so that I can spend time with them and learn interesting things about their otherwise inane lives. I mean, really. If they were such terribly interesting human beings, what would they be doing working in a bar?
3. Girlfriends. I do go through a lot of these, often concurrently. It never ceases to amaze me why I am not on better terms with many former girlfriends. Some of them, to be fair, have been purely psychotic . More have demonstrated that they have no sense of humour. Such was the case with all of the dour chicks I have dated in the last few years who showed no sense of humour when I didn’t call them back. Still more have demonstrated a variety of social problems, ranging from vegetarianism to owning too many cats to not being willing to iron my shirts. The latter point is really pretty critical to me. If my charm is no longer strong enough to encourage a girlfriend to iron my shirt, then in my view the relationship is irreparable, and I am only delaying the inevitable, and making it harder for them by pretending otherwise. But do you think I get credit later on for dumping them?

My main fault as a man, I suppose, is not my lack of modesty, but that I am just so bloody good looking, and charming to boot. I acquire female acquaintances very quickly. I don’t need to hear a chick’s perspective on the world to understand how a chick thinks. A chick’s thinking is invariably inferior to mine, and no matter how many times I listen to her jabbering, I am not going to become a more intelligent human being for listening to her.

With only a rare few exceptions—primarily chicks who I went to university with, and have cunningly, and surreptitiously turned into mother figures as they’ve aged and I haven’t—I don’t delude myself into thinking I can be friends with chicks.

There are some guys I know who go out of their way to be friends with chicks. Even ugly ones, which I have always thought as particularly pointless. They consider themselves to be more evolved species, and even make such absurd claims as being able to understand that futile, incomprehensible beast that is woman better.

I mean, really. What the fuck kind of point are they trying to prove?

Power Games

I never cease to be amazed at the distances that the Left will travel to spin in their favour, at the expense of truth and human dignity. The death of Folole Maliaga is the case in point.

Let’s look at the facts now in the public domain. Folole Maliaga was morbidly obese. She was suffering from critical respiratory failure, as a result of that morbid obesity. She was released from hospital, with a stiff cocktail of drugs and a breathing machine, to deal with that respiratory failure, and was told that her death was imminent if she did not dramatically change her lifestyle.

Instead of taking the drugs, Mrs Maliaga rejected them in favour of “traditional Samoan medicines”, while continuing to use a very non-traditional oxygen machine. It has also become clear that that machine was not designed or expected to support life.

Mrs Maliaga did not pay her power bill. She also did not pay her telephone bill. What tends to happen, when people do not pay their utility bills, is that they get cut off. There really is little point in having chargeable utility services if nothing happens when people don’t pay them.

When the power to Mrs Maliaga’s home was disconnected, Mrs Maliaga’s family sat around and sang hymns for a period of three hours.

Mrs Maliaga died.

This is a story that can be interpreted in several different ways. The mass media-driven hysteria, emphasised in the blogosphere and among left-wing activists with barrows to push, is also becoming more subdued with a critical eye being cast on what really happened. The "Mercury are Murderers!" brigade is looking more ridiculous as the other contributory factors in Mrs Muliaga's death come to light.

There are already far too many players in this absurd scenario.

When the story first broke, SOE Trevor Mallard called for calm, requested that the public wait for a police investigation into the affair, and refused to comment on the situation. Ducking for cover? Well, not quite. It’s difficult for a Minister without the information to make a useful comment without appearing heartless.

Doug Heffernan from Mercury didn’t help his own career prospects by wading into the argument as soon as the news broke, defending Mercury. When you’ve got an hysterical family member making accusations against the company, it simply isn’t wise for a CEO to even attempt to counter the accusations immediately.

His response should have been: “We are extremely sorry that Mrs Muliaga died. We will be conducting a full investigation into what we did, will cooperate with any police inquiry, and will take full responsibility for any consequences that occurred as a direct result of Mercury’s actions. Our thoughts are with Mrs Muliaga’s family, and we will do anything we can to help them.”

Easy press release to write. It doesn’t accept culpability for her death, doesn’t suggest Mercury will dodge responsibility for it, and gets rid of the beat-up for a bit. The PR guy who thought otherwise should be fired, and Heffernan’s own head will probably roll for his naivety in failing to do just that.

But the two most troubling aspects of the case concern two of the most vocal self-appointed Mercury critics, and the media’s blind, uncritical acceptance of what they have said.

Brenden Sheehan, who has variously been described by sloppy journalists as Mrs Muliaga’s nephew, her son-in-law, and “relative”, is not a media novice. He is the chief shit-stirrer for the Public Service Association. In recent times, he has led PSA strike action against TVNZ, Radio New Zealand, and the Public Trust.

Sheehan is head of the PSA in the Hawke’s Bay. With his very calculated usurping of Mrs Muliaga’s spotlight, and particularly given the nature of some of his public comments, it’s not certain whether Sheehan is pursuing the interests of the Muliaga family, or his own political interests.

It is understandable that when a person dies in tragic circumstances, that family members may seek outside parties on which to scapegoat their grievances. What is astonishing is that the media can allow a seasoned political manipulator such as Sheehan to use the tragedy for downright opportunism.

The second unforgivable personality is Helen Clark.

Clark’s potential choice of targets was broad. They included:

1. The hospital that discharged a critically ill woman with an oxygen machine at home, reliant on her continuing to use a complex cocktail of drugs to assist her to breathe. Hard for Clark to take this option, at it would undermine public faith in a public health system that she has poured billions of dollars into.
2. The social welfare system that was sufficiently inflexible as to provide the means for a critically ill woman to pay either her power bill, or her phone bill. Again, Clark has championed how much better social services are under Labour, so this isn’t viable.
3. Annette King, who as health minister began a vastly expensive anti-obesity campaign, which in Mrs Muliaga’s case, hadn’t filtered through. Difficult to criticise her own Minister.
4. Mrs Muliaga and her family, who chose not to call an ambulance when the power was disconnected. Hard for a Prime Minister to make that call without appearing heartless. Given Clark’s historic reputation for warmth and tenderness towards other people generally, it would be out of character for Clark to take this step.
5. Mercury Energy. A subsidiary energy retailer of an SOE. Potentially a big, callous, corporate beast that Labour voters love to hate. The risk of criticising the energy retailer is that it will lead to massive shareholder value, but given the public’s general loathing towards utility companies on the whole, it’s much harder for the energy retailer to look good.

Of course, the PM could have simply stayed out of the debate completely, allowed the police to conduct an investigation, and for the facts to rule, but the chance of the media exposure when she needs it most became too good to miss.

She did it with a style that only she can manage: she refused to acknowledge Mighty River Power executives outside Mrs Muliaga’s home, and has pointedly ordered Mighty River to apologise for their role in Mrs Muliaga’s death. By doing so, she has effectively jeopardised Mighty River’s legal position before an autopsy has been carried out, and by sanctioning the blame against Mercury before a police inquiry has been carried out, has led to a massive loss in shareholder value in the state-owned company.

For what benefit? A couple of photo opportunities at a time when she needs them most.

Practical Application of Labour’s Electoral Act Reforms

Hand-wringing socialists are coming up with piss-poor on-line defenses of the Labour Government’s gerrymandering of the electoral act to silence its critics in election year, and provide a forum for its own friends—the unions—to launch full-on attacks against the Government’s foes.

Welcome to the law of unintended consequences. Except in this case, it is easy to believe that the Government actually intends these consequences to occur. What Labour has done is make no distinction between organisations that exist to advocate in the public’s mind on behalf of its membership—such as the Employers and Manufacturers’ Association, the Cancer Society, the Heart Foundation, and Federated Farmers; and those organisations that have the membership clout, and affiliations with the Labour Party, to significantly change public opinion merely through promoting issues among its own membership—such as trade unions.

The difference between trade unions and other interested lobby groups is one of incumbency. Trade unions already have the Government’s ear, through their dominance of the Labour Party. Andrew Little doesn’t have to mount a public campaign to get the Labour Party to listen to him: he just calls up a Labour Minister and lets them know his thoughts. The organisational advantage for the Labour Party is that through its relationship with the unions, it has a captive market of members among which to advertise Labour policies.

Not so with the Heart Foundation. The only way that it can get the Government to act in its interests is through political lobbying, and spending resources winning public hearts and minds to make it a public issue. And here lies the great gerrymander of Labour’s electoral act reforms: it favours interests that are already close to Government, while severely restricting the right of those organisations that aren’t cosy with Government to generate public interest.

Let’s look at specific examples of public lobbying by special interest groups over the last few years, and which campaigns will and won’t be allowed under Labour’s proposals:

Rev Up The Government: Remember this? A group of Auckland pro-roading interests put together a campaign promoting increased spending on roads in Auckland. Exactly the kind of public lobbying that has been used to raise awareness of public issues in election year. In 2005 the campaign received particular attention because the Labour Party hijacked the website in a patsy pro-Labour transport initiative. Now, under Labour’s proposals, the Rev Up The Government campaign would not be allowed to spend more than $60,000 in an election year. That’s five modest advertisements in the NZ Herald.

PPTA Campaign Against the National Party: The PPTA spent massive amounts of money in 2005 attacking the National Party, among its 15,000 members. All perfectly legal under Labour’s proposals.

Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind: Spends substantial amounts of resource lobbying Government for better services for its members. If it spends more than $60,000 publicly promoting better services by Government for its membership, it will break Labour’s proposed law. The RNZFB's membership already wants better services for its members. The only way they're going to get them is by either lobbying government, or publicly encouraging non-members to support policies that will further the Foundation's interests.

PSA Campaign Against the National Party: 55,000 members. Can spend as much money as it likes promoting the Labour Party to its membership.

Employers and Manufacturers Association: Spends money lobbying Government on everything from better tax treatment of research and development, industry training, and lower compliance costs for business. If it spends more than $60,000 in election year promoting these issues, it will break the law.

EPMU: 50,000 members. Unlimited spending on promoting the Labour Party to its members, and attacking National.

Federated Farmers: If the FART tax campaign had taken place in an election year under Labour’s proposals, Federated Farmers would have broken the law.

No More Rates Campaign: Spent more than $60,000 on newspaper advertising pressuring Government to limit the rating powers of local authorities. Government eventually acknowledged that it was of sufficient public concern to warrant a select committee inquiry. Would have been illegal under Labour’s proposals.

A cursory look at Scoop's Politics thread gives readers an idea of the huge number of special interest groups that spend significant resources promoting its views to bring make its issues, public issues. Some are successful in geting the public behind them; others, like the Exclusive Brethren during the 2005 election, actually hurt National. Yet in Labour's cynical move to create itself a political advantage next election, it will wipe out the ability of all of these organisations to spend more than $60,000 publicly promoting their own interests.

Fuck YOU, You Thieving Bastards!

The Labour Party has managed, quite successfully over the last seven years, to introduce stalking horses for broader policy measures that suit its own interests. By framing the debate, applying its monumental spin machine to the task, and distracting the opposition off-message on trivial issues, it can then follow-up with the sucker-punch of inevitability. It is inevitable, once campaign finance laws are introduced restricting the ability of political parties to raise money, that laws providing for taxpayer funding of those political parties are introduced, to “protect democracy”.

It has been good politics until now. Now the public are sick of these lying, cheating, self-serving bastards. The National Party should take note.

The Labour Party wants to cut off National Party funding—donations from individual members—any way it knows how, while preserving its own funding base—the unions—and enshrining that in law. That is one outrage, which the National Party is focussing on.

But the main outrage is Labour’s assumption that the public will accept spending millions of dollars a year of taxpayer’s money on political parties to spend and campaign as they see fit. This is the point that National needs to consistently run home: having been caught cheating stealing taxpayers’ money at the last election that they weren’t entitled to, and having legislated it to make that spending lawful after the fact, the Labour Party now wants to keep its filthy snout in the trough.

Labour’s argument for doing this is dishonest, and yet again assumes voters are too stupid to spot self-interest where it lies. The justification for Labour’s public funding is that its donation disclosure regime will make it harder to raise money. Well, Labour can’t have it both ways. Either it is benefiting from loose donation disclosure rules at the moment—allowing it to receive, as National does, large tracts of funding from a small pool of donors, or it doesn’t.

The reality is that Labour’s funding has dried up. Its only source of money is the unions. Labour is massively in debt, following the 2005 election spending fraud. It doesn’t have any other means of raising cash. This sudden concern for the integrity of party funding—that hasn’t occurred to Labour to be an agenda item until, miraculously, it reached the stage in the political cycle where it was raising less money than National—has become a lobbying position for dipping in to taxpayers’ funds permanently.

Well, Labour: you can have all the disclosure rules you want next election. It isn’t going to stop you from being voted out of office. But the cynical vote-yourself-cash policy will be repealed by National. There is no public mandate for you to steal yet more taxpayer money and spend it on staying in office.

Labour’s exemption on unions campaigning at election-time will be short-lived: every time a union message is broadcast at election time, it will be viewed by voters for what it is: Labour Party advantage, and yet another reminder of how the Labour Party is writing the rules to suit itself. National’s only recourse, in government, will be to remove the ability of unions to campaign during election time.

And if the Labour Party becomes reliant on its taxpayer-funded base, it will be even more badly damaged by a National Government removing the trough from which Labour can feed.

This kind of selfishness from a party so desperate to stay in power is almost enough to drive a guy to sedition.

Licence to Print Money?

Have a look at this.

Section 30 of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 1989 reads:

Reproduction or imitation of currency

(1)No person shall, without the prior consent of the Bank,—

(a)Make, design, engrave, print, or reproduce; or

(b)Use, issue, or publish—

any article or thing resembling a bank note or coin or so nearly resembling or having such a likeness to a bank note or coin as to be likely to be confused with or mistaken for it.

Now look at this.

Did the Labour Party get permission from the Reserve Bank before printing $10 bills?

Apart from the astonishment that the Labour Party appears to have enough money to embark on this kind of expensive self-promotion while it still owes the taxpayer over $800,000, shouldn't somebody investigate whether it is also breaching the Reserve Bank Act?

Direct Action on Section 59

The liberal hand-wringers have set up this nifty piece of technology that allows New Zealanders to email their MPs with their views on the repeal of Section 59 of the Crimes Act.

For those people who can distinguish between occasional smacking on the one hand, and physical abuse on the other hand; and who believe that the State's first priority should be protecting children from real physical abuse, rather than occasional smacking, I invite you to take the following steps to email all MPs with your opposition to the Bill, using this same website.

To do so, take the following steps:

Visit http://wizard.repealsection59.org.nz/.

Send your message to all 121 MPs.

Create your own email message.

Press "Next".

Fill in the form with your email address, and first and last names.

Click "Next".

Change the Subject Line to "Don't Repeal Section 59".

Paste the following message:

Along with the vast majority of New Zealanders, I strongly disagree with the Green and Labour Parties' moves to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act. Far too much of taxpayers' money has been spent so far debating this tedious and trivial issue.

As the law currently stands, parents who beat their children unreasonably are given no protection under Section 59. There is no overwhelming case history of parents who have escaped prosecution, or conviction, for committing violent acts against their children. On the other hand, the State appears to have been unable to prevent far too many parents from inflicting genuine harm on their children.

The repeal of Section 59 does nothing to protect a single New Zealand child from criminal abuse. It is a red herring inspired by social engineers who have run out of ideas in confronting some of the main causes of child abuse: poverty, poor education, poor health outcomes, substance abuse, and intergenerational welfare.

On the other side of the debate, there is genuine concern from many law-abiding, caring, and loving New Zealand parents that a repeal of Section 59 will criminalise an occasional use of reasonable force against children.

There is no public mandate for the legislation. It is dividing New Zealanders, and in particular, their faith in the parliamentary process. I urge you not to support this Bill, and instead to concentrate your efforts on reducing serious harm against New Zealand's most vulnerable children.

While in the long term, a public debate on the benefits of smacking versus other forms of discipline may overwhelmingly result in a preference for non-smacking disciplinary measures, this attempt to criminalise law-abiding and successful parents, for no benefit to the children concerned, strikes of monumental political stupidity.

Deal with the important stuff first.

Kind regards,

Disagreeing with Your Own

I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with Cactus Kate in principle, but disagreeing on the outcome.

Firstly, I don't think there should be a reasonable force exemption in the crimes act against children. In principle, I don't think there should be any kind of defence against beating a child. I don't see any moral justification for using physical discipline.

I think most rational parents come to the view that consistently smacking an ill-behaved child just doesn't work. Having said that, there are a lot of irrational parents who never reach that conclusion. There are also many parents who beat their children and are offered no protection by section 59 as it is, because the Court simply doesn't interpret their kind of punishment as reasonable.

I agree that it is the State's role to legislate and define what constitutes an assault against another person, irrespective of the relationship between the two people.

Where I disagree, however, is the emphasis that this Government is putting on the issue, and how it has effectively made repealing section 59 the major social priority of this government.

The real harm to children is gross physical violence by parents and others who are often encouraged to breed children they otherwise would not have. If the Government actually cares about violence against children, and the appalling child death rates, it should be placing much greater responsibility on non-performing parents to ensure their children are healthy, educated, fed, properly housed, and physically safe.

An occasional smack does little harm to a child. Again, I agree it has no benefit, but that's another issue. The real harm against children--which Sue Bradford and even the PM are claiming that this Bill somehow addresses--is the failure of the welfare state to make parents responsible for the upbringing of their children.

That is the biggest social lie of this new century. Middle class parents, who feel legislatively marginalised by an occasional smack, rightly feel that the State's attention should be better focussed on ensuring children are protected from serious harm.

Sue Bradford is motivated much more by ideology rather than a genuine desire to protect children. That Labour has succumbed to Bradford's charms, for the sake of protecting its majority in the House, and is alienating vast tracts of middle New Zealand parents who may occasionally smack but otherwise raise their children responsibly, shows just how out of touch they are.

Over time, section 59 should be phased out. But a lot more has to be done to protect the most vulnerable children in society from abuse by irresponsible parents--and the social harms of alcohol and drug abuse, poor educational and health outcomes, and exposure to violent crime--before any repeal of section 59 is needed.

It is nothing short of an absurdity that the Government has made itself the enemy of its own constituency by introducing legislation that protects no children from serious harm, sends a message to moderate parents that they are harming their children, and is overwhelmingly opposed by voters. It's a tiny, inconsequential piece of legislation, which even its promoters say won't be enforced. In short, Bradford's bill achieves nothing of any use, other than pissing people off. To allow a minor party to hijack its legislative plans, and in so doing alienate large numbers of voters, suggests Helen Clark has lost her cunning nose for public opinion, and her ability to massage that opinion around her own agenda.

One Standard For All Socialists

CYFSWATCH got shut down because some commenters made threats of violence against Green MP Sue Bradford. Bradford shrieked to the Police, claiming that she feared for her personal safety.

Yet over at that paragon of pinko sensibility, Millsy gets his own back. Claiming that the National Party wants to preserve the right to beat people, he ranges across threats of physical violence, racism, and religious hatred:

"The fact of the matter is:IF PARENTS REALLY LOVED THEIR KIDS THEY WOULD STOP HITTING THEM.

The National party are a bunch of violent fuckheads who dont care about a kids right to be free of violence. I think they get off on beating their kids, nothing like bashing a child with an iron bar for spilling the milk to make you feel better. Taito Philip Field is a typical child beating coconut ape who, with his race need to go back up the trees where they belong, and, we need to push violence out of this country RIGHT NOW!

HITTING CHILDREN IS WRONG, and the sooner these coconuts, white trash bogans, scruffy Old-Testamenters and white-middle-class-closet-nazis realise this, the better.

Its time we moved into the 21st Century folks. A new order, where violence is frowned upon.

Posted by millsy : 3/14/2007 10:30:00

But Millsy isn't finished, even after a telling-off from Idiot Savant:

"That fucking Garth George is a fucking wanker, wanting to protect parents who bash their children. I hope one day that someone bashes hime like he bashes his kids. Teach that intolerant bigot a good fucking lesson. People like him need a good thrashing. And that bitch who used the horse whip on her son, thinks she can use violence to coerce her children with the threat of the stick. It probably turns her on, giving her kids a beating.

"New Zealand disgusts me. We seem to be addicted to violence in the home, beating children on a whim.

"Posted by millsy : 3/15/2007 08:54:00 AM "

Long Live Joseph Stalin.

In-Flight Safety

Occasionally I find that my personal views inhibit my social life. One such instance occurred in a bar in Auckland recently, where I was chatting up a hot Emirates hostess.

The conversation started with my criticism of the in-flight safety announcements.

"Why is smoking in the toilet a fire hazard?" I ask.

"Because the plane could catch fire," she answers, in that vacuous, I-haven't-thought-deeply-about-this-but-that's-what-they-told-me-at-hostess-school kind of way that air hostesses all seem to possess. I have noticed that there is something quite particular about the mentality of flight hostesses, which they share in common with Labour Party MPs: the unrivalled ability to spout platitudinous nonsense. There's no justification for pinko politicians on the public payroll to come up with this rubbish, but at least I can understand why air hostesses are so dumbed down. Day in and day out, they are forced to be polite to often obnoxious passengers, responding to such inane questions as: "Is this chicken or beef?" Or: "What does the non smoking light mean?" In a social context, my experience of air hostesses is that conversation almost exclusively revolves around where they have landed from, and what their next destination is.

But I am not satisfied with this answer. "So smoking in the toilet is a fire hazard, but smoking in the cabin is not?"

"No," she answers. "Smoking in the cabin is also a fire hazard."

"I see," I say. "So how come for forty years smoking in the cabin was allowed, and of all the millions of flights, not one plane ever crashed because a passenger was smoking?"

"I don't know," she responds.

I wasn't trying to ask annoying questions, of course. So I gave her a way out of the argument. "I can understand that the in-flight air conditioning system may not be totally efficient, and non-smoking passengers dislike the smell of cigarette smoke. Wouldn't it be more honest to say that smoking on planes irritates non-smoking passengers, rather than claim that the plane will crash if somebody lights up in the toilet?"

Emirates girl wasn't prepared to concede this point. So I progressed to the issue of lifeboats on planes.

"What is the point of lifeboats on a Boeing 747?" I ask.

"They're in case a plane lands on the water," she says politely. I buy her a drink, because she's hot, and come back to the conversation.

"Are there enough lifeboats for every passenger?"

"Yes, of course," she answers.

"Are they very useful, these lifeboats?"

"Yes, they're a key part of in-flight safety," she says.

"I see." I take a swig of my drink, and then say: "How many planes have ever used these lifeboats?"

She doesn't know what I mean. So I expand on this. "Well, put it this way. You spend ten fucking minutes during take-off telling us where the exits are, and where the lifeboats are, when every passenger airliner that has ever crashed into the water has lost everybody on board."

She wasn't amused by this, but she's still smiling politely.

"We need to put passengers' minds at ease."

I say it isn't helpful to give passengers the inaccurate impression that if a 350 tonne airplane hits the water at 300 miles an hour, the plane will somehow remain intact, and the passengers able to walk off into their lifeboats.

"If a plane's going to crash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, nobody's actually going to survive to deploy the lifeboats, are they?" I say.

It is at this point that she starts to feel defensive. Being the not-very-sensitive guy that I am, I don't notice this. It doesn't occur to me that after four years of working for Emirates, she herself has found comfort in the existence of lifeboats. So I continue.

"And what's the point of showing passengers where the fucking exits are? Don't you think, just maybe, that a passenger who does happen to survive a massive plane crash might just jump out of the BIG FUCKING HOLE IN THE PLANE, rather than calmly follow the other passengers along the lights to the designated exit?"

The conversation ended shortly afterwards. Bloody pity, really. Emirates Girl was hot.

Where is CYFS when you need them?

This nutjob, when she's not spending all her days listening to the radio, instead of out working productively in society, is babysitting.

Who the fuck breaks down in tears when reading Dr Seuss to a baby? And who the fuck leaves such babies in the care of such warped people?

Work for the dole would do her a helluva lot of good.

Pull Finger!

There are plenty of opportunities for the Nats to sink the spoon into this sordid bunch of sorry socialists. One of the most frustrating aspects of being a loyal National Party member is seeing them miss the boat.

Here we are with the kick off of a $1.5 million rates inquiry, which deliberately misses the key point—and we have not a whisper of protest from National’s Local Government spokesmen John Carter and Mark Blumsky. Well, boys, get off your lazy arses and start doing your fucking jobs.

National’s local government policy, as far as policies go, is a reasonable document--particularly surprising since it was written by Nick Smith, and is two years old. But it misses out on key issues, and is in need of dire reform. It spends far too much time talking about “consulting” with local government, while local government continues to waste increasing amounts of ratepayers’ money at alarming rates. Local Government doesn’t need “consultation”. It is a slimy cesspool of mediocre socialist politicians who hide behind vast layers of bureaucracy to intervene in ordinary ratepayers’ lives. We’ve gone well beyond the time for consultation. What New Zealand needs is a tough minister to go in and take a big fucking axe to the useless fuckers.

National's challenge in Government will be to pick off policy areas that directly send the socialists squealing and send them into disarray. New Zealand voters have no great sympathy towards the unaccountable never-beens that make up local authority “elected” representation. It’s time to sock it to the buggers.

One of the many lessons of Margaret Thatcher’s greatness was her ability to identify the things that whip the pinkos into a lather. Her reformation of local government in the late 80s—local government that at the time had far more responsibilities devolved to them than New Zealand ever had—was, in part, about putting a lid on some of the mindless socialist mess-ups of the time. Where Thatcher failed was that she didn’t clamp down on the socialist-dominated local authorities’ power to spend.

And here lies the great fiasco that is the Government’s inquiry into local government funding. It is a pointless talk-fest that will spend months coming up with different economic models for how to rate and pay for local government services. Who pays, and with what mechanism, doesn’t actually matter.

It’s their bloody spending that is the problem.

Local Government is rotten to its core. The degrees of bureaucracy required to do anything, apparently in the name of democracy, have created a whole new, and vastly expensive, organizational model: the consultocracy. The requirement to consult with the community, and every competing organisational unit, over even the most thoroughly trivial of developments, places colossal burdens on the ratepayer. Special interest groups need to be included in decision-making for no other reason than they will make noise if not included. In a town like Auckland, there are a lot of special interest groups.

The industry that feeds off this system is wasteful in the extreme, with no external pressures or motivations to act efficiently. Take the case in point of a friend of mine, the manager of a major project in the Auckland region. He was appointed last year, and, being new to the Council, had little knowledge about how the Council operated. In his project team were a group of external consultants, who had been hired by his general manager. As part of this project, he was required to put out a tender for consulting advice on a key aspect of the project. He asked his manager whether it was appropriate for him to go to the Council’s internal procurement office to work out the tender process on that advice. His manager told him to use another external consultant to provide that external tendering advice.

Thus when the external consultant gave the wrong advice about how to go about administering a tender process for external consultancy services, the project manager called the procurement office. The correct advice on the tender process for external consultancy services was given within two minutes. Thus the waste of $15,000 on faulty advice by a consultant on internal council processes. The consultant in question continues to be retained by the project manager, on the basis that she has indispensable relationships formed over fifteen years as an external consultant to Council.

Auckland Regional Council’s expenditure remained static for ten years up until 2001. In the last five years, the Council’s spending has doubled. Auckland City Council—again static over the previous period, but up 60% in the last five years. Bay of Plenty Regional Council—up by 150% over the same period. Canterbury Regional Council’s spending is up by 70%. All in all, local authorities spend over $5 billion—about 4% of GDP—on local authority services. That compares with $3.5 billion in 2000, and $2.8 billion way back when Statistics started keeping records in 1993.

All the while, the asset base of local authorities has ballooned in the last six years, as trivial little empire-builders have self-perpetuated an asset portfolio of $44 billion in 2000, to a whopping $80 billion this year.

Not that Auckland City Councillors actually feel the pinch when they pay their rates bills. The socialist-dominated Council is full of middle-class pinkos—with the sole exceptions of Leila Boyle and Bill Christian—who live in million dollar homes.

They are, in sum, a waste of bloody space.

Local Government is a creation of Parliament. It has, of itself, no legal power other than that which Parliament has given it. It is high time that Parliament stopped passing the buck for local authority excesses, and reined them in.

So in the interests of being constructive, here are some proposals that are so sensible Mark Blumsky and John Carter don’t even have to think about, and it will give them respect, gratitude of the public, and the enmity of every card-carrying Labour Party scumbag who seeks a cushy job in local government before joining Aunty Helen’s also-ran caucus.

1. Take responsibility for the activities of Local Government. Stop passing the buck on wayward, overspending, inept and bloated councils by claiming that’s what local electors want. The degree of apathy by voters in local government is directly related to their frustration that nothing will change the irresponsible habits of empire-building petty politicians.
2. Cut the number of local authorities from 86 to 6. There’s far too much inter-council squabbling, duplication of services, and electable opportunities for would-be meddlers. With one stroke of the pen, tell them to fuck off.
3. Restrict each of the local authorities to ten elected representatives, elected by first past the post. At present the most obscure and petty-minded patch-protector gets elected, and reelected, by doing nothing more than promising a couple of neighbours that they will get their pot-holes fixed. It will also have the added effect of forcing some 500 socialists in elected council positions to get a real fucking job.
4. Tightly define the core responsibilities of local government: water, wastewater, roading, and rubbish collection. All of these services should be tendered out. With just six local authorities, the services will have a critical mass for international best-practice supply of such services. Council’s role will be restricted to selecting the best service supplier.
5. Reduce non-core responsibilities to no more than ten percent of total expenditure. Force the pinkos to cancel their empire-building pipe dreams that have nothing to do with the infrastructure of the region. Ten percent is more than enough to pay for libraries and parks.
6. Require councils to reduce staffing levels by 30%. This is easily achievable by restricting the functions of local authorities to core requirements.
7. Freeze rates for five years. With efficiencies from amalgamation, staff reduction, and a tight focus on core activities, there is no reason not to achieve this.
8. Local government has no interest in creating competition in infrastructure services, and as the stadium debacle showed, councils are unable to separate their commercial interests from their civic interests. Require councils to sell off port and airport assets. The proceeds of the sales should be returned to individual ratepayers in annual installments over a ten year period. Ratepayers who would otherwise squeal that community assets are being sold and proceeds squandered by councils will be appeased by having the assets directly returned to them.
9. Remove the building consents and RMA processes from local government. Instead, create one national organisation processing building consents. This will remove the vastly expensive inconsistencies between local authorities. Better yet, commercialise the consents processing entirely, and restrict the activity of a central agency to auditing and standards.
10. Give the Minister of Local Government the authority to sack any council, and appoint a commissioner to sort out problems. The mere threat of intervention by the Minister will place a degree of restraint on their excesses.

Mark Blumsky, you have expressed frustration that you are unable to achieve anything as a National backbencher. Well, buddy, if you want to distinguish yourself, pull bloody finger and make a name for yourself by reforming one of the biggest fucking rorts in town.

Funding Our Future

Rob Cameron, one of the architects of the SOE model, has suggested that the ten largest SOEs partially float on the capital markets.

This is a good concept, but it’s not realistic under this government. Frankly, I doubt much that a John Key-led National government would partially list any of the SOEs, let alone the ten largest ones. Selling off state assets is seen as selling off the family silver at the expense of future generations.

State owned enterprises are an historical anomaly. They were set up during the Fourth Labour government to provide commercial structures and governance, in anticipation of privatisation.

State owned enterprises account for about $25 billion on the government’s balance sheet. Some of the largest—Meridian, Mighty River Power, Genesis Energy, and TVNZ, all face significant competition from the private sector.

There is little strategic argument for setting up a company with purely commercial imperatives, and then determining that the government should own those companies. TVNZ’s massive losses in value over the past few years can be attributed, on the one hand, to government interference into board operations, and a blind unwillingness to divest from a commercial entity that faces huge competition and high risk.

Again, we return to the core problem that politicians have: selling off SOEs is commercially sensible, but politically sensitive. It doesn’t matter how silly it is to own multiple competing energy generation companies—or even an airline.

There is another, much better option, which John Key should pursue. And it lies in the Super Fund.

Michael Cullen champions the Super Fund as his own. To be fair, it is one of the few significant economic achievements of this Labour Government. It has some $12 billion in assets, diversified across low and medium-risk investments in New Zealand and offshore. The taxpayer is contributing to its growth at the rate of a couple of billion a year. Its investment performance has been solid.

The Super Fund works because it operates outside of political interference. The super fund managers are professional fund managers. The guardians’ sole interest is in the economic performance of the fund. Even Helen Clark’s recent comments about investments in tobacco companies don’t matter a jot to the Super Fund guardians. And nor should they.

The Super Fund has now reached a size where it is untouchable politically. No politician can raid it to fund short-term, hare-brained schemes, and it is seen by the public as a legitimate means of securing New Zealanders' future. John Key's solution is to make it even harder to touch, and even more secure.

John Key should transfer all state owned enterprises to the Super Fund. This will have an immediate effect on the size of the super fund, into a significant public asset worth some $40 billion. The Super Fund guardians can then decide which of the SOEs to keep, which to partially or wholly divest from, and which to float on the capital markets.

While this will result in a direct reduction in the government's fiscal position--surpluses will be lower as profits from existing SOEs are moved to the Super Fund--it will also remove the need for the Government to make ongoing contributions directly to the Fund. The existence of a moderately-performing $40 billion super fund, earning 7% returns, will create an $80 billion fund over ten years--more than enough to cover the super liability bubble over the next forty years as baby boomers start drawing on it.

The positive effect on the capital markets as at least a dozen attractive, high-performing investments start trading domestically will make the New Zealand sharemarket immediately more viable for New Zealand investors.

There will be other options for establishing SOEs for a National Goverment--the ACC employers' fund is ripe for creation of at least two, and possibly three separate SOEs, with an additional $8 billion in assets that could be transferred to the Super Fund, thereby opening up ACC to private competition and investment.

It’s time to take the ownership of SOEs out of direct political interference, and place them in the actual interests of New Zealanders’ future.

Dear Jeanette Fitzsimons...

Dear Jeanette Fitzsimons:

I have yet to see anything in the eleven years in which you have been in Parliament, which demonstrates in even the remotest sense, your contribution to New Zealand. I estimate that in real terms, you have earned over $3 million in your private salary, personal allowances, and superannuation (not to mention your very dodgy schemes--such as your Christchurch office which is owned by the Green Party and chartges rent to Parliamentary Services, which you in return use to fund your Green Party election campaigns)--with no net return to the country.

However, now is your chance to have a lucky break. Yes, Jeanette: I realise that you will soon also be entitled to receive National Superannuation, so I give you one lasting legacy to New Zealand.

Put a stop to this stupid bloody food miles junket. I've already heard far too many bloody pseudo-greenies, who are no less socialist than your very red self, proclaim the hazards of "food miles". As even your co-leader accepts, the food miles argument is a complete bloody crock.

So here is your solution. Go on a junket to Britain--if you accompany Judith Tizard you should be able to save on a companion fare--and tell those silly buggers in Britain off. Produce a new standard for food miles. Be the first person, internationally, to come up with an international measure, which actually presents the carbon footprint as it is. Make sure it favours New Zealand for once, rather than Europe.

Hell, we all know that the food miles theory was invented by European trade protectionists anyway, and cottoned onto by your ignorant pinko-greenie ideologues because they've become bored with protesting about other stuff. So go set the record straight. If they're going to be making food miles the new fad, give them some proper bloody information and some standards that favour us. Like, for example, how New Zealand lamb actually consumes less carbon than British lamb.

There's a good lass.

Kind regards,

Insolent Prick

P.S. I note you still get extra resources from the Labour Government in return for propping up those disgusting pinko liberals. Do you think you could please use your influence to see if the repulsive socialists have repaid the money they stole to buy South Island votes, and indeed the election last year?

Spongiformus Tizarditis

Life is not always easy for the Beehive staffer. Risks of the job include finger-cramps, public humiliation, and quite frequently, bouts of mental retardation. While the cut and thrust of representing relatively competent ministers with actual portfolios, such as David Cunliffe, Annette King, and Phil Goff must have their respective merits, the life of one of the lesser spin doctors must be particularly gruelling.

Take Judith Tizard's office, for example. In seven years of ministerial office, Tizard has never been promoted to Cabinet. She is the first ever Associate Minister for Arts and Culture. Her position of "Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Auckland Issues" provides the excellent ruse to travel with the PM on the latter's domestic and international itinerary.

It's all a bloody shame, really. With Tizard's excellent breeding--her father a deputy prime minister and Finance Minister, who last distinguished himself in 1989, when as Defence Minister, he labelled the recently-deceased Japanese Emperor Hirohito a "war criminal"; and mother a mayor, governor-general, and perhaps most importantly, an entertaining panellist on Beauty and the Beast--it's a shame that so little has become of Judith Tizard.

Judith Tizard is Helen Clark's closest personal friend. While Tizard no longer resides at Premier House (she has obtained a separate taxpayer-funded dwelling in Thorndon), Tizard was Clark's electorate secretary for three years prior to entering Parliament. While working for Clark, Tizard also had the opportunity to finally finish her Bachelor of Arts in History. Of course, it did take eleven years to complete, which probably explains Tizard's immaculate modesty, generosity towards others, and her unwavering commitment to listening to both points of view.

What is harder to explain, however, is this post from one of Tizard's ministerial staffers yesterday. Since Tizard's office is staffed by a rather large number of people--at least seven press secretaries in the last few years--it's not easy tracking down who wrote it. But it deserves special attention. The comment reads:

Office of the Hon Judith Tizard said...
Could you please correct the entry for Judith Tizard as follows:
- IP lists Judith Tizard as "Auckland councilor" [sic]
- Judith served on the Auckland Electric Power Board (1977-1983), and the Auckland Regional Councillor for Panmure (1988-91);
- When Parliament is sitting, Judith resides in ministerial housing in Wellington - not at Premier House;
- Judith is Patron of 11 organisations including the Mt Wellington Women's Bowling Club and the Auckland Brass Band. She is an Honorary member of the Otahuhu & District RSA, and Honorary Vice-President of the Otahuhu & District Highland Pipe Band.

My response was:

Dear office of the hon judith tizard:

No correction necessarily. You have made the correction here. I'm not sure what your point is, precisely, but I can tell you this. We do not yet live in a society where ministerial offices dictate the tone and content of what is said about them.

Now go and do some bloody work. No doubt Ministerial Services pays you a bloody whopping great salary for you to do something somewhat more productive than act as editor of my blog.

The Welfare State

Back in November, I wrote a post on that other inconvenient truth, and the state of welfare dependency in New Zealand. In light of John Key's State of the Nation speech, I've cherry-picked the key recommendations for serious welfare reform:

1. Requirement for all long-term unemployed to report to Work and Income at 9am daily to collect their benefit. Get them into the habit of getting out of bed.
2. Pay a bonus of $2,000 to all women who have been on the DPB for more than two years, to get their tubes tied.
3. Pay bonuses of $1000 to all fathers of welfare-dependent children to have vasectomies.
4. Pay bonuses of $500 to WINZ staff for moving a long-term beneficiary from welfare into work. Bonus payable after six months of continuous employment by the beneficiary.
5. Every child receiving welfare must have their father named on birth certificates.
6. No welfare entitlements to the father of children living with mothers on the DPB.
7. Non-custodial fathers must be in paid employment, and must make minimum contributions of $50 per week.
8. Fathers not permitted to leave New Zealand while children living with a dependent DPB beneficiary.
9. Children must attend school. Non-attendance would lead to the benefit being cancelled.
10. All children must receive medical check-ups at least every six months, to check on the nutritional and general health status of the child.
11. Random alcohol and drug checks of long-term welfare beneficiaries.
12. No violent offenders permitted to live in the same home as children of welfare beneficiaries.
13. A maximum six months of entitlement to the unemployment benefit in any five year period, and a maximum of two years’ entitlement to the DPB for any person in their lifetime.
14. Frequent, random checks of homes of welfare dependent children to assess housing needs and compliance.

"We are not amused!"

I have a very good relationship with my bank manager. I don’t know how this has come about, since my late-night spend-ups in Auckland bars hardly make me a model of personal fiscal prudence. I’ve even stopped using my bank’s credit and debit cards, and resorted to using cash to pay for my beverage bills. There’s something particularly sobering about having to count out the notes, rather than yelling out my PIN number to the barman when my inebriated eyesight is preventing me from reading the numbers on the EFTPOS keypad.

Despite that, my bank manager and I catch up for lunch every couple of months, whereby he tells me about some of the more dubious financial products on offering, we trade advice on the property market, interest rates, and capital markets generally, and discuss cricket. Somebody in the Bank has made it one of his key performance indicators to keep his customers happy.

In November 2006, Helen Clark was in a spot of bother. So much bother that she called the Government's bank manager.

It happened like this. After weeks of mud-slinging from Labour MPs against National leader Don Brash, in which Labour ministers Trevor Mallard, Pete Hodgson and David Benson-Pope had been spreading rumours of an extra-marital affair among the Press Gallery and in the House, Labour was approaching polling free-fall. Rather than turn on Brash, the public was rightfully blaming Clark for sanctioning bringing MPs private lives into the public debate.

Clark was under intense pressure. Her subsequent allegations—that the National Party was behind rumours surrounding her husband’s sexuality—rumours purportedly spread within law firms, accountancy firms, business groups and golf clubs (!!!), were met with public derision. The PM's public claims that National caucus members were spreading the rumours in the Press Gallery were outright rejected by the very Gallery members who were supposed to have received them.

It all got very heated when a staffer in Helen Clark’s private office received a forwarded email from a friend working at Westpac Bank. The email contained a mock National Party billboard, of the kind the Nats had used during the election campaign. One side of the billboard featured Helen Clark , stating: “My husband thinks I’m sexy!” On the other side was Don Brash, claiming: “Her husband thinks I’m sexy!”.

The staffer printed out the email and showed it to the PM. She went ballistic.

Westpac has a special relationship with the New Zealand Government. Westpac is the Government’s official banker. Every government department, every state owned enterprise, and every government agency banks with Westpac. That represents a very large proportion of the economy.

Ann Sherry chairs the Government’s Growth and Innovation Advisory Board—effectively the PM’s personal ear to the private sector. Helen Clark appointed Sherry to be Chairperson of the Peter Blake Trust. Mark Burton appointed Sherry to the board of the Tourism Research Council. Westpac is the only bank that consistently makes donations to political parties.

None of this is particularly unusual or even slightly surprising. A person of Sherry’s status, with her close relationship to Government, will be appointed to Government boards. It is reasonable to say that nobody outside of Government has as close a relationship to the Prime Minister as Westpac’s CEO.

What was unusual was the Prime Minister’s response to the email forwarded from a Westpac employee to a member of the PM’s private office. Clark didn't get the gag. She called Ann Sherry immediately, and complained. Clark stated that she was deeply offended by it, and she did not think it was appropriate for a person working in the bank to be forwarding such outrageous allegations about her husband.

Sherry responded by saying that she would conduct an investigation, and ensure that the staff member was disciplined.

Westpac’s Chief Information Officer was called in to verify the source of the email, with a clear understanding that the employee would face disciplinary action for forwarding the email on to others.

All Westpac staff received a high-level email repeating email policy to them, while an investigation into staff email use was conducted. It turned into high farce, however, when the CIO reported that not only had he discovered the source of the email that had offended the Prime Minister, but that 181 other employees had received the offending email, and forwarded it on to others both within and outside the organisation. Clearly they saw political humour where the Prime Minister had not. Sherry was asked if she wished to discipline all 182 employees. An embarrassed CEO had to report back to the Prime Minister that no action could be taken without similarly firing a key chunk of Westpac's payroll.

This isn't the first time that the Prime Minister has used her authority, and personal relationships, to bully senior executives into doing as she instructed; but to demand disciplinary action against an employee of a bank that is so entrenched in government business, simply for offending her by passing on an email, is about as outrageous as it gets.

Real New Zealanders

This is the combined backgrounds of Labour's caucus and party list from the last election; their qualifications for office and their careers prior to entering Parliament. It makes very fascinating reading, and gives a direct lie to tenuous claims by some of the filthy pinko bloggers that the Labour Party is a broad mix of people from everyday New Zealand.

THE CAUCUS

Helen Clark. University lecturer. Member of the Association of University Staff.

Michael Cullen. University lecturer. AUS delegate.

Margaret Wilson. University lecturer. Appointed to Law Commisison by Geoffrey Palmer. Labour Party President. Later professor of law at Waikato. Chair of the Association of University Teachers. Secretary of the Legal Employees Union.

Steve Maharey. Sociology lecturer at Massey "University". AUS delegate.

Parekura Horomia. Public servant. PSA delegate.

Phil Goff. University lecturer. Insurance Workers’ Union organizer.

Annette King. Dental nurse and polytech tutor. Nurses organization delegate.

Trevor Mallard. School teacher. PPTA secretary.

Marian Hobbs. School teacher. PPTA delegate. Admits to being a former communist.

Dover Samuels. Maori Vice President of the Labour Party. Far North District Councillor.

Pete Hodgson. Vet. School teacher. PPTA delegate.

Taito Phillip Field. Promoted as New Zealand’s first Pacific Island MP. Spent seventeen years as a trade union official, most latterly in an executive role with the Service Workers’ Union, assisting the welfare of South Auckland’s most vulnerable, low-income residents. Currently under a police investigation following allegations he received personal benefit as an MP in exchange for assisting certain vulnerable, low-income residents.

Ruth Dyson: Close friend of Helen Clark’s. Former Labour Party president. Worked for Labour Minister of Employment. Active in the CTU. Worked for Fran Wilde on the Homosexual Law Reform Bill.

Mita Ririnui. Previously private secretary to the president of the Ratana Church. Worked for Special Education Services. PSA delegate.

Mark Burton. PSA delegate. Worked for the Department of Social Welfare, and the Palmerston North City Council.

Paul Swain. CTU Research Officer, and Federation of Labour official.

Judith Tizard. Auckland councilor. Electorate Secretary to Helen Clark. PSA member. Helen Clark’s closest personal friend. Resides in Wellington at Premier House. Patron of the Auckland Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual communities.

Chris Carter. School teacher. PPTA delegate. Promoted as Labour’s first openly gay cabinet minister. Key member of Labour’s Rainbow faction.

Winnie Laban. PSA member. Public servant, also working in the voluntary sector.

Rick Barker. National Secretary of the Service Workers’ Union.

Mahara Okeroa. Teacher. PPTA delegate. Worked for Ministry of Education and Te Puni Kokiri, and was a PSA delegate.

David Benson-Pope. PPTA chairman for Otago. Dunedin City Councillor. School teacher.

Jill Pettis. Nurse. Delegate for the Nurses Organisation, and for Finsec.

Ashraf Choudhary. University lecturer. Involved in the Federation of Ethnic Councils. Member of Association of University Staff. Promoted as Labour’s first Muslim MP. President of the Federation of Islamic Associations.

Lianne Dalziel. Legal officer and Secretary for Canterbury Hotel Workers’ Union.

Shane Jones: Worked at the Ministry for Environment, then Maori Fisheries Commission. PSA member.

Dianne Yates: Former teacher. Delegate for the PPTA, and the Association of University Staff. Has issued two press releases in the last two years, and made one public speech.

Mark Gosche: CTU executive member, spent 22 years as a paid union official.

Ann Hartley: Former city councilor. PSA member. Has published no speeches in the last eighteen months, and issued no press releases in the last year.

David Cunliffe: PSA member, former public servant working for MFAT.

Martin Gallagher: School teacher, member of PPTA, Hamilton City Councillor for nine years.

Steve Chadwick: Nurses organization delegate, Rotorua district councilor, and administrator in a public hospital.

Darren Hughes: PSA member, member of VUWSA’s executive. Worked as Judy Keall’s executive assistant before entering Parliament.

Georgina Beyer: Promoted as Labour’s first transsexual MP. No known union activities. Carterton Councillor and mayor.

Maryan Street: Promoted as the first out lesbian woman Labour MP. Began career as a schoolteacher, before becoming full-time official for the PPTA. Worked for the CTU, before becoming a labour relations specialist at Auckland University. Subsequently became employee relations manager for district health boards. Labour Party President.

David Parker: Lawyer. Personally very close to several prominent trade unionists. After sacking Electricity Commissioner Roy Hemmingway for following an independent line, Parker appointed former CTU economist and Cullen political adviser Peter Harris to the job.

Russell Fairbrother: Organiser for the Meat Workers’ Union before becoming a lawyer.

Dave Hereora: Organiser, Service and Foodworkers Union

Lynne Pillay: Organiser for EPMU and the Nurses Organisation.

Moana Mackey: Delegate for the EPMU. University researcher.

Sue Moroney: Worked for Northern Hotel Workers’ Union, then secretary of equine workers’ union. Spent eleven years working for the Nurses’ Organisation. Apart from School Certificate, she also has a certificate in “Labour and Trade Union Studies” from the “University” of Waikato.

Darien Fenton: Vice President of the CTU, National Secretary of the Service and Food Workers’ Union, and Vice President of the Labour Party responsible for union affiliates. Has sought to extend the minimum wage to independent contractors since entering Parliament.

Charles Chauvel: Began his career with the Hotel Workers Union. Worked in industrial and employment law, representing primarily unions, throughout his legal career before entering Parliament. Spent fifteen years working on gay/lesbian issues. President of the Aids Foundation.

NEXT IN LINE:
Lesley Soper: Convener Southland CTY. NZEI Organiser. Appointed deputy chair of Southland DHB by Annette King. Typically, states her qualifications for becoming a Labour MP: “I have done the hard yards, politically and in the union movement.”

Louisa Wall. Of Maori descent. Employed by the Human Rights Commission. Heavily promoted by Labour’s Rainbow Group as an icon. Also a government-appointed board member of SPARC. Member of the PSA.

Su’a William Sio. Samoan chiefly title. Close friend of Taito Phillip Field. Manukau City Councillor. Called on Manukau City to contribute to locked out NDU workers during the Progressive dispute. Formerly a union delegate.

Brendon Burns: Manager, Government Communications Unit, Prime Minister’s Office. Spent the first nine years of his career as a journalist at Radio New Zealand as a parliamentary reporter. PSA member.

Hamish McCracken: FINSEC union organizer. Now a “lecturer” in “politics” at Auckland “University” of Technology.

Denise MacKenzie. Wairarapa school teacher, and organizer for the NZEI union.

Max Purnell. Coromandel farmer. Government appointee to AGMARDT, the Agricultural Marketing Trust. Chairs Labour’s Rural Sector Council.

Wayne Harpur: Invercargill City Councillor. Appointed by Government to Invercargill Airport Ltd. Former trade union organiser.

Leila Boyle. Auckland City Councillor. Tutor at Auckland University. Member of the Association of University Staff. Received significant personal lobbying from Sports Minister Trevor Mallard to cast a pro-waterfront vote last week. Personal Mentor: Judith Tizard.

Dinesh Tailor: Chair of the Auckland Refugee Council, and Federation of Ethnic Communities. Appointed a JP by Phil Goff. Made a QSO in June. Sanctioned with getting out the “ethnic vote”.

Phil Twyford: Electorate secretary to Helen Clark. Previously an organizer with the Hotel Workers Union, and an official at Oxfam. Appointed by Jim Sutton to sit on the ministerial advisory group on trade negotiations, and by Maryan Hobbs to sit on the ministerial advisory group on international development. Served as chair of Labour’s policy council. Creative NZ, via Judith Tizard, appointed Twyford as project director for Book Month.

Jen McCutcheon, PPTA President, having spent seven years as a full-time union organiser. CTU board member. Employed by ERO. Now deputy director of the Correspondence School.

Chris Yoo: President of the New Zealand Korean society. Charged with getting the Korean vote out. Gave a symposium to a large Human Rights Commission gathering on “Human Rights and the Treaty of Waitangi”. Of course.

Michael Wood: Finsec organizer since leaving university. Appointed by Steve Maharey to the council of Manukau Institute of Technology.

Linda Hudson: SWFU member, Whakatane District Councillor.

Stuart Nash: Marketing manager. Appointed to Director of Strategic Developments at A”U”T, with the extraordinary statement by the vice chancellor that “his powerful communication skills, a concern for social justice and desire to lift New Zealand's economic performance have drawn him to the political spheres where he has been a significant member of the Labour Party.”

Tony Milne: Youth Vice President of the Labour Party. Executive assistant to Tim Barnett. Member of the Rainbow group in Labour. PSA member.

David Talbot: Previously staffer to Pete Hodgson and Marian Hobbs. PSA member. Now employed by ESR.

Marilyn Brown: Palmerston North City Councillor. PSA member.

Anjum Rahman. Frequently a keynote speaker at Government-sponsored human rights, social policy, feminist and health gatherings.

Eamon Daly, disability activist. Promoted by Ruth Dyson and others as New Zealand’s first tetraplegic MP, if elected. Human Rights Review Tribunal Member. Biothics Council Member.

Grant Duffy: Former PSA activist, now runs the Department of Labour’s Partnership Resource Centre. The Centre’s role is to promote union bargaining with employers.

Judy Lawley: Full-time Waitakere City Councillor, “because the demands on city councillors are continually increasing with the ever-widening responsibilities”. Lists her key priorities as a city councillor as “Social issues - addressing poverty, good parenting, healthy communities with access to facilities for everyone, alcohol problems, crime, economic development, and education and training.” Doesn’t list roading, sewerage, or city infrastructure once. Former school teacher and PPTA delegate.

Mike Mora. Christchurch City Councillor. Trade unionist.

Erin Ebborn-Gillespie, Christchurch solicitor.

Ai Lian Su. No idea. Never heard of him.

Ghazala Anwar. Pakistani descent. Lecturer in Religious Studies at Canterbury University. Member of Association of University Staff. Specialist in Islamic Studies, and women’s issues in Islam.

Paul Gibson. Disability campaigner. Former president of VUWSA, and the Disabled Persons Assembly.

Kelly-Ann Harvey: Electorate agent to Judith Tizard. Involved in the Landmark Forum. PSA member.

Camille Nakhid. Lecturer in Social Services at A”U”T. Association of University Staff member. Involved with Waitakare City’s Ethnic Community liaison committee. Henderson Community Board member.. University lecturer. Chair of the Association of University Teachers. Secretary of the Legal Employees Union.

Comment Moderation

Currently I have comments moderation set to "off". Frankly, unlike my nemesis, I can't be stuffed monitoring comments, and don't care what they say anyway.

I do make this point, tho: if you are going to make frequent comments, choose a name for yourself. You don't have to log into blogger, or have a blogger account, but it's bloody confusing for several people posting under the name "Anonymous". I don't mind occasional anonymous comments, but if you're going to frequently post here, distinguish yourself from the other anonymous posters.