Fiji has gained a reputation in the South Pacific for its four military coups that have forced the media to work under restrictive conditions for the past two decades. More recently the battle for media freedom in Fiji has been against the Fiji Media Industry Development Decree 2010. The controversial and highly debated Decree threatens Fiji media with excessive fines, jail terms and places them under the surveillance of a statuary body, the Media Industry Development Authority. The impact of the Decree has led to some of Fiji’s long-established news outlets being criticised for publishing soft news that favours the government. However, new political and current affairs magazine, Repúblika, established in 2012, has anecdotally published hard news without facing any government repercussions. Its editor and publisher, Ricardo Morris, has stated Repúblika is “pushing the boundaries” and claimed the magazine will bring “credibility back to Fiji media”. This case study analyses the editorial philosophy of Repúblika and compares it to the editorial philosophies of Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, The Fiji Times and USP student newspaper Wansolwara. This is done to seek what has enabled Repúblika to publish hard news under a military backed media decree. This research explores what elements of Repúblika’s editorial philosophy are different to the longer-established media outlets in Fiji and whether the magazine is an example of how journalism in the island nation can be improved.

Keith Rankin Feature: Through the Cracks

By Keith Rankin -

December 5, 2015

Feature article by Keith Rankin. This article was also published on TheDailyBlog.co.nz.

While the Greek debt crisis was dominating the world news in late June and early July, another equally significant crisis began to unfold, and is now at its second major stage. Puerto Rico’s government owes US$72 billion dollars “next Tuesday”; money that it cannot pay. (See The Guardian Puerto Rico’s governor tells US Senate the island cannot repay debts, 1 Dec 2015.) Puerto Rico, with 3.5 million people, is of comparable population size to New Zealand, and one-third of the size of Greece. Yet Puerto Rican have fallen through the cracks of world attention and sympathy.

Recent articles in The Economist say things like Quasi-sovereign debt: Puerto Rico doesn’t have the money, Hurricane warning, No way out, The Puerto Rico problem mainland politicians find the territory too hard a place to talk about, A Caribbean fuse, Neither a state nor independent, Another fine debt crisis; Startling parallels between Greece and an American outpost in the Caribbean.

In November the BBC Windows on the World documentary Puerto Rico: The Have Nots and the Have Yachts played on Radio New Zealand (or ‘rnz’ as we are now supposed to call it). Puerto Rico is neither a sovereign nation nor an equal part of a larger sovereign entity. Its people have become denizens (the ‘have nots’) in their own land, much as New Zealanders across the ditch are denizens who have no effective civic rights. Puerto Rico is being bought up lock stock and barrel by rich Americans, the ‘have yachts’.

The specific problem is that the world is organised into a nation state system (the Wilsonian system) that is too rigid, though which has a fuzziness that we find difficult to deal with because we assume too easily that everyone is a citizen of one or other mutually exclusive nation state. In the case of the United States, the main overseas territories in which the people are quasi-Americans rather than actual Americans are Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas, and the US Virgin Islands.

The European Union itself is a form of fuzziness, with variations of fuzziness linked to the Eurozone and the Schengen agreement for open borders. The United Kingdom is extremely fuzzy. Indeed, some of us may have just discovered that parts of Cyprus – Akrotiri and Dhekelia – are a UK overseas territory; an aircraft carrier in the Middle East.

New Zealand retains much fuzziness. We have our own overseas territories: Cook Islands, Tokelau and Niue. (Together these, with the lands Australia covets as its 7th and 8th states, formally formed the Realm of New Zealand in 1983.) New Zealand embraced its own nationhood in many small steps: 1769, 1835, 1840 (2 steps, the second being independence from New South Wales), 1846, 1852, 1857, 1865, 1867, 1876, 1894, 1900, 1907, 1926, 1931, 1934, 1947, 1950, 1972, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1990, 1996, 2001, 2003. 2016 could be another step.

The global solution is not to further entrench the Wilsonian system by removing the fuzziness. The Wilsonian system has already facilitated a form of very lazy thinking on the part of westerners who like to talk about places like Iraq and Syria as if they are nice neat and ordered sovereign entities: country IQ and country SY in the same list as countries US, UK, NZ and SA. (Of course state-Americans, while they impose this structure on the rest of the world, reject it for themselves, on the grounds of entrenched American “exceptionalism”. And why Puerto Ricans – as territory-Americans – do not have the same status as Hawaiians remains a mystery.)

The solution is to embrace the fuzzinesses of identity and ethnicity and nationality. New Zealand residents should be treated as equals in Australia. And Catholics – with their caliph in Rome – should be treated the same as people of other faiths. (Anti-Catholic discrimination has been widespread in the English-speaking world.) Sectarian differences will always create a fuzz-factor that could be seen as a positive rather than as a negative.

Puerto Ricans should be treated as equals to other Americans, in Puerto Rico and elsewhere. They should have the same rights to default on debt as anyone else, and their government likewise should be treated like any other defaulting government (with general reform needed with respect to sovereign debt default).

We introduced limited liability for businesses in the nineteenth century. Most westerners are able to default by becoming bankrupt; rotting in debtors’ prisons is now too Dickensian for most of us to contemplate. Indeed, without these institutions that accept debt-default as a regular and necessary part of life, the economic development of the twentieth century could never have taken place.

Identity is a great thing. We all have multiple identities, including our financial statuses (debtor/creditor, tenant/mortgagor/freeholder) and our various political and cultural affiliations. But under God – whatever or whoever It may be – we are shareholders in our planet, whether we are from Valparaiso, Pago Pago, San Francisco, San Juan, Saipan, Guam, Gundagai, Tubuai, Tangiwai, Chennai, Chengdu, Cebu, Cairo, Christchurch, Wexford, Westport, West Bromwich, Cape Town, Townsville or Palmerston North. We have private identities and public equity. With public equity properly ensconced, we cannot fall through the cracks.

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Bryce Edwards: The political problems of wealth and inequality

By Bryce Edwards -

December 5, 2015

Political Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards.

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Dr Bryce Edwards.[/caption]

Inequality of income and wealth continue to be major post-GFC themes in New Zealand politics. Summing up an important part of the year in politics, Bryce Edwards points to debates and research about these economic problems.

The top political issues for New Zealanders in 2015 continue to revolve around economics, especially those relating to the unequal distribution of wealth and income. The latest Colmar-Brunton poll shows this – see Corin Dann’s two-minute news report this week, Wages fail to keep up with rising cost of Kiwi living, poll suggests. This was also discussed on TVNZ’s Q+A – watch the seven-minute item, Poll results – panel.

Wealth in NZ

In recent years much of the debate has been over income inequality, but in 2015 the focus started shifting towards wealth inequality. As researcher and author Max Rashbrooke explained, wealth can be quite different to income, and in some ways is much more important to deal with. He published a new book which showed that the bottom half of New Zealanders own practically nothing, while the top half have over 90 per cent of all wealth.

You can find out more about Rashbrooke’s new book here: Wealth and New Zealand. And you can read the Introduction from the book here: Income Gets Plenty of Attention – Time to Zoom in on Wealth.

Writing in the Guardian, Max Rashbrooke explained what has happened: “Wages are so low because in the last 30 years the workplace balance of power has shifted away from salary earners and towards the owners of capital, such as shareholders, investors and banks, allowing them to take a growing share of company income. The average New Zealand working person earns $10,000 less than they would if they had kept their early 1990s share of income” – see: New Zealanders need to share our common wealth. Let’s start by discussing inequality.

Rashbrooke also explained his book in a nine-minute interview with Lisa Owen on The Nation – watch: Interview: Max Rashbrooke. Or you can read the transcript. But probably the best summary of Rashbrooke’s findings is his own research report, Wealth Inequality: Who Owns How Much?

See also, Rob Stock’s Max Rashbrooke fears ‘Victorian-style’ levels of wealth inequality. This includes the quote from Rashbrooke that since the 1980s, “Salaried workers have lost around $19 billion a year, or $10,000 per wage earner per year, to the owners of capital.”

For an intelligent discussion of the book – in fact, probably the most interesting response – see economist Geoff Simmons from the Morgan Foundation’s blog post: Who’s New Zealand’s real rich? The results may surprise you.

Simmons praises Rashbrooke’s book for the “rare insight” it brings, and discusses why the issue is important and what some of the possible implications are for public policy. He also give his own summary of wealth statistics: “In 2010 the wealthiest 1% of Kiwis owned 18% of the wealth, the wealthiest 10% had 54%, and the wealthiest 50% had 96% of the wealth. In other words the least wealthy half of the population had 4% of the wealth. Around 8% of the population – 271,000 people had negative net wealth.”

Gareth Morgan has also evaluated Rashbrooke’s solutions, and promotes his own solution – a Comprehensive Capital Income Tax, together with an Unconditional Basic Income – see: Who should pay to reduce poverty? Should it be you?

In contrast, David Farrar considers Rashbrooke’s ideas “the usual hard left policy prescription. Never mind it has failed in every socialist and communist state in the world” – see: The tax and spend solution to inequality.

And if you’re interested in the lifestyles of the young rich kids, Jess McAllen has covered that aspect, with obligatory Max Key photos, in her feature, The haves and the have mores. This follows on from an earlier feature, Super-rich kids: How the other half lives, in which McAllen reports on the partying lifestyles of elite social clubs.

This focus on the kids of the wealthy had some complaining – see David Farrar’s Herald targets Max Key and Nathan Smith’s The inequality debate or why the modern left is failing. On her blog, Jess McAllen justifies her focus on the socialites: Open letter to Nathan Smith.

How wealthy is New Zealand?

A second reason for a new focus on wealth came through the publication in October by Credit Suisse of its Global Wealth Report 2015. According to this, after inequality is taken into account, the average New Zealander is the wealthiest for any country in the world – see David Chaston’s New Zealand scores second on global wealth per capita, and first when adjusted for inequality.

But Rashbrooke has responded to this with a blog post, New Zealand not world’s wealthiest country after, after all. In this he confirmed that the data, taken from the Reserve Bank, had been incorrectly used. The correct data shows that the average New Zealander has “wealth of around US$252,000, as opposed to the US$401,000 originally quoted. That puts us roughly in the middle of the pack with other Western countries, as one would expect.”

So, where do you fit in? To find out where your own asset wealth puts you relative to other New Zealanders, see Rob Stock’s Finding your rung on the wealth ladder.

The increased focus on the wealthy and powerful has been partly reflected in “political roundup” columns I’ve written this year. In June, my column, Is there an establishment in NZ?, pointed to articles dealing with the wealthy. The NBR’s latest annual Rich List was the focus of my July column, Celebrating or condemning the “selfish” super rich?. And the political views of the wealthy in business were explained in my August column, The Business elite view of politics.

Also in August, David Fisher reported on new research by MBIE which shows the motivations and experiences of investor migrants – see: Super-rich love NZ (mostly). And the super-rich are also on the radar of the IRD – see Hamish Fletcher’s NZ’s super rich in taxman’s sights.

The lifestyles of the rich are subsidised in some ways by the broader taxpayers and ratepayers. One example of this was explained by Bernard Hickey last month in his column, In hole for millions.

Here’s Hickey’s key point: “Auckland and the taxpayers of New Zealand were giving billions of dollars to the wealthiest property owners in the land. “Did you know that 1400 members of the Remuera Golf Club receive the exclusive benefit of a piece of Auckland Council-owned land valued at up to $517 million? The club pays rates of $130,000 a year. If up to 70 per cent of that land was broken up and sold for housing and the rest left in parks, it would produce revenues of $16.5 million a year. That’s an annual subsidy of $16.37 million, or $11,700 a member. That includes Prime Minister John Key, who is an honorary member. Even if each member played 50 rounds a year, that would be a subsidy of $233 per round or $13 a hole.”

Left and right united in response. Blogger No Right Turn said “Cities need public spaces. But golf courses aren’t public spaces. Instead, they’re exclusive preserves of the well-to-do, the New Zealand equivalent of a medieval English forest”. He recommended: “Auckland should either redevelop its golf courses, or sell them” – see: Let the rich pay for their own golf courses. Similarly, see David Farrar’s The Remuera Golf Club subsidy.

The Business and CEO world

This month, the annual “Roger Awards” will locate which transnational company has been the worst for New Zealand – see the Daily Blog’s 2015 Roger Award finalists named.

One finalist is Apple. They were also the focus of John Campbell’s new RNZ podcast series – you can listen to his 24-minute investigation into Apple’s high ideals and low tax bill. And for a three-minute update on Apple’s response to Campbell, as well as some photos of Apple’s Auckland office, watch Campbell three-minute video, Apple Update.

A focus on rich bosses has continued in the media – especially public sector CEOs. Last month we learnt about the high pay of public sector bosses, including one who received a $220,000 payment when he stepped down – see Claire Trevett’s The big taxpayer-funded pay rises: $50,000-plus boost for top public CEOs. And for more detail of the pay rates of various jobs across the public sector, at all levels, see: Hottest jobs in the public service. University bosses get paid in excess of $500,000 – see Kirsty Johnston’s Tertiary heads farewelled with ‘golden handshakes’.

In this focus on CEO pay, the private sector has been represented by the big banks, with recent revelations that some banking bosses are earning “up to 120 times more than the average bank teller” – see Tim Fookes’ Gap Between Rich and Poor.

The poor and exploited

The plight of those who actually create the wealth in society – workers – got increased attention in 2015. This was due to more media focus, partly due to some union victories, but also due to the National Government shifting to the left on some industrial issues – see my round up about this from April: Victory for the workers.

Various other elements of the “precariat” received investigation from the media, with one of the best being Michael Morrah’s 12-minute TV3 investigation last month into migrants working in restaurants – watch: NZ’s most vulnerable workers. See also, Michael Morrah’s opinion piece, The exploited.

Such issues have led Duncan Garner to ask a lot of questions about inequality – see his most recent: Are we an equal society?

Related social problems

All year, issues of unaffordable housing – especially for the poor – have been huge. In June, I wrote about Solving the housing crisis, which was a problem due to the “vested interests of politicians”. This was followed by a focus on the poor state of rental housing – see: Anger over ‘slum landlord’ Government. And then, I pointed to arguments that the housing affordability crisis was a “class” one – see: The Housing apartheid problem.

Housing problems continue to be prominent – the latest following last months report by the Salvation Army, showing the impact of the problem on those at the margins – see Shabnam Dastgheib’s Auckland housing crisis makes more children and families homeless – report. See also the Herald’s editorial, Housing hikoi sign of rising social unrest.

A new book also examines the problems – see Rob Stock’s Philippa Howden-Chapman highlights NZ’s increasingly embarrassing housing crisis.

The focus on poverty in 2015 reached a high point in May when the Government actually responded to the upsurge in concern for those at the bottom and increased benefits for the first time in decades – see my Political roundup from the time: The government’s Campbell Live budget.

Max Rashbrooke also explained what was happening for his British audience, via the Guardian newspaper – see: What child poverty campaigners in the UK could learn from New Zealand.

And the problems of wealth inequality continue to impact on other social areas – see Tom Haig’s Who has power in the education system? and Alistair Woodward & Tony Blakely’s Unequal Health In New Zealand: Always Like This?

The politics of wealth, economics, and inequality

At the start of this year I made a forecast: “2015 is almost certain to be characterised by more traditional concerns. Primarily these will include the economy and other resource-based issues: unemployment and job growth, inequality, housing, the cost of living, and perhaps the Government’s promised return to budget surplus” – see my January column, What to expect from politics in 2015.

The ongoing strength of the National Government appears to be partly due to their continued concentration on such issues, and the perception they’ve created that they are managing such problems relatively well. And by the end of the year, the Labour Party had become more focused than ever on “bread and butter” economic issues – see my recent column, Where is Andrew Little taking the Labour Party? And how well is he doing it?

Could the political left benefit from more focus on economics and inequality? Absolutely, according to Labour Party dissident Josie Pagani – see her blog post, We need to talk about the one per cent. She makes the case that “Global inequality is the number one issue for the progressive left.” She also argues for: 1) “switching taxes from income to wealth”, 2) “managed markets”, and 3) international treaties and agreements to harmonise economic issues such as tax and trade.

But if the public is already so concerned with inequality, why aren’t the parties of the left doing better? That’s a question discussed by AUT’s Peter Skilling in Perceptions Of Inequality. His answer – with reference to “system justification theory” – is that social psychology means that the framing of the problem can lead to resistance to change. See also Kirk Serpes’ Why we need to stop talking about inequality.

Finally, for a graphic representation of the wealth problem, have a look at New Zealand’s Inequality Tower by RNZ cartoonist Toby Morris.

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NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for December 03 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

December 5, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 11 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Thursday 3rd December. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include Indonesia calling on the New Zealand government to do more to crack down on the abuse of Indonesian fisherman on foreign boats and the Corrections Department hitting back at a critical Ombudsman report on teenage incarceration at Mt Eden prison, saying changes have been made since the report was carried out.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: Gallantry awards mark courage and service; Minister opens world class urban cycleway; Special Education Update findings released;Science Challenge invests $7m in advanced food research; Enabling disabled people to live normal lives; Masterton to reap benefits of better broadband; Celebration of milestones in digital learning; Southern DHB Commissioner’s term extended – deficit progress made; Canterbury latest Children’s Team to go live; Minister launches Healthy Families Lower Hutt;Greater transparency in Govt fiscal data; Minister commends top NZ courts; New law and regulations on smoke alarms and insulation; Improving CYF’s response to allegations; Growth in international student enrolments for Wellington

ACT Party: ACT Will Not Support National-Maori RMA Tinkering

Greens: Australia And NZ Greens Call For Human Rights Inquiry; Minister must address teen prison lockdown “akin to torture”; Mojo Mathers launches disability-assist dog Bill; Green Party Bill To Stop Māori Land Confiscations Under The Public Works Act; Review of CYFS investigation into Roastbusters raises further questions of trust; Corrections Minister failing to grasp basics of his portfolio; More SmartGates installed at Auckland Airport

Labour: Prison performance report fail;Nick Smith’s fingerprints over cover-up;Courage of Defence personnel not forgotten;Special education review lost on Ministry; More MoBIE money for sheep – this time $2.6m;Housing failure wider than Weymouth; Last chance for public submissions on Regenerate Christchurch; Customs project continue to escalate; Customs review raises questions about border protection

Māori Party: Māori Party Looks Forward To Ongoing Negotiations On RMA Reform

New Zealand First: National Guilty Of Double Speak In Voting Against Healthcare Bill; ‘Cruelty To Kiwis’ Restricts Pharmac Drug Buying; Better To Go For ‘Tourist Drivers WOF’

NZ National Party: Bishop welcomes Wellington international student growth; Healthy Families for a Healthy Hutt Valley

United Future Party: A total of 452 entries have been received in the 2016 New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards, a pleasing result given the economic climate in the industry. LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

BUILDING ACTIVITY: Building work worth $4.2 billion was put in place in the September 2015 quarter, up 4.6 percent on the September 2014 quarter, according to Statistics New Zealand. More details at: http://bit.ly/1RoeFQY

CYF’S IMPROVEMENTS: Child, Youth and Family is improving its operations and partnerships with other agencies following a review by the Chief Social Worker into CYF’s involvement in the “Roastbusters” case. The Chief Social Worker’s review is available at http://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/newsroom/2015/review-practice-auckland.html

DAIRY AWARDS: A total of 452 entries have been received in the 2016 New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards, a pleasing result given the economic climate in the industry. More information on the awards can be found atwww.dairyindustryawards.co.nz.

HEALTH RESEARCH: High-Value Nutrition National Science Challenge has today announced a $7million research investment funding projects that build the science required to develop innovative new foods, including those that will help babies sleep through the night and better protect children against allergies. Read more:http://www.highvaluenutrition.co.nz/en/news-and-events/october-2015/national-science-challenge-high-value-nutrition-invests–10-9m-i.html

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT ENROLMENTS: The International Education Snapshot report shows growth across New Zealand in the first eight months of this year of 13 per cent, or 11,760 international students. The International Education Snapshot: January to August 2015 report is available here:http://www.enz.govt.nz/markets-research/latest-research

LOCAL AUTHORITY PLANS: The Office of the Auditor General has today released a report into the audits of local authorities’ 2015-2025 long term plans. Click here for report: http://www.oag.govt.nz/2015/ltps?utm_source=subs&utm_medium=subs&utm_campaign=LTPs

PEMBROLIZUMAB (KEYTRUDA): PHARMAC has today published the clinical advice it has received on the melanoma treatment pembrolizumab (Keytruda). A summary of the process and clinical advice, and a link to the clinical committee recommendations, is available at http://www.pharmac.health.nz/tools-resources/research/pembrolizumab

PERSONS WITH DISABILITY: This year the Human Rights Commission is leading a nationwide campaign to generate engagement across New Zealand with the United Nations Day of Persons with Disabilities – 3 December 2015. This is a day of celebration and focus for people with disabilities. Read more: https://www.hrc.co.nz/idpd/

SPECIAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Findings of 156 Special Education Update engagement forums held by the Ministry of Education with over 3,650 people across New Zealand, including parents, families and educators was released today. The findings, action plan and further information can be found here: http://www.education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/specific-initiatives/special-education-update/

TRANSPARENCY IN GOVT DATA: Data released today by Treasury and Figure.NZ makes is even easier for the public to dig into the Crown’s books for details on its spending and revenue.The full release can be found athttp://figure.nz/sources/S25YoIwXRaP4CS1Q

WORLD CLASS URBAN CYCLEWAY: Auckland’s most ambitious cycleway, the $15 million Nelson Street Cycleway has opened. The path runs from Upper Queen Street to Victoria Street and links to existing cycle ways.For more information on the Nelson Street Cycleway: https://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/nelson-street-cycleway/

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Thursday 3rd December.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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Tony Alexander’s Weekly New Zealand Economic Overview December 4 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

December 5, 2015

Economic Analysis by Tony Alexander.

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Tony Alexander, BNZ economist.[/caption]

In this week’s Overview I take a look at the implications for someone approaching or even in retirement of sustained low returns on conservative assets like term deposits, rising life expectancy, the coming slowing in labour force growth once the current migration boom eventually eases off, and the social connectivity which continued employment can bring.

On the interest rates front there is little worth writing about this week beyond seeing if the Reserve Bank cuts the cash rate one last time back to 2.5% next Thursday. Regarding the NZ dollar the week has been one of strength and it pays to remember that compared with the rest of the world we stick out as having great economic fundamentals and some good growth drivers for the next few years.

For the full analysis, click here Download document pdf 304kb, or continue reading below.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night I mention this theme of raging against the dying light (Dylan Thomas, 1947) because after giving a talk in Rotorua last week a 65 year old man came up to me and asked whether I thought it was a good idea for him to be buying his first home now. I wholeheartedly said yes if that is what he wants. Getting into one’s first home is an exciting time so unless someone presents me with some fairly dire financials my answer will usually be in the affirmative. The main reason I said yes however was that who would not want to undertake such a wonderful thing at a time when for decades we have been told that come 65 we are supposed to fade out of sight and confine ourselves to walking a small dog along the beach, riding buses for free outside peak times, and doing our best to not be a burden on the state. The message for at least 25 years has been that old people will be a problem for the rest of us and they will cause our taxes to rise. One ancillary message has been that people need to save more for their retirement. But that makes near no difference to the fiscal impact unless you tie superannuation payments to the amount people have saved up, the value of assets they own generally, the income they earn. All of these things are present in Australia but few votes go to any politicians in New Zealand who propose not even abating national superannuation but simply raising the retirement age. Saving for retirement is simply a very good idea regardless of your view of the sustainability of our superannuation scheme because accruing a diversified asset portfolio over time by sacrificing small amounts of consumption (saving) over a period of decades allows that capital to work for a person through compounding effects. The accrued assets give options in one’s later years which will not exist for those who receive only national superannuation. But it is not the saving issue which I wish to address here and I certainly feel no compunction to try and scare the bejeebers out of people so they do cut spending and boost saving. Instead I wish to focus on the interaction between four things.

Sustained low interest rates

Increasing life expectancy

The tightening up of the labour market facing employers

The joy gained from working

A key theme which I have been increasingly dropping into commentary since early this year is that the factors driving inflation globally have altered, low inflation is getting locked in, and that means low interest rates for a very long period of time. Probably decades. If you are planning on your term deposit rates sometime in the next five years jumping up to 5% – 6% then I think you will spend a lot of time being disappointed. Low returns from the most conservative of portfolios means there is a very strong incentive for people to not switch away from equities and property as much as they approach retirement as might have been the case if we were still in the 1980s, 1990s, or 2000s before 2008. The case for young savers having a higher risk growth-oriented portfolio is even more compelling. Low returns say to older people that there is value in holding onto investment property for the yield it will give and the long-term capital gain potential. Same for shares, local and offshore. In fact, in the words of a respondent to our BNZ Confidence Survey sent out last Friday morning…” I am retired, saved hard all my working life, (80 before I retired) hoping to live on my savings etc. plus a little extra in the form of interest. Low interest rates to folks like us are a disaster. All day to day costs insurances, rates and the likes keep increasing. Regards BNZ client” Which brings me to the second very important point. We are living longer and longer as medicines and medical procedures improve, and as those who take notice of the evidence and the warnings curb their calorie intake, smoking and drinking. Rather than retire at 65 and die by 75-80 people will increasingly anticipate living into their 90s when perhaps come 95 they will go skydiving. People will need retirement era income over a far longer period of time than previously anticipated. That adds to the argument driven by sustained low interest rates to bias one’s portfolio away from low yielding cash, term deposits and government bonds toward equities, corporate bonds, and property in its various forms. This means not just holding onto one’s investment properties but perhaps buying more – which is one factor I believe is helping to underpin our housing markets currently. It also argues, as I have long contended, against the idea that one should sell one’s three or four bedroom house and shift as soon as possible into a low maintenance unit. It can pay to keep the spare bedrooms for the grandkids to use (both their parents are working and they need to offload the kids during school holidays). Also the spare rooms can be rented out on Airbnb to Swedish backpackers named Helga for $100+ a night. Third, why stop working when there are plenty of employers having it slowly dawn on them that they need to employ more older people. Once this current migration boom passes the labour force growth rate will plummet. Employers will struggle to get staff and opportunities facing older people to remain in gainful employment will multiply. That is fortunate because in an environment of low returns on most portfolios many people may need to work to supplement their retirement income. My advice to employers is to think about how older employees could be usefully employed. Which brings me to my final point. Why stop working, even if you no longer need the money? The chances are you have not spent your life herding sheep or lugging coal so you will be in better physical shape than past retiring generations and able to keep working beyond 65. While plenty of people have great social networks and engage in many social activities, in my experience most people do not. They pretend to be loving life and actively engaged in things – but they aren’t really. In that regard these older people are exactly like most young people – pretending to be part of some crowd because society demands that we not look too weird, and being alone is considered exactly that – weird. So we make up friends and outings, or perhaps more accurately allow the implication to lie in the air that we are more engaged than we really are. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Work delivers social engagement even if it may not extend into the weekends or evenings. Actually, the nature of working these days is less and less nine to five Monday to Friday so all hours can be encompassed by work. At this point some people will be thinking “but what type of work will these older people do? Maybe they will end up flipping burgers.” Fantastic. Who would not want to be a 73 year old tossing buns surrounded by pizza-faced kids shaking and overcome by FOMO because they cannot access their ‘phone in the work environment, worried about who they saw with who last weekend, pretending they know more than they do, fretting about so many really simple things. It would be hilarious. Just be careful not to get too up yourself as you shake your head at the impulsiveness and the earnest nature of youth. There is a risk that if at some point you say you wish you knew back then what you know now how different it would be, that someone asks “What exactly is it you know?” (Yes, that was a reference to one of my favourite BNZ ads of some years ago, along with the one with a clever bloke advising his jogging friend not to run home behind a bus to save $2, but to run home behind a taxi and save twenty!) The upshot of this article then is this. Don’t let the buggers talk you into retiring like you’ll be doing the world a favour. Stick in it, perhaps build a “portfolio” of part-time jobs, and embrace the social interaction it will bring along with the extra money coming in. We’ll all eventually have more than enough time to be in that good night. Why hurry the process by missing an opportunity for life-lengthening social engagement? And discuss with your financial advisor options for boosting long-term returns from growth assets by not switching as much of one’s portfolio to conservative, low yielding assets as one approaches 65 as was the recommendation before 2008. Driverless Cars I received an email after last week’s lead article on driverless cars which included this section. “Your most current Overview coincides with my taking delivery of a new Tesla Model S last night here in Washington DC, so your driverless car topic was quite timely. It seems like a great car so far (traded a Ford Focus Electric (all electric)) for the greater range and size of the Tesla S. The S now has autopilot, so literally from the time I put it on the highway to home last night, the car drove itself, paced its distance to the car in front of me, varied its speed in traffic accordingly keeping its distance, took the curves and bends in the road, all without input from me (other than my foot hovering over the brake pedal cautiously). I do think that if it encountered the kiwi possum, it might do contortions to miss it. I will email Mr. Elon Musk to see if version 7.1 can’t screen this troublesome glitch out of the system.” Housing The upward trend in the number of consents being issued for dwellings to be built in New Zealand continues. In seasonally adjusted terms consent numbers rose by 5.1% in October after falling 5.8% in September taking the three month gain to 2.8% from 7.2% three months ago – meaning a slowing trend for the moment in issuance growth. However full-year consents were up 8.5% and 17.4% above the 20 year average number. Growth is occurring though not at an especially rapid rate. In Auckland consents have grown by 20.1% over the year and at 8,935 sit 18% above the 20 year average. Things are moving in the right direction but the level of activity is still very low and certainly, as pointed out last week, well below the level needed to start eating away at the backlog. The shortage of houses in Auckland continues to worsen. In Canterbury consents over the past year have fallen 2.5% which is the first annual decline since the start of 2012. At 6,810 the 12 month consent total is 91% above the 20 year average and falling. Outside of our two biggest cities consents totalled 10,637 and this was a rise of 7.6% from the year to October 2014. The underlying annual growth rate is sitting close to 20% and may accelerate as rising regional house prices lead people to build new rather than buy used. NZ Dollar The NZD has firmed against all bar the AUD this past week, assisted by a small rise in dairy prices and perhaps simply the absence of any new weak data allowing any view to develop that our economy’s growth rate is slowing. If anything, after the mid-year lull, it is accelerating again. Our gain against the Euro was assisted by expectations of increased money printing soon, against the Yen, by the fresh Japanese recession, and the GBP by weak economic data. We look quite good compared with most of the rest of the world hence exporters should not have an expectation that the NZD falls much in the coming year. Chances are we go up instead. If I Were A Borrower What Would I Do? Fix one or two years. I struggle to make any case for fixed rates rising much in the near future. But keep an eye on US monetary policy tightening which is likely to start soon. Higher US rates will tend to lift medium to long-term NZ fixed rates but there is no certainty at all about how much US rates rise, how rapidly etc. The biggest monetary policy experiment in decades is about to start. For Noting You can write the story of NZ’s economy during 2015 using as your central character the monthly business confidence measure gathered in the ANZ Business Outlook Survey. We started the year with the first survey in February showing a net 34% of businesses expecting the economy to improve over the coming year. A net 23% planned hiring more people and a net 22% planned boosting capital spending. Come August however a net 29% were feeling pessimistic, only a net 3% planned hiring more people, and a net 0% planned extra investment. The slumping of these measures was driven by the 50% fall in international dairy prices between March and August, the Kiwi dollar almost hitting parity against the Aussie dollar, worries about Greece, worries about China, and slowing house construction in Christchurch. But the latest readings of the sentiment measures for economic growth, employment, and investment are now respectively 15%, 14%, and 15%. Average readings are in turn 15%, 7%, and 11%. So things are average to slightly better than average and this backs up our expectation of near 2.5% growth in the economy over the coming year. –]]>

NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for December 04 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

December 5, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 6 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Friday 4th December. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include new statistics by the Health Quality & Safety Commission showing 277 patients suffered serious harm, including broken bones from falls, in hospitals in a year and the first study by the University of Auckland comparing the sky-rocketing price of cancer drugs shows that costs vary wildly from country to country.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: Benefits to rise after Child Hardship Bill passes; Resource Management changes pass first reading; Give a hand to your community this holiday; Attitude Award winners an inspiration; Healthier Lives Challenge tackles major diseases; Alignment of NZ and Australian qualifications frameworks; West Coast community congratulated for achieving Lake Brunner water quality target; Cambridge hosts track cycling world cup event

Greens: National Government wins another fossil; Waihi community shouldn’t be undermined by goldmining; Super Fund and ACC should Divest for Paris

Labour: Nick Smith misleads Parliament over pool laws; Committee rejects families’ plea for hearing; Top heritage building not safe yet

Māori Party: Māori Party Welcomes Debate On Public Works Bill; Māori Party supports Safe Sleep Day

New Zealand First: Another Flip Flop By A National Minister – Smith Bows To ‘Brownmail’; New Health And Safety Laws Could Cost Workers Their Homes

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

CANCER DRUG PRICES: The first study comparing the sky-rocketing price of cancer drugs shows that costs vary wildly from country to country.The study was published published recently in The Lancet Oncology and is available at:http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/issue/current

INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEER DAY: Volunteering New Zealand (VNZ) celebrates New Zealand’s volunteers and volunteering in general on International Volunteer Day (IVD) on 5th December. Read more:http://www.volunteeringnz.org.nz/international-volunteer-day/

HEALTH REPORT: Each year, health care adverse events are reported to the Health Quality & Safety Commission by district health boards (DHBs) and other health care providers. Click here for the report:http://www.hqsc.govt.nz/assets/Reportable-Events/Publications/learning-from-adverse-events-Dec-2015.pdf

HEALTHIER LIVES CHALLENGE: The Healthier Lives National Science Challenge, which aims to reduce the financial burden of major health problems, with funding of up to $31.3 million over 10 years was launched today. For more information about the National Science Challenges, visit http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/science-innovation/national-science-challenges/

HUTT CITY YOUTH AWARDS: Athletes, leaders and entrepreneurs were among the winners celebrated at the inaugural Hutt City Youth Awards ceremony held in Lower Hutt last night. For a full list of nominees, winners and prizes go to: www.huttcityyouthawards.co.nz/2015/12/03/hutt-city-youth-awards-winners/

QUALIFICATION FRAMEWORK: Enhancing mobility – Referencing of the Australian and New Zealand Qualifications Framework was released today by the Governments of New Zealand and Australia. A report which aligns the levels of the qualifications frameworks of New Zealand and Australia. A copy of the report is available here:http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/about-us/our-role/our-role-in-international-education/country-specific-recognition-arrangements/australia/

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Friday 4th December.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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Seminar: What chance for democracy in Burma?

By Selwyn Manning -

December 4, 2015

Pacific Media Centre

Event date and time:

Thursday, December 10, 2015 – 18:00 – 20:00

UPDATES ON BURMA – COME ALONG TO HEAR OUR SPEAKERS:

Stanley Saw
Burmese migrant in NZ since 1977. He works in administration at Auckland University. He is an observer and commentator on Burmese politics. He will give an overview of the situation in Burma, focusing on the November election.

Cicilia Dwe
Karen refugee, born in the Burma-Thai border. She arrived in NZ in 2001, aged 10, as part of the UNHCR programme. Recently a student, she will focus on the situation of the Karen people.

Rahmat Ullah
Rohingya refugee, a painter. He arrived in NZ in 2008 as part of the UNHCR programme. Originally from Arakan state in Burma. He will talk about the oppression of the Rohingya people.

When: 10 December 2015

Time: 6.00 – 8.30pm

Where: WG 801, Sir Paul Reeves Building, AUT, City Campus, Auckland

Organised by the Asia-Pacific Human Rights Coalition (APHRC) in partnership with the Pacific Media Centre.

Contact: Kevin McBride

Facebook event

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End sexism and ‘invisibility’ of women in the media

By Selwyn Manning -

December 4, 2015

Pacific Media Centre

The latest Global Media Monitoring Project study reveals continuing severe disparity between representation of women and men in news media, indicating the portrayal of women in day-to-day journalism does not reflect their contribution to society. This is shared in the Pacific too, but Padre James Bhagwan also reports there is some good news.

ANALYSIS: Wednesday, December 2, was the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. It marks the date of the adoption, by the General Assembly, of the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (resolution 317(IV) of 2 December 1949).

The focus of this day is on eradicating contemporary forms of slavery, such as trafficking in persons, sexual exploitation, the worst forms of child labour, forced marriage, and the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.

The day also marks the beginning of the second week (eighth day) of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. One form of gender-based violence is structural violence. Structural violence refers to systematic ways in which social structures or social institutions may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.

Hunger and poverty are two prime examples of the physical and psychological harm that results from exploitive and unjust social, political and economic systems.

One form of structural violence is lack of progress toward equality of men and women in the news media.

This is according to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), a five-yearly study which has conducted research in 114 countries over 20 years. The study was undertaken on sampling the news of one particular day around the world — Wednesday March 25, 2015.

The study reveals continuing severe disparity between representation of women and men in news media, indicating the portrayal of women in day-to-day journalism does not reflect their contribution to society.

Portrayal of women
This year’s study was GMMP’s fifth and largest on the portrayal and representation of women in the news media. Findings indicate that, worldwide, women make up about 50 percent of the general population but only 24 percent of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news — exactly the same level found in the 2010 report.

Women’s relative invisibility in traditional news media has also crossed over into digital news delivery platforms. Only 26 per cent of the people in internet news stories and media news “tweets” combined are women.

“The GMMP 2015 report examined the visibility, voice and mention of women and men in the news media and finds a sexism that has endured across decades and geographical boundaries, adapting to emerging media forms and thriving in all spaces in which news content is produced and shared,” said Dr Sarah Macharia, GMMP global co-ordinator.

The report also found that, overall, women remain more than twice as likely as men to be portrayed as victims as they were a decade ago, at 16 and 8 per cent respectively.

Findings indicated that there is a global glass ceiling for female news reporters in newspaper bylines and newscast reports, with 37 per cent of stories reported by women, the same as a decade ago.

The GMMP is a project of the World Association for Christian Communication, with support from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.

The Pacific has participated in the GMMP since 1995 when Fiji was the sole Pacific Island country to contribute towards the global study. In 2010 Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Australia and New Zealand joined enabling data to be collated across the wider Pacific region.

Highlights decade
The Pacific report from the GMMP highlights that from the last 10 years of data that women are still in the minority of news topics reflecting the gender inequality in the formal structures of decision-making and power of Pacific media outlets:

* Overall the presence of women in news items averaged at 25 percent (26 percent in traditional media and 24 per cent in online media. Women were more present in news topics on Science and Health (54 per cent women) in traditional media.

* However, in the remaining six topics, women were present far fewer times than men in both traditional and online media sources.

* The top three story topics which featured the most female news subjects were employment with 75 percent. Female subjects made up 67 percent of stories on celebrity, arts and media while sources on medicine, health, hygiene and safety topics featured 65 percent female news subjects. Women also made up 50 percent of stories featuring beauty contests, models, fashion and cosmetic surgery.

* Overall males were portrayed as victims more commonly than females (59 percent males and 41 percent females) across a wider range of situations. However females were more likely to be victimised in situations of non-domestic sexual violence, assault, rape (11 percent females and 4 per cent males).

* Out of the total number of news stories featured in newspapers in the region, stories that featured women were more likely to be photographed compared with news stories featuring male news subjects (34 percent of news stories featuring women were photographed and 19 percent of news stories featuring men were photographed).

* Overall 45 percent of reporters in the Pacific region were female. While there were 47 percent of reporters and presenters in print who were female and 46 percent of television reporters were female in radio 61 percent of announcers were female.

* Across the seven major news topic categories women were the central focus in only 16 percent of stories including 2 per cent in politics and governance, 11 percent in economy, 29 percent in science and health, 15 percent in Social and Legal, 20 percent in crime and violence, 23 percent in celebrity, arts and media and sports and 20 percent in other categories.

* Only five out of a total 359 news stories (1 per cent) raised issues of gender equality/inequality: Women politicians (20 per cent), other domestic policies (20 percent), employment (20 percent), human rights (20 percent) and legal system (20 percent).

* Overall, the majority of major news topics did not challenge gender stereotypes — an average of 1 percent of stories clearly challenged stereotypes.

* Female news sources were more likely to be found in stories reported by females (35 percent of all female sources were interviewed by female reporters while 26 percent of all female sources were interviewed by male reporters).

* Overall the gender of reporters made no difference in the proportion of stories that challenged stereotypes (97 percent of stories by female reporters did not challenge stereotypes while 98 percent of stories by male reporters did not challenge stereotypes).

More female presenters
The Pacific GMMP report does point out, however, that there has been a marked increase in the number of female reporters and presenters making the news from less than 30 percent in 2005 to nearly 50 percent across a wider scope of traditional media outlets.

“Although more women have made it into mainstream media as the makers of news there still has not been a wider structural change in media institutions therefore not only is the content of media reflective of society it is at the same time as affected by the gaps in gender mainstreaming as any other organisation, company or community in the Pacific.”

Because of the recent rise in online media platforms Twitter and internet sources were also monitored in 2015. However there exists a digital divide between more developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand and small Pacific Island countries which accounts for the dominance in online data from the two former countries.

“Nevertheless online media is still largely dominated by male reporters and male news subjects. This highlights the growing need for newer forms of media sources to also be utilised as platforms for advancing gender equality.”

Given these findings, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and its GMMP coordinators are calling for an end to media sexism by 2020.

Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri, associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) added the WCC’s voice to that call. “Our prayer and hope is that, by the time we reach 2021, at the 11th WCC Assembly, we shall read a report that shows the news media has adopted a wider vision of equality and inclusion,” said Phiri. “With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, together we can transform the media to make women more visible.”

Report highlights
Highlights of the 2015 GMMP can be found at: http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/highlights/highlights_en.pdf while the full report can be found at: http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/global/gmmp_global_report_en.pdf

The Pacific report can be found at: http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/regional/Pacific_Islands.pdf

It is not only the news media that is challenged to widen its coverage of women and women’s issues in the news. All of us must recognise the similar challenge to pay attention to who and what makes the news and open our own eyes to see and understand the issues affecting those who don’t.

“Simplicity, serenity, spontaneity.”

Reverend James Bhagwan is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church in Fiji and a citizen journalist. He is also the vice-president of the World Association of Christian Communication-Pacific Region. This article was first published in The Fiji Times. The opinions expressed in this article represent the personal views of the author. He can be contacted on padrejames@gmail.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.

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Special Report: Asia Pacific: Response to Climate Change

By Selwyn Manning -

December 3, 2015

This Special Report is by Dr. Shamshad Akhtar.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). She is also the UN’s Sherpa for the G20 and previously served as Governor of the Central Bank of Pakistan and Vice President of the MENA Region of the World Bank. This is Dr. Shamshad Akhtar first article with EveningReport.nz.

[caption id="attachment_8376" align="alignleft" width="150"]

Dr Shamshad Akhtar.[/caption]

Global leaders are gathered in Paris for the COP21 climate summit. Given Asia-Pacific’s size and its contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, its voice and commitment are critical to achieving a comprehensive agreement on climate change. Many Asia Pacific countries are developing and must focus on achieving sustained economic growth and development.

Of the 49 regional members of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 43 have a light climate footprint, contributing only 10 per cent to global emissions. For these countries, notably the least developed countries, Pacific islands and low-lying states, vulnerability to climate-related natural disasters will grow with climate change. At the other extreme, the region is home to six of the top 10 emitters in the world – China, India, Russia, Japan, Indonesia and Iran – which account for about 43 per cent of global emissions. Of these top six Asian emitters, fossil fuel-based energy is responsible for about 80 per cent of their collective emissions, with emissions from industrial processes, agriculture and waste playing a lesser role. Mitigating the emissions of these countries requires multiple actions, key among which is a switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

Of the 183 countries that have submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 43 are from the Asia-Pacific region. Countries across the region have indicated both conditional and unconditional reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. These include economy-wide emissions targets or deviation from a business as usual (BAU) scenario to an intensity targets of emissions per unit of GDP. Many INDCs, particularly those from the developing countries, include an overall rise in emissions by 2030.

While this is remarkable in its own right, they still leave a significant gap between the INDCs pledged and the cuts required to keep the temperature increase to below two degrees Celsius warming limit. This gap is close to 16 billion tonnes of CO2 reductions per annum by 2030, roughly equal to the current emissions of China, India, and Russia combined. The only way we can bridge this gap is if we collectively treat the INDCs announced as the floor to be raised by enabling countries to adopt and implement additional measures needed with technical, financial and capacity support.

Despite the present gap between the INDCs and the necessary emission reductions, progress is underway in our region. This not only sets specific economies on course for a low carbon future, but will also alter the global dynamics. China’s INDC, for instance, targets emissions to peak by 2030 at the latest, and for emissions intensity of GDP to decline by 60 to 65 per cent. Progress in energy efficiency, switching to gas and the development of hydro, wind and solar energy has now begun to show results, with China’s coal consumption having peaked in 2013. India proposes to reduce emissions per unit of GDP by 33 to 35 per cent, and to ensure that 40 per cent of its power generation capacity is from non-fossil sources by 2030. In support of this objective, India plans to install 60 gigawatts of wind power and 100 gigawatts of solar power capacity by 2022, a six-fold increase over the current capacity.

Changes in the energy generation mix, efficiency and conservation of energy use and developing carbon sinks through reforestation and soil carbon will be important strategies to stabilize emissions in the Asia-Pacific region. There has been some progress on all these fronts in our region, but more needs to be done. With advanced energy efficiency, the region could save 35 per cent of its energy consumption against business as usual by 2035. (Asian Development Bank, Energy Outlook for Asia and the Pacific 2013, http://adb.org/sites/default/files/pub/2013/energy-outlook.pdf) As the region’s urban population is expected to reach 3.2 billion by 2050, there is an opportunity to pioneer low carbon cities with energy efficient buildings, innovative urban planning and efficient transportation systems. There is also a need to switch from coal to renewables and to promote cleaner coal technologies, as coal still accounts for 55 per cent of electricity generation in the Asia-Pacific. In adopting clean energy alternatives countries are also addressing the scourge of air pollution, which has emerged as a grim reality for many city dwellers across the region. While non-hydro renewables such as wind and solar currently contribute less than 2 per cent of regional electricity generation, growth has been rapid from a small base. The expected shift to renewables will be a net benefit for Asian economies. It will reduce dependence on imported fuels as the region is a net energy importer, enhance energy security and improve the balance of payments. To harness a low carbon future, the region needs to further tap its tax potential, which could be raised by 5 per cent of GDP. This would potentially mobilize $1.5 trillion while private sector savings in the region are close to $6 trillion.

The success of the COP21 climate summit is critical for all of us as climate change does not respect boundaries and no one can escape its effects. Country submissions for emission reduction are good starting point but remain nonbinding targets. The steep growth in energy demand in the Asia-Pacific means more will need to be done to increase the overall penetration of renewable energy in the coming decades, with collective and concerted actions critical to addressing the problem at its source. The future of our region and indeed of our planet hinges on the Asia-Pacific region mobilizing its skills and resources to find enduring solutions.

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Expert analyses of TPPA on process and investment chapters released

By Selwyn Manning -

December 3, 2015

University of Auckland investment law expert Amokura Kawharu has written a paper on TPPA investment issues + Professor Jane Kelsey writes on the steps to be taken in New Zealand and the United States toward ratification of the TPPA.

The first two in a series of expert peer-reviewed papers analysing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement from a New Zealand perspective were released today.

The series has been supported by a grant from the New Zealand Law Foundation and the research papers will be posted on the website https://tpplegal.wordpress.com/nzlf-expert-paper-series/ as they are completed.

University of Auckland investment law expert Amokura Kawharu, co-author of Williams and Kawharu on Arbitration, has written the paper on chapter 9: Investment.

She concludes that the chapter provides an overall greater level of protection for foreign investors and their investments as compared with New Zealand’s existing trade and investment treaties.

While there are some exceptions, for example on the screening mechanism for foreign investment, they are generally narrowly drawn.

Investors can also take claims to arbitration on the basis of alleged breaches of certain types of government contracts, something that New Zealand has never agreed to before.

‘While the text includes novel safeguards which are aimed at clarifying the purpose of the rules and preserving policy space, some issues are not addressed, and the scope of the rules and the exceptions (and therefore the government’s right to regulate in the public interest) remains uncertain,’ said Ms Kawharu.

The second paper by University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey outlines various process aspects of the TPPA, including the steps to be taken in New Zealand and the United States for ratification of the agreement, the pre-requisites to the agreement coming into force, and the internal machinery for operation and enforcement of the agreement.

Professor Kelsey observes that the 30-chapter agreement constrains domestic law and policy at central government level, and in places by local government and SOEs, in diverse areas beyond traditional aspects of international trade.

Analysis of the US process suggests there is a significant chance there will be no vote in the US Congress before a new administration takes office in 2017, which may seek to renegotiate the agreement, add new side-letters or withhold certification of compliance by other countries until further changes are made.

The TPP Commission’s powers, chapter-specific committees and inbuilt renegotiations will supervise compliance and could extend the initial TPPA obligations. Professor Kelsey warned that the cumulative opportunities for foreign states and corporations to influence domestic decisions may be burdensome and intrusive.

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NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for December 02 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

December 2, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 6 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Wednesday 2nd December. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle includes a report by The New Zealand Initiative highlighting the need to find ways to incentivise local authorities to be more open to economic growth if local government is to meet the looming infrastructure and aging population challenges, farmers in South Canterbury are hoping farms in the North Island will help restock and provide feed as the region faces one of the driest periods in decades and International dairy prices rebounding slightly at the GlobalDairyTrade auction overnight.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: NZ-German joint project wins recognition; PM meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel; VorTech drone wins C-Prize competition; Cancer nurse coordinators play key role; Foss welcomes $25 million boost for visiting driver safety; 3K to Work launched across New Zealand; Extra $12m for two Auckland schools to address roll growth; NZ ratifies UN Convention Against Corruption; Expanded powers for DOC rangers under new bill

Greens: Government to be asked to come clean on fossil fuel subsidies; Green Party To Vote Against National’s RMA Changes; Parliament to debate supermarket referee to give suppliers a fair go; Govt keeping consumers in the dark about hepatitis scare

Labour:Unfinished Canterbury claims used for surplus; Maori trust million dollar legal blow out; CoOL approach needed for frozen imported berries; Government needs to act on Japanese whaling; Cancer patients forced to keep begging; South Island unemployment rises 32% in 2015

New Zealand First: Minister a no-hoper on housing; Stewart Islanders’ Shark Dive Fears Neglected By Arrogant Minister; New Zealand First Bill Proposes Major Health System Benefits

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

CANCER NURSE EVALUATION: The independent evaluation by research consultancy Litmus comes two years into the $4 million a year initiative to fund cancer nurse coordinators across the 20 DHBs. The evaluation report can be viewed at : http://www.health.govt.nz/publication/evaluation-cancer-nurse-coordinator-initiative-second-annual-report

EXPORTS LEAD TRADE SURPLUS: New Zealand earned $2.8 billion more from exports than spent on imports during the year ended September 2015, according to Statistics New Zealand. Read more: http://bit.ly/1HFlyeF

LOCAL GOVERNMENT NEEDS: New Zealand urgently needs to find ways to incentivise local authorities to be more open to economic growth if local government is to meet the looming infrastructure and aging population challenges according to a report by The New Zealand Initiative. The report : The Local Formula: Myths, Facts & Challenges is available at: http://nzinitiative.org.nz/site/nzinitiative/files/The%20Local%20Formula.pdf

NEW SUICIDE PREVENTION RESOURCE: The Mental Health Foundation (MHF) has released its newest resource – Are you worried someone is thinking of suicide? Advice for families, whānau and friends. Click here for more:http://shop.mentalhealth.org.nz/product/762-worried-someone-is-thinking-of-suicide-

PHILANTHROPY NZ REPORT: Philanthropy New Zealand today released the 2014 Giving New Zealand report, sponsored by Perpetual Guardian.Giving New Zealand – Philanthropic Funding 2014 can be accessed at the following web link: http://www.philanthropy.org.nz/sites/all/files/Giving%20New%20Zealand%202014.pdf

TRAVEL CARD RESEARCH: Travel cards can provide a safe and convenient way to pay for things when you are overseas, but if you use one that’s not suited to your requirements, there could be problems and unexpected costs, says Banking Ombudsman Nicola Sladden. Go here for more: https://bankomb.org.nz/news-and-publications/quick-guides/item/looking-after-your-credit-and-debit-cards-and-pins

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Wednesday 2nd December.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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Keith Rankin’s Chart for this Week: Asian Finance 1995-2014

By Keith Rankin -

December 2, 2015

Economic analysis by Keith Rankin.

On 30 September I published a chart showing twenty-year averages of the private-sector and public-sector financial balances in a wide range of countries (Spread of Financial Balances by Country, 1995-2014).

This week’s chart focuses on the Asian region, and shows structural differences between these countries and New Zealand in particular and much of the rest of the world in general. (Note that the New Zealand figure in particular has moved slightly due to an upgrade of the IMF data, published in October.)

We see that all the Asian countries appear in the right-half – in Quadrants 1 and 2 – which means that they have private sectors which spend (including spending on new investment goods such as factories and equipment) less than they earn. Offsetting that, most have persistent government deficits; this means that the main intersectoral financial flow in these countries is from the private sector to the government sector. However, with the weight of Asia to the right of the dashed line, it also means there is a substantial net flow from Asia’s private sector to Asia’s foreign sector, meaning to countries like New Zealand operating well to the left of the dashed line. This is strongly consistent with a pattern of Asian money flowing to – and seeking returns in – western countries, and non-Asian emerging economies in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

On 14 November The Economist published a feature article Pulled Back In about private debt in emerging economies. The article identifies Singapore, Malaysia, China, Korea and Thailand as all having significant and growing private sector debt. Not included in the article, but almost certainly up there, will be Taiwan and Hong Kong.

This finding seems completely inconsistent with the financial balances data plotted in the chart. These countries are all substantial creditor countries, in that they save and lend to or otherwise purchase financial assets in the ‘debtor’ countries to the left of the dashed line. Yet they are identified as having among the highest rates of private debt in the world. The Economist says: “The classic sort of emerging market has a current-account deficit and is prone to inflation…. The other kind, too new to feature in textbooks [my emphasis] on emerging market crises, has a hearty current-account surplus, huge foreign-exchange reserves and decent public finances – but lots of private debt and an excess of goods-producing capacity, leaving it prone to deflation”.

What it means is that financial institutions (especially banks) in these Asian countries are lending massive amounts to their own people, who are in turn buying financial assets in other parts of the world. Of particular significance as global ‘investors’ is Singapore and Malaysia, both countries with many people with “Chinese-sounding names” (see my What’s in a Name?). In London, one famous Malaysian project is the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station (Battersea – the pride of Britain and Malaysia, The Star Online, 25 July 2015).

The juxtaposition of this week’s chart and The Economist chart (“Big and Bigger”, in the cited article) tells us that, on a large scale, people in Singapore, Malaysia and China (and almost certainly Taiwan) have been borrowing money from their own banks and buying existing and refurbished assets in countries like New Zealand. This is nothing new. It’s a pattern going back to the beginning of the century (noting that Malaysia at least changed its financial behaviour dramatically – from global debtor to global creditor – after the 1998 Asian crisis).

This is leveraged speculation; it’s not a simple case of finding outlets for savings. It means that many quite rich people are getting heavily into debt in order to buy foreign assets that they believe will substantially appreciate in value. It means that the next big financial crisis will most likely start as an East Asian banking crisis. Leveraged speculation can make spectacular financial gains. And spectacular losses.

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Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: The rise of gender politics and feminism

By Bryce Edwards -

December 2, 2015

Political Roundup by Dr Bryce Edwards

[caption id="attachment_4808" align="alignleft" width="300"]

Dr Bryce Edwards.[/caption]

The rise of gender politics and feminism – Feminism is on the rise. This year has seen a greater focus on gender issues than perhaps ever before. This extended column looks back on one of the most important trends in New Zealand politics in 2015.

A variety of different gender issues have been part of the political conversation in New Zealand this year. Some have been focused at the elite level – such as how to get more women into the ranks of the political or financial establishment. Other debates have been about attitudes, ideas and behaviours – especially “casual sexism” – but also about domestic violence. And another focus has been on the women at the bottom of the heap – those struggling on low pay.

The variety of gender politics stories show how feminist politics has now moved from the margins into the mainstream. Now it seems almost everyone wants to call themselves a feminist – from Judith Collins through to Police Commissioner Mike Bush.

Who is a feminist?

Are you a feminist? It’s becoming increasing popular to identify as feminist, even if you’re a man, and especially if you’re a politician. This year has seen a surge of concern about gender inequality, discrimination and the degraded position of women in many aspects of New Zealand life. A number of high profile advocates for women’s rights have spoken out recently. And many of these are men: a campaign was launched on Friday to get men on board the feminist struggle – see Simon Collins’ Men sign up to feminist cause.

Much of the debate about feminism equates “being a feminist” with being “pro-women” or in favour of women’s equality and human rights. This categorisation is fraught, and makes nearly everyone a feminist at one level or another. Certainly amongst the men signing up to the “HeforShe” campaign there are a few surprises – some of the more high profile are: Police Commissioner Mike Bush, Governor-General Jerry Mateparae, Gareth Morgan, Wallace Chapman and Jack Tame. Of course David Cunliffe was at the forefront of this movement last year with his apology for being a man.

Not all male commentators are impressed with the “HeforShe” campaign – Chris Trotter gives his reasons in a blog post, Window Dressing A Dark Reality: Why I won’t be signing on to “HeForShe” anytime soon. But for a different view on why men should be standing up on gender issues, see Johnny Moore’s Here’s why I’m a feminist.

It’s obviously not just middle-aged men rallying to the feminist cause. The above articles simply point to the more mainstream and surprising new voices of gender politics. The feminist label is being adopted more readily now amongst teenagers, after a period of reluctance to use this term. Back in May, Jeremy Olds wrote a feature story about The rise of high school feminism. In this, students explain why they have been setting up feminist clubs.

Plenty of other prominent men and women have made pronouncements about feminism this year. Comedian Michele A’Court published a book – Stuff I Forgot to Tell My Daughter – largely about gender issues and “the fourth wave of feminism”, and she was the subject of an interesting interview with Philip Matthews – see: Michele A’Court is trying to make NZ feminism fun.

TV3 broadcaster Paul Henry got himself into trouble earlier in the year when he disagreed with Hillary Clinton and Helen Clark allegedly running for office on the basis of their gender – watch the six-minute video: Dr Jackie Blue: Paul Henry wrong on feminism. He also received an interesting response from Narelle Henson – see: Paul Henry, feminism and disagreeing with Dr Jackie Blue. See also Rodney Hide’s Blue misses point on feminism.

National’s progress with women

Feminism used to be associated with the political left, but today’s feminist agendas are often pushed from the political right, including within the National Party. Probably the most prominent MP speaking out this year on gender issues has been National’s Judith Collins. In May she talked about her feminism and what it means to her, stating “I’ve been a feminist a lot longer than most people. I’ve been a feminist all my life” – see the NBR’s Lifelong feminist Judith Collins wants cabinet job back.

This was in a 10-minute interview with Heather du Plessis-Allen on TVNZ’s Q+A – see: Judith Collins wants Cabinet job back – ‘It’s up to the PM’. And Nikki Kaye commented last month on her own gender politics – see Catherine Fu’s Nikki Kaye on following her conscience, feminism and what she’d tell her 20-year-old self.

Women ministers have been increasingly visible in John Key’s National Government this year, with Amy Adams, Paula Bennett, Maggie Barry and Anne Tolley all being foils to an at times “very blokey” administration, according to the NBR’s Rob Hosking – see his (paywalled) column, Government’s women ministers to the fore.

Hosking outlines the increasingly strong role of the Government’s female ministers and argues, “This highlighting of National’s women ministers could be dismissed as coincidence but that seems a stretch. It certainly isn’t tokenism, however: most of these initiatives are part of the business of the government this year, in some cases major parts of it.”

Justice Minister Amy Adams has been lauded for her progress on gender issues. Since taking on her justice job she has made domestic violence reform her top priority, which in August received backing from opposition parties – see Andrea Vance’s Killing the family pet could become a crime in law overhaul.

And Adams’ establishment of the new role of Chief Victims Advisor, and especially her appointment of longtime campaigner Kim Mcgregor to the role, has been very well received amongst women’s groups – see Shane Cowlishaw’s Rape prevention campaigner Kim Mcgregor appointed new Chief Victims Advisor.

There have been other gender initiatives for which the Government has received praise – for example last month trade unions and the Greens congratulated National on establishing a joint group to deal with establishing the principles for working out how to apply equal pay rules across industries – see Peter Wilson and Sarah Robson’s Government hailed for equal pay initiative.

National’s problem with women

John Key’s “rapist” allegations in the debate about the Australian detention centres has clearly made the Prime Minister vulnerable to counter-allegations that he’s insensitive to rape victims and gender issues. His refusal to apologise for any offence caused has been criticised by the Herald – see its editorial, Why John Key should say sorry.

And the Herald’s political editor Audrey Young says the episode “suggests he is willing to squander his reserves of political capital – in particular with women” – see: Key attack leaves him offside with women. Fellow columnist Paul Little paints Key as an old-fashioned male chauvinist for how he has handled his opponents: “he is about old-fashioned values, like putting women in their place, teaching them to be seen and not heard, and never backing down or apologising, especially when you’re in the wrong” – see: John Key put those women in their place.

But National’s Michelle Boag has received even more heated criticism for her judgements on the women MPs who walked out of Parliament. She accused them of “parading their victimhood” – see Sam Sachdeva’s MPs who shared sexual assault stories ‘paraded their victimhood’ – Michelle Boag.

The strongest response came from Alison Mau – see her RadioLive article: Michelle Boag, when is it okay for victims to speak up? And the Southland Times also called her comments “arrant rubbish. Stunningly so” – see the editorial, Boag wrong to rain on “victimhood parade”.

Others on the left were quick to condemn – see Chris Trotter’s Victimisers On Parade: National Demonstrates Why It’s Unfit To Govern A Decent Country, Jessie Hume’s Michelle Boag Thinks Survivors Should Shut Up and Rachael Goldsmith’s Open Letter to Michelle Boag. But not all lefties were hostile to Boag’s position – see socialist activist Philip Ferguson’s Memo to NZ’s cosseted bourgeois politicians: No, Christmas Island actually isn’t about you.

Sexism in parliamentary politics

Debate continues about whether the National Government will be harmed by John Key’s controversial “rapist” comments, with Patrick Gower reporting last week National still ahead in polls despite ‘rapist’ remarks.

But this is only the latest in a line of contentious debates this year about sexism in politics. A couple of months ago, it was all about Labour’s fast-rising new star, and whether she was being unfairly categorised – see my column at the time, Jacinda Ardern and the “pretty little thing” debate. See also, Ardern’s blog post, I am a feminist.

This episode led to further examination of gender issues in Parliament. TVNZ’s Q+A put together a 12-minute panel discussion on Sexism and politics, featuring Judith Collins, Annette King, Julie Anne Genter and Claire Robinson. And RNZ’s Amelia Langford asked: How sexist is New Zealand politics? For more on the topic you can also listen to her 18-minute Focus on Politics for 30 October 2015.

This has fuelled even more concern about the under-representation of women in politics – particularly Parliament and Cabinet. The Green Party has responded with an announcement from co-leader James Shaw that “half of its Cabinet will be women if it enters Government” – see Isaac Davison’s Green Party to have 50/50 split men and women.

This received praise from bloggers – see, for example, No Right Turn’s A commitment to equality. But not all agreed that it was the best way to deal with the problem – listen to Rachel Smalley’s one-minute talk, Gender quota misses the point. See also James Shaw’s interview with Ben Mack About gender equality, quotas, the pay gap and the future of New Zealand.

Women at the top

It’s a sign of how mainstream feminism has become, that today much of the gender politics agenda is about the women at the top – the broadcasters, CEOs, politicians and others in positions of power. There is currently a particular focus on women in business – see, for example, Fran O’Sullivan’s article from Saturday: Women’s arrival at top taking too long. In this, O’Sullivan celebrates “that women are finally taking their place at the top tables of New Zealand business”, but laments that the changes are happening too slowly.

O’Sullivan draws attention to Joan Withers winning the “Chairperson of the Year” title at the Deloitte Top 200 awards last week. Withers, who chairs Mighty River Power and TVNZ, earlier in the month also won the supreme prize in the Women of Influence awards. For more on her victory, and the other category winners, such as the Ministry for the Environment’s Vicky Robertson and the Defence Force’s Karyn Thompson – see Stuff’s Joan Withers supreme woman of influence.

Over time the position of women in business might be improving, but it’s recently gone backwards – see Tess McClure’s Women losing boardroom battle. She reports “The number of women in business management has dropped dramatically in the last two years, reaching a ten-year low in 2014.”

This week Rachel Smalley suggested that publicly-listed companies need a quota imposed on them to ensure 25 per cent of each company’s directors are female – see: Quotas needed to diversify NZX boards.

Smalley uses the example of businesswomen Diana Foreman not being on any company boards. Yet while Foreman herself is also campaigning for more women on boards and in business, she opposes quotas. According to Holly Ryan, “Ms Foreman disagreed with having a quota system, with companies needing to put the people with the best skills in the job rather than a woman for the sake of gender diversity” – see: Rich-lister: Women the secret to success.

Foreman has recently published a book, In the Arena, which is “about getting to the top and why she thinks businesses need to work harder to get more females into executive and board roles”. See also Fiona Rotherham’s article, Diane Foreman says women need help to be entrepreneurs, not a ministry of women’s affairs.

Some businesses are clearly doing better than others – for some positive stories see John Anthony’s Sovereign NZ CEO’s gender equality work gets UN nod and Tao Lin’s Gender pay gap still there: so what are we doing about it?

There are also problems in the public sector with a lack of diversity at the top, as detailed by Bernard Orsman in his mid-year feature, Auckland’s Super City club: Who’s running our city? White men from wealthy suburbs. See also Hayden Donnell’s White Men in Charge: It’s Not Just Auckland Council.

But the State Services Commission report released last week suggests there has been significant progress in terms of the employment of women in the public service, albeit with a significant pay gap – see Paul Purcell’s More female bosses, but still less pay. According to this report, “Female bosses in the public sector have increased by 23 percent between 2010 and 2015 with women now in charge of 39 percent of all public sector departments.”

In terms of the pay gap between public sector males and females, the Commission says, “When adjusted for occupation, seniority and experience, the average pay gap falls by two-thirds” – see Fiona Rotherham’s More women than ever in public service – but paid 14% less.

The legal profession is also biased at the top, according to last week’s top 50 most influential legal experts put together by Lawfuel – see: The Power List. Only 15 women make the list (including Mai Chen, Una Jagose, Deborah Chambers, and Jane Kelsey). See also Alex Mason’s Call for more female QCs.

More positively, the University of Canterbury law school will soon be led by two women, “for the first time in its 142-year history” – see Jody O’Callaghan’s University of Canterbury has first female law dean in Ursula Cheer. The Police also are making progress in the gender make up of staff – see Talia Shadwell’s Women a growing force in police ranks.

For an overview of the position of “Women In Power” and other gender progress, see Simon Collins’ report, Women face battle for equality. In addition to this, it’s worth noting that the recently-released World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2015 has New Zealand jumping up three places to the ranking of number ten – see the report for New Zealand.

Casual (and serious) sexism

Much of the renewed feminist focus in politics is about highlighting some of the behaviours, stereotypes and beliefs that are said to be rampant in a sexist New Zealand. The problem of so-called “casual sexism” was outlined well by Alison Mau back in March with her column, The curse of #casualsexism. This referred not just to the everyday gender discrimination experienced by many women, but also to TVNZ’s Facebook post of “Vote For Our Sexiest Female Presenter”. Similarly, see Aimie Cronin’s I’m not sexist but…. and Shelley Bridgeman’s Sexism is alive and well.

Lizzy Marvelly has also raised related issues in her blog post, When did New Zealand become so sexist? This is on Marvelly’s new website, Villainesse which she launched in May, as explained in the news report Lizzie Marvelly sings out to give women a voice.

Marvelly’s site contains plenty of gender politics content, such as I shave my legs and don’t have a cat. Can I still be a feminist?, and The Villainesse Guide to not being sexist, chauvinistic or misogynistic in 2015.

Marvelly has also been behind the It’s My Body. My Terms. campaign, which hopes “to shift attitudes about consent and sexual violence” – see the Herald’s report, Stars support new campaign to shift views about consent.

Many other types of sexism in society have been closely examined this year. Academic Nicola Gaston has a new book out – Why Science is Sexist. For a summary of this, see her article, Sexism is still one of science’s biggest issues. See also, Kim Savage’s five-minute item on TVNZ’s Q+A: Sexism and science. You can also listen to feminist blogger Deborah Russell talk about the issues in her 17-minute interview about the topic on RNZ: The Pundits: Feminism.

Domestic and gender violence

Possibly the single most controversial item published on the topic of gender and domestic violence this year was Rachel Stewart’s New Zealand has reached the pinnacle of world number one in domestic violence. In this she laid the blame and the solution for domestic violence “firmly at the feet of men” and called for some tough physical responses to the offending men.

The scheduled upcoming tour of singer Chris Brown has been controversial due to his record of domestic violence, leading to an interesting debate about whether he should be allowed in the country. Various Maori women leaders came out on his side in September (including Dames Tariana Turia, June Jackson and June Mariu) – see David Fisher’s Chris Brown – Dame Tariana Turia says let him in. But many feminists wanted him barred – see Nicholas Jones’s Judith Collins: Chris Brown ‘just another wife-beater’. But, in this case Jan Logie took issue with the National MP’s “new persona” of feminism – see: Judith Collins can’t talk about Chris Brown without making her own apologies.

Then in October Tony Veitch once again became the topic of debate when he made controversial statements on Facebook – see Laura Mcquillan’s Tony Veitch’s latest rant shows an appalling lack of self-awareness.

Women at the bottom

Although much of the attention of gender politics is focused on helping women “at the top” of society, or dealing with sexist stereotypes and behaviour, some is focused more on economic structures and how they impact on women at the bottom.

For Deborah Hill Cone, much of the focus on “casual sexism” is banal when more serious gender discrimination is going on, and so she responded to Alison Mau’s column on “The curse of casual sexism” by saying: “What I do care about is the reality of the economic power of women, especially older women and minority women. This matters more to me than the objectification of television presenters. Like most things in life, it all comes down to money” – see: Let’s turn focus to women’s pay.

It’s low pay that is probably the biggest problem for women at the bottom of the socio-economic heap. And this year has seen a renewed focus on issues of equal pay for such workers. Much of this attention on working womens’ pay is due to the landmark case of aged-care worker Kristine Bartlett, which was explained by employment lawyer Christie Hall at the start of the year in her opinion piece, Where next for equal pay. See also her eight-minute interview with Corin Dann on Q+A: Equal pay for all.

In October the Government responded to the court case by setting up a joint working group to help negotiate a settlement and a fix for women in low paid industries affected by unequal pay – see Kiri Gillespie’s Carers move closer to pay equity deal. See also, June Francis’ A Salute to Kristine Bartlett, and Bronwen Beechey’s Fight for Equal Pay continues.

In terms of the on-going gender pay gap, some interesting explanations are put forward by economist Geoff Simmons in his five-minute video trying to locate the causes – see: What is the cause of the gender pay gap? See also, Simon Collins’ Women’s pay drops further behind men’s. But it’s also worth considering David Farrar’s blog post, NZ has lowest gender wage gap in the OECD.

Finally, is the increase in gender politics a win for the political left? Leftwing activist Phillip Ferguson has some doubts about this, suggesting that feminism, along with other liberal-left ideologies, has merely served to bolster the status quo – see: Respect for diversity’: modern NZ capitalism’s necessary ideology

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NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for December 01 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

December 1, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 9 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Tuesday 1st December. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include the release of a Salvation Army report saying more New Zealanders risk facing homelessness in retirement unless the government takes urgent steps to deal with the problem and the Ministry for Primary Industries warning of a potential health risk from imported frozen berries, following four cases of Hepatitis A.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: Clinician joins Southern Partnership Group; Medical students’ borrowing limits extended; New phase begins for residential red zones; Bennett says Hola! to Argentina; Construction starts on new Kawarau Falls Bridge near Queenstown;Police to trial family violence victim video statements; Speech – UN Climate Change Conference; PM announces $20m for research to help reduce emissions; New Zealand to ratify Doha Amendment to Kyoto Protocol; PM addresses Paris Climate Change Conference; PM calls for global action on fossil fuel subsidies; EQC Minister welcomes Auditor General’s report; Clinician joins Southern Partnership Group; Horticulture export act to be updated

ACT Party: Funding changes a big win for med students

Greens: Govt abandons older New Zealanders; Fossil of the Day award shows up National’s climate hypocrisy

Labour: Back-down has Joyce doctoring loan policy; Labour will back RMA changes at first reading; Police search of journalist’s apartment worrying; Brownlee barge can’t apply to Treasury report; Hep A berries must be recalled and products named; Seniors face housing hardship after Nats do nothing; EQC still failing years into rebuild; PM’s Paris posturing embarrassing Kiwis

Māori Party: Police admission of ‘unconscious bias’ against Maori welcomed

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

DELOITTE EXCELLENCE AWARDS: The Institute of Public Administration New Zealand (IPANZ) is calling on all public sector organisations, big and small, to put forward successful projects for consideration for the Deloitte IPANZ Public Sector Excellence Awards 2016. More information about the awards, including last year’s finalists and winners, can be found at: http://www.ipanz.org.nz/excellenceawards

EARTHQUAKE COMMISSION AUDIT: The Auditor-General has published a report Earthquake Commission: Managing the Canterbury Home Repair Programme – follow-up audit. The report is available at:http://www.oag.govt.nz/2015/eqc-follow-up?utm_source=subs&utm_medium=subs&utm_campaign=eqc-follow-up

ENVIRONMENT WEBSITE WINS: Environmental monitoring website Land, Air Water Aotearoa has scooped the top award at the annual Science Communicators Association of New Zealand (SCANZ) awards presented in Wellington on Monday evening. Click here for more: http://www.lawa.org.nz/

HOMELESS BABY BOOMERS: The latest report from The Salvation Army’s Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit, Homeless Baby Boomers, reveals only 62 per cent of Baby Boomers who retire at 65 after 2025 can expect to be home owners, compared with over 77 per cent of 65-year-olds who retired in 2011. Click here for the report:http://www.salvationarmy.org.nz/HomelessBabyBoomers

HOSPITAL CARDIAC ARREST: St John’s latest OHCA report reveals the emergency ambulance service has maintained a strong 15% survival rate for patients who are treated for cardiac arrest. The OHCA report is available on the St John website: http://www.stjohn.org.nz/Global/18_11_15_OHCA_Report_2015_HQ_released.pdf

KAWARAU FALLS BRIDGE: The first sod on construction of the new $22 million Kawarau Falls Bridge on State highway 6 at Frankton near Queenstown was turned today.For more information on the new Kawarau Falls Bridge:http://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/new-two-lane-kawarau-falls-bridge-project/

LAMP CROP DECREASE: Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s (B+LNZ) Lamb Crop 2015 report estimates 23.9 million lambs were tailed this spring – the smallest lamb crop since 1953. The report is available at:http://www.beeflambnz.com/Documents/Information/Lamb%20Crop%202015.pdf

PROPERTY VALUE RISES: The latest monthly QV House Price Index shows that nationwide residential property values for November have increased 15.0% over the past year which is the fastest rate since February 2006. Read more: https://www.qv.co.nz/resources/news/article?blogId=211

TERMS OF TRADE: The merchandise (goods) terms of trade fell 3.7 percent in the September 2015 quarter, due to import prices rising more than export prices, according to Statistics New Zealand. More details at:http://bit.ly/1Th2C6o

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Tuesday 1st December.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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JERAA and Pacific pre-conference info for WJEC: The next generation

By Selwyn Manning -

November 30, 2015

Pacific Media Centre

WORLD JOURNALISM EDUCATION ASSOCIATION PRECONFERENCE

13 July 2016

Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
Organised by the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia in collaboration with the Pacific Media Centre (Auckland University of Technology) and Media Educators Pacific

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Submit by Friday, 5 February, 2016

Preconference Theme—The Next Generation

The one-day WJEC Preconference of 13 July 2016 will precede the full WJEC of 14 to 16 July 2016 at the Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand. Delegates will have the option of registering for:

– The one-day preconference alone (costs to be advised mid-December)

– The WJEC alone (see www.wjec.aut.ac.nz/registration.html)

– Both the one-day Preconference plus WJEC together (costs to be advised mid-December)

The core theme will be ‘The Next Generation’ of journalism educators, trainers, and researchers. Although the core theme will relate to issues affecting newcomers to journalism education, training and research, the preconference will feature papers and panels on a broad variety of issues relating to journalism and journalism education.

Early-Career Sessions
Research students and early-career trainers, educators and researchers whose abstracts are accepted will have the option to present their papers in specially badged ‘Early-Career Sessions’. These sessions will feature only students and early-career, trainers, educators and researchers, and at the end of each session, a senior researcher or educator will provide formative feedback to each presenter about their conference papers.

Preconference Call for Abstracts
Abstracts are being sought for conference papers and panels on the following themes:

– ‘The Next Generation’: issues affecting the opportunities, work and career structures of newcomers to journalism training, education and research

– Journalism education and training in Australia, New Zealand or Pacific Island nations

– Journalism education at a time of rapid technological, economic and social change

– Other topics relevant to journalism and journalism education

Abstract Submission Guidelines

– Abstracts must be submitted as a Word file and emailed by Friday, 5 February, 2016 to wjec-preconference@outlook.com

– Abstracts for individual papers must be 300-800 words. Abstracts for panels must be 500-800 words, and they can also have abstracts for individual papers attached. If so, the attachment for each individual papers being presented as part of the panel can be a further 300-800 words per paper if required.

– The abstracts should give a clear sense of the goal of your research or educational project, its scope, and the method of inquiry, the results (to date) of your research or educational project, and conclusions/discussion. If you wish to have your paper printed in the Preconference Proceedings, it must be submitted by 1 June 2016.

– In the body of the email, put in the name, organisation details, email addresses and postal addresses for all authors of the paper. If there is more than one author, please identify who is the corresponding author that we should send all correspondence to.

– Your abstract must not include your name or contact details for yourself or any of the paper’s co-authors.

Abstract Submission Process

A panel of judges will conduct a blind peer review all abstracts that are submitted by the deadline of 5 February 2016. You will be advised of the outcome of the review process by 4 March 2016.

Key Dates in 2016 for Preconference Delegates

5 February Deadline for submitting your abstract for the WJEC Preconference

4 March Notification of acceptance of abstracts

1 April Confirm your participation in the WJEC Preconference

30 April Final date for Early Bird Registration for both WJEC Preconference and WJEC

31 May Draft program released

1 June Deadline for submission of full papers (optional)

30 June Final conference program released

13 Jul WJEC Preconference (one day)

14-16 July WJEC (three days)

20 August Submissions for Asia-Pacific papers after the conference for double blind peer-reviewed Pacific Journalism Review – Submission guidelines

Editor of PJR: Professor David Robie of the Pacific Media Centre. Inquiries: pjreview@aut.ac.nz

For more information about the WJEC Preconference or Abstract submission

Pleasecontact JERAA Vice President (Conference) Leo Bowman (l.bowman@qut.edu.au) or JERAA Vice President Networks Angela Romano (a.romano@qut.edu.au).

For More Information about the WJEC

Please see http://www.wjec.aut.ac.nz/

Assoc Prof Angela Romano Assoc Prof Leo Bowman

Vice President (Networks) Vice President (Conference)

Journalism Education & Research Assoc of Australia Journalism Education & Research Assoc of Australia

Honours Coordinator |Creative Industries Faculty Discipline Head |Journalism, Media & Communictation

Queensland University of Technology Queensland University of Technology

a.romano@qut.edu.au +61-731388162 l.bowmano@qut.edu.au +61-731388163

Level 5, Z6, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove QLD 4059, Australia

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NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for November 30 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

November 30, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Monday 30th November. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include the Labour Party unveiling a new Shadow Cabinet line-up, world leaders and tens of thousands of officials, delegates and observers gathering in Paris for the crucial United Nations climate talks and the Ministry for Primary Industries confirming it immediately commenced an investigation into the alleged mistreatment of bobby calves that was aired on television over the weekend.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: PM Welcomes Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy Initiative; NZ deeply disappointed by whaling decision;Greater transparency for Govt investment projects; Auckland building consents continue to surge; 10-year passports: Back by public demand; New Law Commission projects announced; Views sought on extra protections from sunbeds; Appointments to the Film and Literature Board of Review

Greens: Thousands of Kiwi climate marchers challenge Govt to show leadership; NZ should send navy to monitor Japan’s whale hunt; Green Party Congratulates Kirk Hope; Key needs to walk-the-talk when on the world stage; Key must apologise over Malaysian diplomat case; MPI failing our animals and damaging our reputation

Labour: Bias amongst police must be urgently addressed; Guilt doesn’t mean Govt off hook; Labour Line-Up To Take The 2017 Election

New Zealand First: Simple Teacher Planning Equation Stumps Ministers

United Future Party: Party Leader AGM speech: Bold, not bland

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

10-YEAR PASSPORTS: Passports Office will start issuing 10-year adult passports to applicants from today. More details at: http://www.passports.govt.nz/10-year-passports

ARTS COUNCIL REPORT: The Arts Council invested a record $43.6 million in the arts and arts organisations in 2014/15 with more organisations than ever receiving multi-year funding, according to the council’s Annual Report 2014/15. The report is on the Creative New Zealand website: http://www.creativenz.govt.nz/about-creative-new-zealand/corporate-reports/annual-report-2014-15

BUILDING CONSENTS: The number of new dwellings consented rose in Auckland, but decreased in Canterbury, in October 2015 compared with October 2014 according to Statistics New Zealand. More detailed information at:http://bit.ly/1TmdH6X

HOUR OF CODE: New Zealand students can take their first steps into the exciting world of computer coding next week with the annual ‘Hour of Code’ campaign returning as part of Computer Science Education Week, 7-13 December. For more information visit: http://code.org/learn

SUNBEDS PROTECTION: Public consultation on proposals for additional protection from the use of commercial sunbeds starts today. Further information including the consultation document and details on how you lodge a submission is available here: https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/reducing-harm-caused-commercial-sunbeds

TRANSPARENCY FOR GOVT INVESTMENTS: Two reports released today on Government’s investment practices and the performance of its major investment projects provide an overview to the public for the first time.The two reports can be viewed here: Managing Government Investment Projects 2014-15 www.treasury.govt.nz/statesector/investmentmanagement/publications/ipannualreport/2014-15 and Major Projects Performance Report March-June: www.treasury.govt.nz/statesector/investmentmanagement/publications/majorprojects

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Monday 30th November.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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Keith Rankin on Tribal Politics

By Keith Rankin -

November 28, 2015

Feature by Keith Rankin. This article was also published on TheDailyBlog.co.nz.

[caption id="attachment_8333" align="alignleft" width="300"]

The left/right divide. Image sourced from Liberation.typepad.com.[/caption]

Chris Trotter last week (Capitalism Kills: Why, for the Right, the Left is always wrong) both criticised and participated in tribal politics. I would substantially disagree with him, in part because there are lefts and rights, not simply Left and Right. But, inasmuch as there are rival Left and Right tribes, my view is that it is the Left tribe in New Zealand that sees the Right tribe as bad, whereas the Right tribe sees the Left tribe as mad. As such I think that the tribal Left can be somewhat more uncompromising, and less likely (than vice versa) to engage constructively with the Right.

Indeed in history we see that changes brought about by parties (small-p and large-P) of the radical left have generally been retained and embedded by subsequent governments of the right. (In the case of anti‑nuclear New Zealand, this was the policy of the radical left that was embraced by a then-regressive Labour Party because the anti-nuclear issue provided a distraction. And embraced by National because – like Mt Everest – it was there. Lunchtime is a long time in politics.)

For me, tribal politics is rather sad, because it focuses on the negatives, the problems rather than the solutions, the put-downs rather than the pull-ups. While I think that most people are motivated more by the issues and policies, and want all governments to do the correct things regardless of their colours, tribal politicos seem to only want their side to do their good things, and feel more at ease when the other side is doing the bad things (or the mad things) that bad guys (or mad guys) do.

I want the real issues to be discussed, and always around the context of solutions. If something really is insoluble, it probably isn’t a real issue. Indeed a problem that cannot be solved is not really a problem at all. (Death for example is probably not a problem; however premature, negligent and purposeful deaths certainly are problems. Indeed, a society without death feels like a dystopia; death must then be the reality that prevents such dystopia.) Tribal politics makes people more engaged with (and enraged with) what they are against than with what they are for. So tribalism itself becomes an essentially conservative force.

One of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced in New Zealand was the 1982 Official Information Act. This could easily have been criticised as a Rob Muldoon vanity project. (Indeed, Muldoon later did name this legislation as his legacy accomplishment.) If Mr Muldoon had put it to the people as a referendum, both the Left tribe and the Right tribe were so trenchantly anti-Muldoon that the proposal could easily have been voted down.

In 2013, National Party people were probably more amused than annoyed when the “Marriage Equality” proposal was drawn as a Private Member’s Bill. Certainly the substance of the proposal could have been dealt with as an amendment to Labour’s Civil Union legislation. But it was the symbolism that mattered, and many people from the Right tribe engaged constructively and in good humour. Mad, possibly, they thought; so much political energy was being invested by the left in this proposal at a time that other issues were being neglected. But hardly bad.

It’s so different with the issue of the New Zealand flag. (I raised the flag question with PM Jack Marshall at a political meeting in 1972. The Seddon flag that perfectly represented us in 1900 is so ‘not us’ today; so not us in 1972, in the year that we abandoned God Save the Queen. The soldiers’ graves that I later visited at Cassino had ferns engraved, not Union Jacks. The many Canadian graves were also easily spotted. The silver fern is a symbol of Aotearoa that even the Labour Party embraces; see The Daily Blog, 10 November. There must be worse things in our future than having a flag with a fern.)

The Left tribe seems so uncompromisingly annoyed that the Right tribe has stolen one of its issues, that it is determined to support the Seddon flag of empire rather than have any other flag – including the lovely Red Peak – represent us. Any replacement flag stands to be seen as the Key flag, the flag of the other side. If we cannot be the progressive Republic, then we must be the Empire of the past. (In the past – especially in our past – the word ‘progress’ meant economic growth. In the 1890s – the conservationist MPs such as A.K. Newman, for whom growth was not everything – were conservatives.)

Political memories are short. How many of us realised until now that the Official Information Act was Muldoon’s legacy project? In 2050, how many of us will have even heard of John Key? Remember Jim? (He gave us MMP, his legacy. At the time Jim Bolger opposed MMP.) Remember George? (Winston Peters does; George was the last PM to have presided over NZ at a time when more MPs were from another party. Indeed, George Forbes’ United Party was, I understand, the third largest in the 1931-35 Parliament. Labour was the largest.) Remember Sid? He abolished the Legislative Council, New Zealand’s House of Lords. These are leaders whose good deeds we appreciate, even if we’ve forgotten who they are. We don’t appreciate their bad deeds, such as Holland’s enforcement in 1951 of the 1932 Public Safety Conversation Act. (George’s deeds were so few that we could count them on one finger.)

What will we say to our grandchildren in 2050 when they ask which flag we chose in 2015? And in 2016? Would we have to admit that we spoiled our ballot papers? Maybe the Right are right; maybe the Left is mad?

One of the really big political problems today is the lack of political engagement of young people. May I suggest that what so many of our young people see today are tribes who talk past each other; and oppose, because that’s what tribes do. A bit like Israelis versus Palestinians. Or Sunni versus Shia. (What’s the odds on those problem being solved within the next 2000 years?) Yet the disengagement over the flag issue is very similar. The Left tribe does not connect with the people promoting the change process, just as the young have difficulty connecting with mainstream politics. If only the young would vote for whom they dislike the least.

One final point that worries me. I’ve heard people from the left ‘Liberal’ tribe in the United States saying that they will be happy if Donald Trump becomes the Republican Presidential candidate. They should be careful what they wish for.

A Hillary Clinton presidency is not a foregone conclusion, just as the retention of our present flag is not foregone. If you are a New Zealander, vote ‘5’ for the flag you dislike the most (eg the black and blue fern that John Key says he will vote for). Then a ‘4’, then a ‘3’, then a ‘2’, and then a ‘1’. Engage now so that you don’t regret it later; so that, just in case we get a new flag, it’s a flag you helped to select. If you are an American, join the Republican Party. Vote in the primary election in your state. Vote for the candidate most likely to defeat Donald Trump or Ben Carson. Vote out the baddist and the maddist, at the first possible opportunity.

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Tony Alexander’s New Zealand Weekly Economic Overview November 26

By Selwyn Manning -

November 27, 2015

Economic Analysis by Tony Alexander.

Thursday November 26th 2015

[caption id="attachment_3709" align="alignleft" width="300"]

Tony Alexander, BNZ economist.[/caption] A couple of very large numbers made their appearance this week. One came from the International Visitor Survey which showed a massive 38% rise in spending by visitors to New Zealand over the past year. The tourism sector is in very good health and this is one of the important offsets to weakness in the dairying sector which will keep overall economic growth up and discourage the Reserve Bank from contemplating rate cuts beyond probably one more 0.25% reduction. The other number was the net migration gain of 62,477 people this past year. For Auckland the net gain was near 38,000 for which 12,700 extra houses are needed. But in the past year only 8,700 or so building consents have been issued. The Auckland shortage is still getting worse and that is why this current lull in the market as buyers look for bargains elsewhere is only temporary. But because the urge struck me early this week I have decided to lead off the Overview with a few thoughts on driverless cars and what we can do in them.

You can Download the full analysis document here pdf 314kb, or continue reading below.

A Bath In My Driverless Carriage I was at a function recently where another speaker ventured the opinion that in 15 or so years time we would all be using driverless cars. The gut reaction of 99% of you to that comment will be the same as mine which was no chance at all. I love driving. But there will be many people quite happy to use driverless cars, and plenty of people we all know who should be forced to use them. So I took to thinking about this potential development in another way – the opening up of business opportunities and potential uses which could be quite wonderful. One’s driverless car would effectively be like a part of the public transport system, but you would have your own private pod in which you could do – well, anything. My thinking started by reflecting on the Simpsons episode where Homer discovers the power socket in his car and plugs in a massive range of appliances including a deep fryer, coffee maker, fax machine and so on. Sitting in our driverless cars we could do the same thing, adding nice coffee machines, gaming systems etc. But we would not need to position these things so that they could be reached from a current driver’s seat position because the non-driver could sit anywhere. In fact why sit. One could install an Air New Zealand-like flat bed system and sleep on the way to work, school and home again or watch a movie. One could even install a massive TV screen in place of the window screen as there would be no point looking ahead to see what was coming – the car would take care of all that. Drink driving would be a thing of the past. You could get driven to a bar, get pickled, then get driven home. You could arrange with friends to meet for a drink in your car where you could install your own bar. The car would pick up and drop off each invitee. Thus we would not all gravitate automatically to little pod cars but being Kiwis will probably want the SUV equivalent or people/drinking mate mover variety. Teenagers would no longer need to “park-up” on a date. Tint the windows and cruise. Partners could simply go on a date in their car, cruising through city streets, up hills for the view whilst sipping champagne and eating oysters and chocolate the whole time. Rather than some romantic vision of honeymooning in a private car on the Orient Express you could simply hire a driverless car in Europe programmed to follow a certain picturesque route for two weeks. It would be wonderful. No more foreigners driving on the wrong side of the road. In fact countries would simply ban non-residents from driving in anything other than a driverless car. The cars would probably be electric driven and they could automatically plug themselves into an outlet to charge up each night, or drive over ten kilometre stretches of road into which recharge cables have been laid. Coming home from school you could hire a tutor to travel with the kids to help them with their homework. You could turn the car into your office and hold meetings there. The possibilities are massive and scope for profitable exploitation is open to everyone. So if you are of entrepreneurial flare you may want to think about how you can make money from the changes in what we would do in our cars, changes in our social interactions, and eventual ending of our description of a vehicle as “our” car. We would lose personal attachment to our cars, and instead form attachments with the things we put in them. Then, like the French shifting apartment and taking their kitchen with them, we would change cars and relocate our appliances, furniture, spa bath and massage table to our new vehicle. Would driverless cars swerve to miss possums? Guess it comes down to who programmes them. “Its either you or the possum” the ad says. Best hope extreme animal lovers don’t set the parameters. Imagine the Pukeko invasion! http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/20/volvo-concept-26-self-driving-autonomous-car-transport-design/ Housing This week, in the absence of any new data on changes in house prices, house sales and so on, it is hard to do anything other than focus on the net migration numbers which continue to go through the roof. Back in late-2012 when I warned that Auckland house prices would rise a lot more than the 40% they were up since 2009 because of net migration flows turning from negative to positive, I figured the annual gain might get to 30,000 or 35,000. It has now, in the year to October, hit an astounding 62,477 courtesy of 120,123 people shifting to NZ for more than a year in the past 12 months and just 57,646 leaving. This annual net inflow total represents a 1.4% boost to the population. That is a lot of extra people needing accommodation and if we use the NZ average of 2.7 people per dwelling that means a need for an extra 23,000 houses. In the year to September the total number of dwelling consents issued was 26,000 so allowing for at least 10% of these houses not in fact being built or replacing demolished houses, all the additions to our housing stock are going simply to handle migration-driven population growth. Auckland gained a net migration flow in the year of 38,000 people, a population boost of around 2.5%. That means the need for an extra 12,700 houses using Auckland’s three per house occupancy rate. Consents in the past year have totalled 8,700. Auckland’s housing shortage continues to get worse and worse and that is the key reason why during this pause in Auckland’s housing market as Chinese buyers struggle to get funds off their mainland and investors look for bargains elsewhere in NZ, Auckland buyers face a small window to pick and choose from stock on offer to a slightly better degree than a few months ago. Eventually however the economics 101 of the situation will shine through again in an environment of sustained low interest rates, and prices will rise. They are probably still rising, though simply at a slightly slower pace than before. And just in case you still hold the belief that Auckland house prices are about to fall, the city’s total population growth last year was about 3% meaning the need for an extra 15,000 houses in total. Real action for now however is in the regions excluding Christchurch with buyers literally snapping up anything they can find. They have a price range in their minds reflecting what they are used to in Auckland. Faced with much lower prices elsewhere, 50% lower in fact on average, their willingness to buy easily exceeds that of the locals who have stood idle these past few years not buying the lower priced stock on offer. Where does all this end? Well that is the key issue. There may not be an “end” as such as we have seen in the past, simply periods such as Auckland is going through now when some buyers back off for a tad. In the absence of any serious interest rates threat in the next few years the cycle is only likely to definitively head downward if we get a combination of booming supply (very unlikely in the short to medium term), imposition of much tougher finance access rules by the RBNZ (highly probable), and a reasonable-sized economic shock right after tighter rules have been introduced (unknowable). For the record, the migration flow with Australia has officially turned positive on an annual basis for the first time since 1991. For noting, Auckland Council are debating opening up many suburbs for higher density dwelling construction. Thus the less forward-looking people may start to understand why people have paid such high prices for many properties with land – land-banking for future subdivision and multiple unit development opportunities. Final decisions on the affected suburbs will occur next year. But current occupiers should expect changes as Auckland has no option other than to intensify given the lack of funds to allow development of an efficient transport system which will allow people to live a long way from their places of work. NZ Dollar A week ago the NZ dollar was buying 64.5 US cents and now it sits over one cent higher near 65.8 cents. This rise mainly reflects some weakness in the greenback over the past week as profits were taken following last week’s rise partly on the back of weakness in the Euro following the events in Paris. In other words, the NZ dollar is back where it was a fortnight ago against the US dollar – and also there or thereabouts against the British pound, Yen, and Euro. However we are at a two month low against the Australian dollar near 90.7 with the AUD boosted by a pullback in expectations of additional easing of monetary policy by the Reserve Bank of Australia. Going ahead we feel the NZD retains good support in a world where although the US economy is improving and interest rates may be raised soon, elsewhere tough economic conditions continue. Be on the lookout for any rebound in dairy prices which could easily see the NZ dollar stage decent rises against most other currencies. If I Were A Borrower What Would I Do? I would still opt for the two year fixed rate. Note how competition is however even stronger with new discounting of one year fixed rates and the medium term rates also coming down a tad further. For Noting One of our key themes has been that while the decline for now in dairying will sap growth in the economy, there are plenty of insulating factors. One we have emphasised is many non-dairy exporters doing well especially with new assistance from the extra weakness in the NZ dollar caused by the fall in dairy prices. And one of the non-dairy export sectors we have noted has been tourism. This week the International Visitor Survey figures for the year to September were released. They show visitor spending in New Zealand has soared by a massive 38% in the past year. Here are the growth rates by country. The tourism sector is still substantially smaller than dairy as an export earner and unlikely to surpass it once you strip export education from the tourism figures and ensure casein revenue is included in the dairy export total. But the sector has good upside potential and positive impacts spread all over the country.

Spending rise in the past year

Australia 22.7%

China 78.1

UK 43.4

USA 54.9

Germany 34.7

Japan 5.2

Korea, Republic of 8.5

Canada 45.5

All 37.6

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High Court says it can’t make Groser provide TPPA information faster ‘for now’ – Kelsey

By Selwyn Manning -

November 26, 2015

Source: Professor Jane Kelsey.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Tim Groser is currently taking part, in his capacity as Climate Change Minister, at the COP21 climate change conference being hosted in Paris.

[caption id="attachment_7208" align="alignleft" width="150"]

Trade Minister Tim Groser.[/caption]

Professor Jane Kelsey has accused the New Zealand Government of ‘stalling tactics’ after Trade Minister Tim Groser took a month to respond to a High Court order that he reconsider his withholding of TPPA information via the Official Information Act.

‘This week we went back to court to challenge Trade Minister Groser’s stalling tactics over the release of information on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations, following a High Court order that he reconsider the Official Information Act request I made last January’, said University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey, first applicant in the case.

The Minister took a month to respond to the court’s decision, despite the urgency of the request and the imminence of the signing of the TPPA. He then set out a process for reviewing the request, rather than an actual response. The ministry had so far located just one category of information: New Zealand’s negotiating mandates dating back to the start of the negotiations. However, the officials were too busy and the Minister was overseas, so no response could be provided until 5 February 2016, conveniently the day after the expected signing of the agreement.

[caption id="attachment_8298" align="alignright" width="300"]

In a decision released yesterday, Justice Collins acknowledged the return to court reflected ‘intense frustration’ at the ongoing delays.[/caption]

The applicants asked the court to order the Minister to provide the information by mid-December.

In a decision released yesterday, Justice Collins acknowledged the return to court reflected ‘intense frustration’ at the ongoing delays. However, said he was unable ‘at this juncture’ to make orders that could realistically speed up the process for release of the negotiating mandate documents.

The Minister was expected to respond within the next week to an interim refinement of the other categories of information requested. Justice Collins said it would not be appropriate to make any order until that was done.

The judge cautioned the Minister and his advisers that ‘there should be no further delays in responding fully and properly to Professor Kelsey’s request’.

[caption id="attachment_1844" align="alignright" width="150"]

Professor Jane Kelsey said: “Given the Minister’s behaviour to date, however, I fully expect further stonewalling.”[/caption]

‘Given the Minister’s behaviour to date, however, I fully expect further stonewalling to avoid the release of any substantive information before the Agreement is signed or while it is before the Parliament’, Professor Kelsey said.

The court also noted that the Chief Ombudsman has still not concluded her review of two remaining aspects of the Minister’s refusal to release the information in February that was referred to her as ‘urgent’ in March.

The applicants retain the right to return to court again to seek further orders and directions in relation to the November judgement.

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NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for November 26 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

November 26, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 8 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Thursday 26th November.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include the introduction of a bill to Parliament overhauling the Resource Management Act and a report released by the State Services Commissioner showing an increase of women in senior leadership roles in the State sector.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: Turakina Māori Girls’ College to close; Education Legislation Bill 2015 introduced; Resource legislation introduced to Parliament; Ministers welcome 5000th Christchurch repair; Southland to get new Trades Academy; Start of aeromagnetic survey programme; Greymouth joins ranks of fully-fibred towns; West Coast joins Regional Growth Programme; Inquiry highlights lessons from Penrose outage

Greens: Strengthen public education, don’t undermine it

Labour: Redcliffs School closure flies in the face of sense and the community; Fewer frontline staff in education despite spin; RMA changes must protect the environment; Fewer frontline staff in education despite spin; Vital that Government takes languages seriously; Reforms fall far short of a housing crisis fix

Māori Party: Māori Party Support RMA To Select Committee

New Zealand First: Abuse Of Restaurant Workers Tip Of Iceberg; Redcliffs School Closing Ignores Wishes Of Community; Minister Turns The Lights Out On Turakina; Auckland Paying For Feeble Skills Training Approach

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

EXPORTS & IMPORTS FALL: The trade deficit widened to $963 million in October 2015, compared with a deficit of $892 million for the same period last year, according to Statistics New Zealand. Read more: http://bit.ly/1PZSShr

GIRLS COLLEGE TO CLOSE: Turakina Māori Girls’ College will close on 27 January 2016.The decision follows a second round of consultation about the state-integrated Presbyterian Māori girls’ boarding school during which two submissions were received. The Ministry’s advice on the decision can be found here:http://www.education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/information-releases/turakina-report/

GLOBAL PRODUCTIVITY SLOW: Global productivity growth continues to slow, rising at a meager 0.3% pace this year. This persistent sharp deceleration reinforces concerns that global potential growth rates are slid, according to JP Morgan. Click here for more:https://markets.jpmorgan.com/research/email/u4nq9jok/TaZmedhn1RHDb_iecvleSQ/GPS-1881731-0

GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY RANKING: QS Quacquarelli Symonds are set to release the pilot edition of their new Graduate Employability Rankings. Designed to provide new insight into how universities are preparing their students for employment, they show Stanford University leading the way.The pilot edition will be available from:http://www.iu.qs.com

HOUSEHOLD INCOME: The Household Economic Survey (HES) measures annual income and housing expenses from a sample of New Zealand households. The survey was released today by Statistics New Zealand and is available at: http://bit.ly/1MSqOZ5

MINERAL RESOURCES SURVEY: Aeromagnetic surveys will begin soon in Nelson and Marlborough with the aim to build up comprehensive data on our minerals resources. More information on the surveys (including regular updates about key dates and locations) is available at: http://www.nzpam.govt.nz/cms/about-nzpam/news/current-news/aeromagnetic-surveys-in-nelson-and-marlborough

WOMEN IN SENIOR ROLES: The number of women in senior leadership roles in the State sector has grown from 16% to 44.2% since 2008, and 38% of current or acting Chief Executives in the Public Service are women according to reports released by the State Services Commissioner. The 2014/15 Report on Remuneration of Public Service and State sector Chief Executives is available on the SSC website https://www.ssc.govt.nz/rem-senior-state-sector-staff-to-30june15 and the 2015 HRC report is available on the SSC website http://www.ssc.govt.nz/human-resource-capability-new-zealand-state-services-2015

WEST COAST ECONOMIC STUDY: Opportunities for more investment, more jobs and better incomes for the West Coast will be the focus of a comprehensive economic study . An expression of interest to carry out the West Coast Regional Growth Study can be viewed here: https://www.gets.govt.nz/ExternalIndex.htm

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Thursday 26th November.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: Police vs democracy

By Bryce Edwards -

November 26, 2015

Political Roundup by Dr Bryce Edwards.

[caption id="attachment_4808" align="alignleft" width="150"]

Dr Bryce Edwards.[/caption]

Accusations that the New Zealand Police are censoring and suppressing critical enquiry is troubling for democracy and freedom.

When some parts of the establishment can’t cope with criticism, they hit back and find ways to protect themselves from public scrutiny. That’s the logical conclusion following revelations from sociologist Jarrod Gilbert about Police attempts to prevent him from accessing information. Gilbert tells his story in yesterday’s Herald column, The police have deemed me unfit to undertake crime research because I know criminals.

In this must-read column, Gilbert details how he has “been banned from accessing basic and uncontroversial police data”. When he sought some sort of explanation via a request for the Police’s file on him, in reply he “got pages of black ink. Everything has been redacted: censored.” The column also reveals details of “the lengths police are going to to control research”, including a threat by the Police to “blacklist” researchers who do not comply.

There’s since been a flurry of news media reports on the issue, starting with David Fisher’s Academics in battle with police. This reports other criticisms of the Police contracts for researchers, which are said to amount to “an attack on academic freedom and an affront to the Education Act’s legal obligation on academic institutions to be a ‘critic and conscience of society’.”

See also David Fisher’s important follow up reports: Revealed: The police contracts ‘shutting down debate’ and Police withholding information to avoid embarrassing govt, says O’Connor.

The response has been strong, especially in political circles. On Twitter, Government Minister Peter Dunne (‏@PeterDunneMP) has sided with Gilbert, tweeting sarcastically to him, “I assume Police will now stop providing information to Courts, Judges, Prisons probation officers etc on same basis?”. Labour’s Chris Hipkins (‏@chrishipkins) has declared: “Govt agencies have no right to question how official information will be used by requesters. It’s undemocratic”, which gained a response from Trevor Mallard (‏@TrevorMallard) that it was “about time the State Services Commissioner pretended he had a backbone”.

Various academics have tweeted in solidarity. The University of Auckland’s Luke Goode (‏@LukeGoode) stated: “This is appalling censorship, bullying & abuse of power. Universities should jointly and vigorously oppose this.” And media figures have also sounded alarmed. Former editor-in-chief of the Herald, Tim Murphy ‏(@tmurphyNZ) tweeted to Gilbert: “Disgraceful censorship and control freakery…….good to go public”. For more examples, see my blog post, Top tweets about NZ Police suppression of academic research.

But not everyone has sided with Gilbert. On Facebook, former politician and columnist Michael Laws declared: “Let’s be clear here: Jarrod Gilbert is a gang associate, a gang apologist & a gang enabler. He always has been, and he uses the cloak of academia to mask his true sensibilities. Good on the Police, I say.”

Critiques of the Police not appreciated

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Gilbert has been banned due to his critical approach to both the Police and the establishment in general. Gilbert said something similar on RNZ yesterday: “what concerns police is sometimes I’m critical of them, and they may not like the research that I engage in” – see RNZ’s: Police block gang expert’s data access. You can also listen to his six-minute interview with Guyon Espiner on Morning Report: Academic questions police restrictions on data. He argues that the Police clampdown has “got very chilling implications for free speech.”

This is elaborated upon by blogger No Right Turn: “The real problem is that the Police don’t like what Jarrod Gilbert has been saying about them or crime policy – so they’re trying to destroy his career as revenge. So far, so normal: our police are chronic abusers of power and obsessed with maintaining their own public image. They’ve shown a willingness to manipulate and fabricate evidence in criminal cases (and continue to endorse those who do so); of course they’ll do so to protect themselves from critics” – see: Police, censorship, and policy.

Gilbert is the author of the landmark Auckland University Press book, Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand. He’s also active as a columnist and blogger, winning the 2015 Canon Media Award for best blogger. And at times he has criticised the National Government on law and order issues – see his June column, Collins’ defence of police offending indefensible and his September column, Govt stats on gangs ‘wildly inaccurate’.

Of course he’s not the only academic to receive an interesting Police response to his research activity. Earlier this year, the Herald on Sunday published a feature article I wrote, which was critical of the Police and questioned the health of the organisation – see: NZ police are failing the public.

Police Commissioner Mike Bush responded with: In defence of New Zealand’s defenders. Interestingly, Jarrod Gilbert blogged in response to the exchange, with both bouquets and brickbats for the Police (as well as some of both for myself) – see: The pen is mightier than the baton. In this post Gilbert also outlines his own orientation towards the police.

See also, three other columns I have written this year about the police: Can we trust the police?, The politics of justice and Libertarians against dirty politics.

Political response

Much condemnation has come from media and political circles. Media specialist Russell Brown has been forthright in rallying a response to the situation: “This is scary and unacceptable and must be resisted as forcefully as possible. I might be wrong, but I don’t anticipate Jarrod’s employers at the University of Canterbury will die in a ditch over this. So it therefore falls to the rest of us to declare that what the police are doing to Jarrod and the control they seek to impose on others like him is incompatible with democracy. I invite my fellow journalists, academics and other members of the public to join me in saying so in the discussion for this blog post. This cannot stand” – see: The Police Ten 7 State.

And it’s not just the left expressing alarm at Gilbert’s revelations – David Farrar has labeled the Police processes “outrageous” and “ludicrous” – see: Police censorship. See also Eric Crampton’s Police muzzles?

In Parliament, the opposition parties have spoken out strongly, especially the Greens’ David Clendon – see Newswire’s Opposition ‘furious’ over police research contracts.

This article reports that “Police Minister Michael Woodhouse isn’t commenting, saying it’s an operational matter.” Others argue, however, that the issue is one of policy. For example, former police investigator Tim McKinnel ‏(@timmckinnel) has tweeted in response: “Has @WoodhouseMP ever said anything substantive about NZ Police #everythingisoperational”. And Graeme Edgeler (‏@GraemeEdgeler) has suggested: “The next time a minister declines to answer a question in the House because it’s an operational matter, the questioner should put a motion on the order paper requiring the Chief Executive (or Police Commissioner etc.) to attend the House to answer questions.”

Reforming Police processes

Labour and the Greens are calling for the Government to scrap the Police contracts forced onto researchers – see Katie Kenny’s Call for police to scrap ‘censoring’ contracts after researcher Dr Jarrod Gilbert banned.

Police Minister Michael Woodhouse might have no choice, as it appears the Police are breaking the law with the way they are handling information requests. According to law professor Andrew Geddis, based on the information at hand, Police behaviour “is inconsistent with the Police’s legal obligations under the Official Information Act, and thus unlawful” – see: My 2 cents on the Jarrod Gilbert affair…. Geddis says that Police “seem to be treating that information as ‘theirs’ to do with as they want and only sharing it on their terms. Which is not what the law says!”

Today’s Herald editorial makes a similar point, saying the Police shouldn’t be discriminating over who receives its information: “The police have no right to make that judgment. They are a public body obliged to be open to scrutiny” – see: Data attitude casts bad light on Govt policy.

David Farrar agrees with calls to change the way Police deal with information requests: “I would go further. I think all government data, by default, should be publicly available in machine readable format. Obviously personal details should not be included, but I’d love to see the criminal sector databases on convictions, sentencing, rehabilitation etc publicly available so NGOs, researchers and even companies can analyse the data and look for trends, correlations, possible causative factors etc” – see: Police censorship.

Government PR versus democracy

But is the problem bigger than just the Police? That’s the argument made by Danyl Mclauchlan: “It’s all very sinister on its own but it’s related to a deeper problem in the public service that got bad under Clark and is now so much worse under Key, and that is the transformation of the public service into a giant public relations machine for the government of the day. All sectors of the public service now have large communications departments and their primary role is to ‘manage risk’ for the Minister, Director/CEO and the rest of the organisation, in that order” – see: Research as propaganda.

This argument is backed up today, curiously, by Police Association president Greg O’Connor, who says that officers and bosses are acting like other public servants in government departments who are attempting to avoid embarrassing the government – see David Fisher’s Police withholding information to avoid embarrassing govt, says O’Connor. O’Connor says: “Commissioners are answerable to ministers as any other CEO in the public sector. The stuff that is going to embarrass government is going to be hidden in official documents or statistics.”

Similarly, Tertiary Education Union president Sandra Grey has said “the withholding of information by government departments was widespread and created a climate of silence” – see Laura Bootham’s Academic freedom under threat – TEU. Grey also says “It is getting really concerning that we’re seeing a closing down of really legitimate public debate.”

Grey is also reported as believing that “the conditions, which were attached to academics accessing publicly-owned data, were being created because of the potential for political discomfort” – see David Fisher’s Revealed: The police contracts ‘shutting down debate’.

Today’s Herald editorial, Data attitude casts bad light on Govt policy, also warns about this trend: “These disturbing contracts seem symptomatic of an unfortunate attitude that has permeated the public service under this Government. Its ‘no surprises’ principle seeks to control the release of any information which might be awkward to explain.” The Herald complains that the Official Information Act “has seemingly become subservient to a culture of information control, or ‘spin’ in the vernacular. When the culture has permeated even the police, it is time to take stock.”

For other news on problems with the Official Information Act, see Vernon Small’s Public watchdogs need to bare their teeth over misuse of OIA, taxpayer events, and my recent column, New Zealand’s closed government.

Stories about the Police

The Police are currently trying to improve their PR by restructuring their public affairs and communications divisions – see Anna Leask’s Overhaul of police PR and communications divisions.

But they are facing a difficult task in light of some searching investigative reporting by Heather du Plessis-Allan on TV3 Story. The latest embarrassing item is last night’s six-minute story, Are police doing enough to return your stolen gear?

But it’s du Plessis-Allan’s ongoing investigation into gun purchasing laws that could be more damaging. See her original five-minute story from last month, Loophole in gun laws needs to close, followed up with the two-minute story, Police move to shut down flaw in gun-buying system, and then four-minute story, Police warned about gun risk but did nothing. du Plessis-Allan has also written about this issue in her column, In the gun with mum after rifle stunt.

Policing the police

How well is the Independent Police Conduct Authority doing in its watchdog role? Its annual report has recently been released – which you can download here.

According to Henry Cooke’s news report, the authority has been struggling to complete its investigations on time, largely due to a 15 per cent increase in the complaints and referrals it has received – see: IPCA falls far short of its goal. And RNZ reports that budgetary constraints are causing some to question whether human rights are being hampered as a result – see: Police conduct authority funding tight.

Finally, what are the hard questions being asked about the issue by satirists? Dr Frank Shizenhausen asks: “Why wasn’t Dr Gilbert simply arrested in the middle of the night and dragged to a secret detention centre? I’m sure that with the right amount of handling he would have confessed to any number of crimes. Like the Crewe murders, for example” – see Scott Yorke’s Right Thinking: Unacceptable police behaviour.

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Across The Ditch: How Has GST Delivered For NZ + 3rd Cricket Test in Adelaide

By Selwyn Manning -

November 26, 2015

Selwyn Manning joins Australian radio FiveAA’s Peter Godfrey to deliver their Across the Ditch bulletin. This week: How Has GST Delivered For NZ + 3rd Cricket Test in Adelaide – Recorded on 26/11/15

With Australia debating the pros and cons of increasing GST, what is the experience of New Zealand which increased its GST to 15% on October 1 2010.

Points to ponder, in NZ: * Labour brought in GST at 10% during the Lange Labour Govt in 1986s. It replaced sales taxes that varied according to what was being sold or serviced. * Labour increased it to 12.5% in mid 1989 when the economy was in decline and unemployment was rising fast. * National increased it to 15% on October 1, 2010 (despite promising not to increase taxes) * National needed to increase GST in an effort to balance the Govt books due to reductions in income tax and business and corporate tax rates as promised by National. * It should be seen as a shift from income-related taxation to consumer-based taxation. * GST works (from a fiscal prudent POV) while domestic consumption (or private spending) is high or progressing, but when people ease back in their spending due to increased costs of living, mortgage rate increases, cuts to working hours or entitlements, then the GST take falls dramatically. * In NZ GST is applied to all goods and services including food and essential goods and services – no exceptions. This means low and middle income earners have to pay more tax as a proportion of their household incomes as compared to high income earners. And for people laid off or ill or retired it has interrupted their ability to regain self-sufficiency.

Is NZ in better shape because of, or in spite of, 15% GST? Well, the first thing to remember is NZ’s economy is vulnerable. It has a current account deficit that is problematic, it has ballooned government debt since GST was increased to 15%, its manufacturing sector is struggling, its reliance on milk powder exports (the so called white gold) has left the economy exposed – which with the downturn in milk commodity prices has driven thousands of farmers to the wall and caused the rural sector into a regional recession. 15% GST has provided the Government with more revenue to help it recoup tax revenue lost due to a reduction in income and business tax. But it has impacted heavily on low and middle income earning New Zealanders who shoulder the bulk of the tax liability burden, as a proportion of their disposable income. As an export-led economy, New Zealanders have learned the hard lesson that the domestic economy progresses only when New Zealand’s export commodities (agriculture, forestry, horticulture, viticulture, ICT products and services etc) are booming. Like Australia, when commodity exports are regressive, or under pressure, our domestic economies suffer – and remember GST is a domestic consumption tax, and as such it is a means of getting more money into a government’s coffers rather than be an economic saviour. It also enables businesses to escape direct revenue-based taxation liability (especially when business tax rates are reduced) and places the burden of lost tax revenue on people (income earners). Some would say, it gives businesses a revenue stimulus. New Zealand governments argue that it is too complex to take GST off food. Australia has shown it is possible and sustainable to exclude food. If your country is mindful of maintaining that exclusion then it would maintain its ethic of ensuring low and middle income Australians are not disadvantaged by GST. ALSO DISCUSSED! How is the Adelaide Oval pitch shaping up for the third Cricket test between Australia and New Zealand’s Black Caps?

Across The Ditch broadcasts live on Australia’s radio FiveAA.com.au and webcasts on EveningReport.nz LiveNews.co.nz and ForeignAffairs.co.nz.

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NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for November 25 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

November 25, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 14 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Wednesday 25th November. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include controversy over difficulties Dr Jarrod Gilbert, a sociologist specialising in research on criminals at the University of Canterbury, has had obtaining official information from police, new research from Motu into shifts in the ways that New Zealanders are mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions and the Southern District Health Board missing out on full accreditation to train doctors after the Medical Council found as many as 19 deficiencies in its processes.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: Minister to travel to Paris for key climate meeting; New tourism and hospitality college for Northland; Government Begins Review Of ETS; ETS review an opportunity for forestry; NZ food and beverage sector adding value to volume; Study confirms NZ’s commitment to education; Soft Plastics Recycling Programme launched; Government Suggests Options To Improve Financial Advice Laws; Record low number of backroom bureaucrats; Additional funding to engage young Wellingtonians with science and tech; Good progress in two years of Housing Accord; More opportunities for Māori and Pasifika Trades Training; Minister launches Healthy Families Rotorua; Caversham Valley improvements deliver safer journeys for Otago; Government Suggests Options To Improve Financial Advice Laws; White Ribbon Day puts spotlight on family violence

Greens: No John Key, science alone won’t save us, action will; Agriculture must be part of Emissions Trading Scheme review; Police censorship of crime research “an outrage”

Labour: Petition over Key’s comments on sexual violence returns to Parliament; Data withheld to stymie research; Last chance for Govt to listen on ECan

Māori Party: Te Ururoa Flavell joins 250 km run to raise awareness about domestic and sexual abuse; Call to bring back Maori soldiers buried in Malaysia; Labour & NZF Maori MPs Should Do Homework Before Mudslinging

New Zealand First: Silver Fern Farms ‘Heist’ Needs Regulators’ Scrutiny

NZ National Party: Hutt Valley primary school to engage kids in science and tech

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

BACKROOM BUREAUCRATS DROP: The June 2015 update of the Core Government Administration shows 35,632 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff, a reduction of 474 from December 2014.The latest capping update is available here:http://www.ssc.govt.nz/capping-june15

CONSTRUCTION SURVEY: The Aecom Sentiments Survey for the 2nd half of 2015 highlights a substantial softening in the infrastructure sector with only 29 percent of respondents expecting to see an increase in workload. The survey is available at: http://www.aecom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Sentiment-NZ-2H-2015_final_Embargoed-until-25-November-2015.pdf

EMPLOYMENT FIGURES: The number of Pacific people employed increased by 9.6 per cent in the year to September 2015, according to the latest Labour Market Factsheets for Māori and Pacific peoples released by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment today.For more information on MBIE’s labour market analysis, and to view the factsheets visit our website:http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/employment-skills/labour-market-reports.

FAMILY SUPPORT: A research released by Statistics New Zealand, shows that 61 percent of New Zealand adults who experienced a major life change in the last 12 months turned to family for support. Read more:http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/people_and_communities/Well-being/social-connectedness/social-networks/deal-with-change.aspx

FINANCIAL ADVICE LAWS: An options paper has been released in a move to improve financial advice legislation. More details at: www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/business/business-law/financial-advisers/review-of-financial-advisers-act-2008

FOOD & BEVERAGE SECTOR: A new report on New Zealand’s food and beverage export sector shows that the sector is successfully achieving growth by investing in added value products and moving up the value chain. The Investor’s Guide to the New Zealand Food and Beverage Industry is part of the Food and Beverage Information Project and is available here: http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/sectors-industries/food-beverage/information-project

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS: New research by Motu Economic and Public Policy Research has identified where households can make a real difference to their greenhouse gas emissions – and cutting down on red meat and purchasing an electric vehicle are top of the list. Click here for more: http://www.motu.org.nz/assets/Documents/our-work/environment-and-resources/emission-mitigation/shaping-new-zealands-low-emissions-future/Are-we-turning-a-brighter-shade-of-green-execsummary.pdf

INTERNATIONAL VISITOR ARRIVALS: The latest edition of International Visitor Arrivals to New Zealand (IVA) is now available on the Statistics New Zealand website. Read more: http://bit.ly/1Md0Lke

INTERNATIONAL VISITOR SPENDING: International visitor spend grew 38 per cent to $9.4 billion in the September 2015 year, according to the latest International Visitor Survey released today by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). Summary statistics are available in the IVS key data table:http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/sectors-industries/tourism/tourism-research-data/ivs/ivs-commentary

NZ EDUCATION: Education At a Glance 2015, which was released overnight, shows that New Zealand ranks in the top two OECD countries for expenditure on both school and tertiary education as a percentage of total public expenditure. The report is available at: htttp://www.oecd.org/edu/eag.htm

SELF-ESTEEM STUDY: Thousands of Kiwi parents have seen a positive increase in their child’s self-esteem after they take part in a triathlon event, according to a new survey by Sanitarium Health Food Company. Click here for more:http://try.weetbix.co.nz/parents/benefits-for-your-child

SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS AWARDS: The The NZI Sustainable Business Network Awards, which have been running for 13 years was held last night.Read more: http://sustainable.org.nz/awards/

UNLOCKING CURIOUS MINDS: Nearly $1 million of additional funding has been awarded to 25 new projects across New Zealand to engage more young Kiwis with science and technology under the Unlocking Curious Minds contestable fund pilot. For more information visit: http://www.curiousminds.nz/ucm

WORLD BANK’S CLIMATE PLAN: The World Bank Group today unveiled a new plan that calls for $16 billion in funding to help African people and countries adapt to climate change and build up the continent’s resilience to climate shocks.Go here for more: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2015/11/24/world-bank-group-unveils-16-billion-africa-climate-business-plan-to-tackle-urgent-climate-challenges

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Wednesday 25th November.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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Carolyn Skelton on NZ’s Web Series coming of age: Web Fest 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

November 25, 2015

Feature analysis by Carolyn Skelton. A couple of weeks ago, I went to the first NZ Web Fest 2015. It had a diverse and engaging programme. The rise in popularity of online videos follows the increasing use of youtube, and a related decline in viewing of broadcast TV especially among young people. [See Andrew Laxon on NZ Herald 21 Nov 2015] NZ Web series, shows and documentaries – The range of productions and people covered in the Fest included the YouTube international celebrity Jamie Curry of Jamie’s World; https://youtu.be/IYzxhj93ngA web series featured on the NZ Web Series Channel ; fictional web series such as High Road, https://youtu.be/PFONfCsSZn8 AFK, Flat 3, End of Term and more; 3 minute documentaries as enabled by Loading Docs; web shows supported by TV channels such as Maori TV and TV3; and satirical shows like White Man Behind a Desk. Some, like Jamie Curry, started making no-cost YouTube videos with the encouragement of friends, talking about her life, friends and family, and picked up a massive international niche audience. Jamie now has a published book, a manager, and has recently been getting some help with organising ideas from Jaquie Brown. Others, like Chaz Harris, creator of End of Term, had previous experience in TV, film and web series in the UK and NZ. We were given a preview of selected episodes of End of Term. It’s now showing on the NZ Web Series Channel and on YouTube. It is rendered mysterious and intriguing because each episode represents “found footage” of a home-made video recording, and reveals a small amount of information shown out of chronological order. It’s a mosaic, a puzzle, with clues as to the order in the online camera graphic. https://youtu.be/rz3QZlCCCWc [Chaz Harris talks on RNZ with examples of web series] However, while Harris had initially wanted to make a TV or film production, Roseanne Liang, creator of Flat 3 said her team saw themselves, their approach and their content as non-mainstream. She described them as Kiwi Asians with an inclusive feminist and intersectionist philosophy. They have gone for brand partnerships for funding. Laing referred to the defining characteristic of web productions in the US as being where “authenticity is king”, in contrast to TV where “the story is king”. Laing is indicative of the strong participation by women as producers and directors of web series and web shows. https://youtu.be/OgeLHoL6Fxo The Aroha Project also has an alternative focus. It is “part of a multifaceted initiative responding to bullying, alienation and suicide risk amongst young Māori and Pacific LGBT youth.” https://youtu.be/TJ5U-UJsFsk Characteristics and funding models Much of the Web Fest focus was on youth culture, YouTube, and mobile technologies. However, the popular, very Kiwi and Westie accented High Road has a protagonist who is a scruffy aging rocker. The series begins with him running a local radio station at the Piha Camp site. The strongest themes throughout the Web Fest were those of creativity, innovation and entertainment. Multi-platform productions and possibilities for audience interactivity are also highly recommended. Short videos and humour considered to be highly desirable, though not always necessary. It was pointed out that there is an audience for longer documentaries online as seen at Vice Media. Three funding models were presented through these presentations, apart from the no-cost first YouTube videos of the likes of original productions of Jamie’s World: NZ On Air funding; brand partnerships (usually through product placement); Crowdfunding. They all have their pros and cons, but behind each are a specific ethos. Brenda Leeuwenberg from NZ On Air explained the process of applying for NZ On Airt funding for web series. The numbers of applications for this doubled to 109 in the last year. Anna Lawrence and Brent Kennedy on branding and monetising online content. NZ On Air funding aims to give a leg up to new crews and talents (especially among young wannabe filmmakers). They want to encourage productions that will be free at point of viewing. Loading Docs, supported by NZ On Air Digital Fund and the NZ Film Commission, is taking submissions proposals for 3 minute documentaries for funding. I have some misgivings about product placement in that it is likely to influence onscreen meanings to some extent. Proponents of this approach say that they choose partners that support their work. Furthermore, they say that partnerships have a flexibility not usually seen with TV and film commercial sponsorship and product placement: one episode of a web series may feature a Coca Cola product, the next a Pepsi one, or something entirely different. Crowdfunding promises more independence for video-makers by encouraging participation and support from their potential audience – in itself crowdfunding can be a good promotional exercise. 2015 Web Awards The day ended with the announcement of the very worthy winners of the 2015 NZ Web awards. [nominees here] The choices must have been hard for the judges. In keeping with the youth and female focus of online video production, Jamie’s World won the Best YouTube Video Channel. The winner of the Best Web Series (fiction) was High Road and the winner of the Best YouTube One To Watch award went to Ollie Langdon. The Best Web Show (non-fiction) was White Man Behind a Desk. https://youtu.be/E1RL1Y4FFKw I particularly enjoy WMBAD as it provides some much needed home grown political satire. It does not seem to use brand partnerships. –]]>

Keith Rankin’s Chart for this Week: Decadal Inflation in New Zealand 1925-2015

By Keith Rankin -

November 25, 2015

Analysis by Keith Rankin.

[caption id="attachment_8277" align="aligncenter" width="978"]

Inflation in Context.[/caption]

This week’s chart looks at decadal rather than annual inflation. With Statistics New Zealand last year celebrating the centenary of the Consumers Price Index (CPI), a more broad-brush and historical approach to the inflation-spectre that still drives much of our macroeconomic policy is timely.

The light-red plot shows – for each quarter – average prices in the previous four quarters (1 year) compared to average prices in twelve-quarters (3 years) ten years earlier. The reason for comparing a 1-year average with a three year average is that it assures us that turning points in the plot reflect the most recent period, and not any blips that were happening ten years earlier.

The dark-green plot shows 40-quarter averages (10 years) compared to the previous 40-quarters. It shows the decadal pattern unblemished by short term blips in the data. It is centred, meaning that the most recent (2010) plot represents average prices from Dec-2005 to Sep-2015 compared to average prices from Dec-1995 to Sep 2005.

In the big picture we can easily see what is appropriately called the Great Inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s. It is important to emphasise that – like the Great Depression of the 1930s – this was a global economic event that affected New Zealand. It was not a New Zealand specific event. This contrasts with the German hyperinflation of 1923, and the Zimbabwe hyperinflation in the early years of this century, which were country-specific events. Indeed in New Zealand we see that prices were lower in 1930 than in 1920, quite unlike the German experience.

In New Zealand we worried about inflation in the 1910s, in World War 2 (1940s), and in the 1950s. But decadal inflation of about 50 percent in these times was clearly dwarfed by decadal inflation that peaked in New Zealand in 1982, at 270 percent. This means that, in New Zealand (similar to most western countries), New Zealand prices were 3.7 times higher in 1982 than in 1972.

(A 100% inflation rate means prices have become two-times what they were previously; a doubling. A 200% inflation means a trebling of prices. A 900% increase represents a ten-fold increase of prices.)

The decline in inflation rates (disinflation) in New Zealand clearly began with the 1982 price and wage freeze. Inflation was briefly reignited in 1985 following the 1984 devaluation and the big public sector pay hikes. An apparent surge in inflation in 1987 was in fact due to the introduction of GST; not to underlying inflation. The Reserve Bank Act of 1989 – ostensibly the creation of a monetary-policy mandate and arsenal to fight inflation – was introduced well after the inflation problem had abated. The high GST-boosted inflation rate almost certainly served as part of the pretext for the Reserve Bank Act, an act that essentially interpreted the already-waning inflation as a national rather than as a global phenomenon.

We see that from the 1990s, inflation has been close to its twentieth-century norms. The Great Inflation was clearly an exceptional period of global macroeconomic history. Policymaking centred on the inflation issue has become an anachronism. While the battle is the world’s central banks is now to fight deflation, they really have no more clue about how to do this than they did in the 1930s. (Switzerland currently has interest rates of -0.75% and annual inflation at -1.4%. Japan has both interest rates and annual inflation at 0.00%!)

Negative decadal inflation peaked in New Zealand in the year 1932, at -20 percent for the ten years commencing 1922. We are in for more of this deflation – again a global phenomenon – unless, that is, World War 3 breaks out.

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NZ Report: Govt Intends To Toughen Up On Encrypted Communications + The Elusive Taylor Swift

By Selwyn Manning -

November 25, 2015

New Zealand Report: Selwyn Manning joins Australia’s radio FiveAA.com.au breakfast team to deliver New Zealand Report: This week – The New Zealand Government intends to toughen up on encrypted communications + The Elusive Taylor Swift – Recorded Live on 25/11/15.

New Zealand’s National-led Government looks set to further tighten the country’s security intelligence laws in the aftermath of the November 13 terror attacks in Paris. Yesterday (Tuesday) the Prime Minister John Key said there were 40 New Zealanders currently on a special anti-terrorism target list and at least two individuals are currently under 24 hour surveillance by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). Key said all 40 individuals on the watch-list are on the “periphery of Islamic State”. He told Radio New Zealand: “One or two of them are quite threatening individuals but I hasten to say people should take some confidence from the fact that they’re under 24-hour surveillance so their capacity to do a lot is limited.” Immediately after the Paris terror attacks John Key and the SIS and GCSB Minister, Chris Finlayson both indicated a concern that new encryption communications software made it possible for terrorists and criminals to communicate and plan strikes within the dark web. Finlayson hinted that the Government is looking to make it unlawful for people in New Zealand to use encryption without ensuring the Government’s spooks have a means of deciphering the communications. Currently, all ISPs in New Zealand must provide the Government’s spooks with de-encryption keys to any private or protected communication platforms. But there is no law preventing individuals from using high-encryption software like Tor and Tails. QUIRKY NEWS: On a lighter note, the biggest mystery in New Zealand this week is: Taylor Swift, where the bloody hell are ya? Media and fans have been out trying to hunt down the American superstar after rumours began circulating that she was spotted at an Auckland west coast ocean beach, and also that she is here filming a new music video. The news of the century was confirmed by a local soap opera actor who bumped into Swift when exiting the toilet on a flight from LA to Auckland. Ido Dent told Television New Zealand: “Yeah, had a good chat to her on the plane outside the lavatory. She’s definitely here.”

New Zealand Report broadcasts live on Australia’s radio FiveAA.com.au and webcasts on EveningReport.nz LiveNews.co.nz and ForeignAffairs.co.nz.

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COP21 countdown continues

By Selwyn Manning -

November 24, 2015

NewsroomPlus.com – Contributed by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) A week before the crucial COP 21 climate conference in Paris, a new report by the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System (UNEP Inquiry) and I4CE – Institute for Climate Economics – shows how France is successfully integrating sustainability factors into its financial architecture. The report, entitled France’s Financial (Eco)system: improving the integration of sustainability factors, pinpoints the key steps taken by both public and private actors in France over the last two decades, with a focus on pioneering climate-related measures introduced this year. UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said:

“France is part of a growing catalogue of examples around the world where sustainability is being factored into private and public financial decision-making. This shift in financial considerations is an element of the collective ambition we are seeing from all corners for a sustainable future. More than this, it demonstrates the accelerating momentum toward sustainability we will need to build on in Paris to tackle climate change.”

The study is the first in-depth analysis of the progressive mainstreaming of environmental issues in France’s financial sector. It highlights the country’s leadership in promoting the integration of sustainability and climate factors into financial decision-making. This has most recently taken the form of new climate-related reporting and risk assessment measures – notably Article 173 – which were adopted as part of the 2015 Law on Energy Transition for Green Growth.

Nick Robins, Co-director of the UNEP Inquiry, said:

“This new report on France adds to the UNEP Inquiry’s in-depth analysis of actions that countries across the world are taking to align their financial systems with sustainable development. It shows how market and policy innovation can combine to improve the performance and resilience of the financial system.”

The official policy and regulatory framework is only one of the elements that contribute to greening France’s financial system. The report identifies a broad “ecosystem” of commercial, public sector and non-profit actors who have played a key role in fostering the articulation of sustainability issues across the financial sector. This extensive engagement and depth of expertise have been essential to building the momentum that led to this year’s climate-specific measures, notably the world-leading provisions for investors to disclose their contribution to energy transition and plans for climate factors to be included into bank stress tests. Benoît Leguet, Managing Director at I4CE said:

“The French approach focuses on improving the practice of all actors while leaving them enough space to act in the most appropriate way for their own interests and business models.”

Romain Morel, economist at I4CE, said:

“France has developed a distinctive model where public and private initiatives reinforce each other to both raise awareness and promote concrete action.”

France’s Track Record

France’s track record is based on a growing attention to environmental, social and governance issues over the past fifteen years, with their formal integration into the regulatory framework beginning back in 2001. Since then, this oversight-based approach has been expanded to include additional issues, with measures:

focusing on improving availability of information through the development of a comprehensive set of reporting measures targeting both the financial sector and the companies it finances;
fostering the development of market-wide expertise through a mix of public and private initiatives and national debates on sustainable development issues gathering a broad range of stakeholders;
driving improved risk assessment through minimum requirements for institutions to disclose their exposure to climate-related risks.

These measures have contributed to growing volumes of domestic climate finance in France, up from EUR 30 billion in 2011 to EUR 36 billion in 2013, according to I4CE research. Hosting COP21 has provided an added stimulus for domestic efforts in France to green its financial system. Looking forward, the report highlights a set of priorities to maintain the momentum of policy and market innovation. The French case study follows the recently published UNEP Inquiry global report, The Financial System We Need, which charts how the full potential of the financial system can be harnessed to deliver the transition to sustainable development.

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NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for November 24 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

November 24, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 11 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Tuesday 24th November. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include twice as many people in need of emergency housing are turning to the Citizens Advice Bureau for help compared with five years ago and the Health & Disability Commissioner revealing the first half of this year was a record for patient discontent.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: PM announces Jonah Lomu public memorial details; First Govt accommodation nears completion; ‘Clinical Hub’ pilot among St John Ambulance successes this year; Heart & diabetes checks health target met; Speech: Nathan Guy – Speech to NZ Racing Board AGM; New direction and more opportunities for youth development; Minister welcomes start of $102m transport project in Tauranga; Rangiora Health Hub officially opened; Employers urged to give offenders a chance; Community housing sector continues to grow, 500th home at Hobsonville completed

Greens: If the UN can challenge Australia, why can’t John Key?

Labour: Hefty insurance costs deserve closer scrutiny; Desperate Nick Smith talks up housing failures; Labour At Paris Climate Talks; Do as I say, not as I do at Treasury

Māori Party: New book captures the principled politics of Hon Dame Tariana Turia

New Zealand First: Challenge To Prove Safety Of 1080 In Waterways, Catastrophe in making with record levels of debt-ridden foreign students

NZ National Party: Helping hand for first home buyers in the Hutt Valley

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

CHRISTCHURCH GOVT BUILDINGS: The first of the new central Christchurch buildings to house Government agencies is expected to be fully fitted out this week, in anticipation of workers moving in early next year. More on the Government agencies’ positioning in the central city can be found at http://www.ccdu.govt.nz/projects-and-precincts/government-accommodation

ELECTRIC VEHICLES BENEFIT: A Life Cycle Analysis report commissioned by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) has found that electric vehicles (EVs) are better for the New Zealand environment than petrol or diesel powered vehicles, across the lifecycle of the vehicle as well as in use. The full report can be downloaded from EECA’s website https://www.eeca.govt.nz/assets/Resources-EECA/ev-lca-final-report-nov-2015.pdf

HDC COMPLAINTS: Health and Disability Commissioner has revealed the first half of this year was a record for patient discontent, with 380 complaints about everything from botched surgery to rudeness. The report is available at:http://www.hdc.org.nz/media/293558/dhb%20complaints%20information%20jan-jun%2015.pdf

HOUSING REPORT: In the year to June the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) received 3000 inquiries from people seeking emergency housing according to a report released. The full report can be found at:http://www.cab.org.nz/submissions/Documents/CAB-Spotlight-emergency-accommodation.pdf

EMERGENCY MEDICINE CONFERENCE: Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, an organisation responsible for training emergency physicians and advancement of professional standards in emergency medicine in Australia and New Zealand is currently having its conference in Brisbane, Australia. More information available at:http://www.acem2015.com/

REAL ESTATE AGENTS IMPROVE: The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) says that in the past four years there has been a steady increase in positive ratings of agents, according to a Nielsen survey done by the Real Estate Agent Authority – Annual Perception Report. Read more:

https://www.reinz.co.nz/reinz/index.cfm?1CB561D5-18FE-7E88-42FB-507342EF7F81&obj_uuid=8D3BC333-7BC8-403F-B356-0D8DF940AE32

RED CROSS RESPONSE: Red Cross is preparing to respond to more tropical cyclones this season, as the effects of a severe El Niño are felt across the Pacific. Kiwis can support the Pacific Disaster Fund athttp://www.redcross.org.nz/donate/pacific-disaster-fund/

ST JOHN REPORT: The St John National Annual Report for the year ended 30 June 2015 shows St John ambulances responded to patients with life-threatening conditions more quickly than ever before. The report can be downloaded from:http://www.stjohn.org.nz/Global/Documents/Publications/Annual%20Report/St%20John%20National%20Annual%20Report_2015%20interactive_FINAL.pdf

TRANSPORT PROJECT: Work is set to start on the $120million Baypark to Bayfair roading project in Tauranga that will boost the Bay of Plenty’s economy and improve road safety. To view the animated drive-through of the project go to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MatVyPhO0UY and for more information on the project go to:http://www.nzta.govt.nz/b2b

WEATHER RELATED DISASTERS: A new report issued today by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) shows that over the last 20 years, 90 per cent of major disasters have been caused by 6,457 recorded floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts and other weather-related events. The report, entitled The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters can be found at:http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/COP21_WeatherDisastersReport_2015_FINAL.pdf

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT: Changes for the Ministry of Youth Development (MYD) which will see significantly more youth development opportunities in New Zealand. The consultation document Partnership Fund for Youth Development – Information for discussion and response is available at:

http://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/newsroom/media-releases/2015/engagement-document.docx

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Tuesday 24th November.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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PM announces Jonah Lomu public memorial details

By Selwyn Manning -

November 23, 2015

MIL OSI – Source: New Zealand Government Prime Minister John Key has announced details of the public memorial for Jonah Lomu. A public service will be held on Monday 30 November from 1pm to 3pm at Eden Park in Auckland. “Jonah touched people’s lives across the country and around the world,” says Mr Key. “This service will be open to all members of the public who want to remember the significant contribution Jonah made, not only to rugby here and overseas, but also to the wider community through his work with charities such as UNICEF and Kidney Kids NZ. “The service will be a celebration of Jonah’s life and I expect a large number of people will want to be there.” In addition there will be special ‘Aho Faka Famili’ (Day of the Family) event allowing Pasifika to pay their respects in their traditional way. This will be held at the Vodafone Events Centre on Saturday 28 November from 12pm. A private funeral for Jonah will be held on Tuesday 1 December. Lomu family spokesperson John Hart says family members were grateful to the Government for their support. –]]>

Hikoi for homes: growing unrest

By Selwyn Manning -

November 23, 2015

Feature Report by Carolyn Skelton. At the weekend there were nation wide Hikoi For Homes. The Auckland Hikoi began at Glen Innes, where a large number of State Houses have been sold to private entities. The Hikoi was a response to the current housing crisis, and especially to the way it is impact on renters: the people who tend to be marginalised by the mainstream media, with its continual cheerleading of the house buying boom (or‘bubble’) in Auckland. The strongest focus was on those on the lowest incomes who have no choice but to rent, while rents keep rising above the rate of incomes. The demands of the Hikoi are:

An immediate stop to the sell-off of state and council housing
A $1 billion annual budget for the provision more state, public and not for profit housing
Setting minimum standards for all rented housing
Greater tenure protection for tenants
Rent freeze for five years
A statutory right to be housed
State subsidies for modest income homeownership programmes

Providing more safe, secure, healthy public (state) and not-for profit rental housing will help to take the heat out of the socially and economically damaging housing bubble, both for renters and potential home buyers. Bernard Hickey explains that in the context where many cannot afford the going rate of renting, taxpayers are subsidising landlords through the widespread allocation of accommodation supplements. An editorial in the NZ Herald, warns of growing unrest in response to the housing crisis, but does not provide an adequate explanation for its claim that participants in the Hikoi are misguided. It merely reiterates the mainstream media position that it’s all about enabling more people to buy homes by building more houses – a position that favours the developers, investors and speculators who are benefiting most from the current housing crisis. Around 50% of New Zealanders now live in rental accommodation. The calls for rent controls are gaining impetus. Without rent controls, many tenants will need to seek alternative accommodation if the rent rises to an unaffordable level, whether or not that have security of tenure. Catriona MacLennan explains why this is necessary, giving examples of countries like Germany and the US that have rent caps. ‘New York has rent controls and rent stabilisation for some properties and, from October 12 this year, the Rent Guidelines Board froze rents on one-year leases for stabilised units. In Berlin, new rules introduced on June 1 to limit rent increases in certain areas resulted in a 3.1 per cent drop in the average cost of new Berlin rents within a month. The law aims to put a brake on galloping rent rises which have been making inner city tenements unaffordable.” The Hikoi in Auckland was well attended in spite of some dismal weather – light rain showers throughout, but the biggest downpour held off til the Hiko reached its destination at Orakei Domain. On the hikoi, I remembered a couple of years back when there was a modest attendance at anti-TPPA protests, with little or no MSM coverage. The attendance at the latest anti-TPPA protests have been much larger, the debate has intensified in the MSM, and a slight majority of New Zealanders polled are against it, with only 34% in favour. I suspect the demands of the hikoi will more into the mainstream over the next year and gain momentum in the general population. [caption id="attachment_8223" align="alignleft" width="300"]

The Hikoi went through some posh Auckland suburbs[/caption] It’s a matter of a humane and inclusive society that cares for all its members and doesn’t leave some people, including children, no other choice but to sleep in cars, garages and on the streets. There was a significant Green and Labour Party presence with Phil Twyford, Jacinda Ardern, Jan Logie and Marama Davidson on the Auckland hikoi. Auckland Action Against Poverty provided a video record of the Hikoi. https://youtu.be/3YWc9zgMgGw]]>

Report: Wellington Hikoi for Homes

By Selwyn Manning -

November 23, 2015

NewsroomPlus.com – “We’re here because we care,” was one of the rallying calls to gathered marchers at the Wellington leg of today’s Hikoi for Homes. After proceeding from Cuba Mall to Civic Square, the marching band that had accompanied the Wellington Hikoi for Homes passed the musical baton on to others who provided a series of songs between a series of speakers. In amongst the singing even Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith’s name popped up, in a set of lyrics from Women’s Trade Union ensemble Choir Choir Pants on Fire as they sang “truth to power”. Dr Nikki Turner, first of the speakers, set out the issues that gave rise to the Hikoi for Homes – also held in Auckland and Christchurch – in no uncertain terms. Turner is described on the CPAG website as an academic General Practitioner – in addition to working as a GP at the Pacific Health Medical Centre in Strathmore, Wellington, she also holds positions at both the University of Auckland and the University of Otago (Wellington campus). Turner spoke of “families and children who get sick, and recurrently sick, because their housing is inadequate”. The diseases, such as chronic lung conditions and rheumatic fever, that children contract leave them “cripples for their adult life” said Turner, calling the deprivation of their basic human right to be protected through safe housing a “national shame”. Fittingly the first song interlude, by folk musician Nigel Parry, had at its centre the tragedy of Otara toddler Emma-Lita Bourne, who died last August after being hospitalised with pneumonia. Before starting Parry praised the coroner who had the courage to assign a link between Emma-Lita’s death and living in a cold, damp State house. An excerpt from the song includes these words: “… they shared the damp and mould, now she’s never growing old, but Emma had a home”. New Zealand expert on housing and health, Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman, spoke next, making reference to both the poisonous risks of mould and of the historic housing stock in this country that invites dangerously below-par temperatures indoors. “It’s not an accident that children fall behind in their schooling through illnesses, and end up in emergency wards… we’re here because we care and we can do it better”. Howden-Chapman didn’t hold back from calling out those Government ministers who have demonstrated a gross dismissiveness of the scale and nature of the housing infrastructure problem, while merrily signing off on billion dollar contracts for road infrastructure. She called not just for safe housing, but secure housing, and housing stable enough for families to be settled in one place during their children’s schooling years and upbringing. “It’s time to say to the Government, do you care?” When State Housing Action Network (Shan) organiser Ariana Paretutanganui-Tamati spoke she said both National and Labour governments had dropped the ball on State and social housing. She warned that the run-down state of Housing New Zealand stock was an ongoing excuse for its divestment, and “if National was unchecked it would all be sold”. She also used the term ‘social cleansing’ for the actions of the current government, adding that it is known around the world that “only the State can (provide) housing at the scale needed”. Paretutanganui-Tamati also warned that New Zealand was being taken back to Victorian times and families’ ability to build any equity had been “stopped”. Another speaker, Paul Barber, reminded everyone present that the renting population in New Zealand was not only one third of households, but up to one in two New Zealanders. Barber spoke of a generation being left behind and in support of moves such as Wellington City Council’s decision on a Living Wage as “one part of a response”. Pointing to the persistence and hard work paying off in the case of moves to a Living Wage he also gave a reminder that the housing crisis is not due to “mysterious forces beyond our control”. “Unaffordability is an outcome of low incomes, and it’s not true we can’t do anything about these problems – we can”. (Note: Higher-res individual photos available on request to projects@newsroom.co.nz)

SEVEN SHARP DEMANDS

As a demonstration of public mood, the Hikoi for Homes organisers – including the Child Poverty Action Group, Auckland Action Against Poverty, First Union and Unite – are hopeful that messages are heard loud and clear by politicians. Be that by Ministers – and all parties – ahead of next year’s Budget or local body pollies ahead of the Local Government elections next year. At its sharp end, Hikoi for Homes set out to make “a resounding statement to a government that’s negligent in providing basic living standards and welfare for its people”. Seven calls to action that it put forward are:

An immediate stop and to the sell-off of State and council housing
A $1 billion annual budget for the provision of more state, public and not-for-profit housing
Setting minimum standards for all rented housing
Greater tenure protection for tenants
Rent freeze for five years
A statutory right to be housed
State subsidies for modest income homeownership programmes

All with Philippa Howden-Chapman’s question implicitly sitting behind them: “It’s time to say to the Government, do you care?” –]]>

NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for November 23 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

November 23, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 10 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Monday 23rd November. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include official figures that police have spent about $15 million on search and rescue missions in the last five years, the Immigration Advisers Authority being under pressure to clamp down on unlicensed advisers and the release of a report by actuarial firm Melville Jessup Weaver on the costs of life insurance.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: Regions benefit from tourism boom; Education experts to convene in Auckland; PM welcomes closer partnership with ASEAN; Fiordland partnership to protect birds and wetlands; Summary of Ture Whenua Māori submissions released; $250,000 to Centre for education leadership; $618,000 to support racecourse safety and development; PM to attend CHOGM, climate change conference and visit Berlin; New tranche of Auckland SHAs announced; HomeStart delivering for first home buyers

ACT Party:Councillors have a duty to speak up on rezoning

Greens: Minister in denial over impact of poverty on learning; Govt needs to investigate links between anti-biotic resistance and herbicide; You might not have a strong plan to cut emissions Tim, but we do; Groser misleads on climate costs to justify lack of ambition

Labour: Over two decades later our kids deserve more

New Zealand First: Falsehoods, Ignorance, Head In The Sand On Emission Reductions

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

CHILD RIGHTS CAMPAIGN: UNICEF New Zealand has launched a new child rights campaign called ‘Make My Future Fair’/ Meinga tōku āmua kia tika. Make My Future Fair is a call for all New Zealanders to stand up for children. Read more: http://fairfuture.nz/

CONVENTION ACTIVITY SURVEY: The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has released the Convention Activity Survey (CAS) for the year ended September 2015. Click here for more:http://tourism.cmail19.com/t/r-l-zkittlk-iuiyjibdu-m/

DECEMBEARD: Decembeard™, Bowel Cancer New Zealand’s hairiest fundraising campaign, is back for 2015. Decembeard™ aims to encourage men throughout New Zealand to raise the much needed funds for Bowel Cancer New Zealand (BCNZ), while growing a beard through December. To register to participate in Decembeard or to donate, visit: https://www.everydayhero.co.nz/event/decembeard2015NZ

EDUCATION EXPERTS SUMMIT: Education experts and policy makers from 12 countries are about to gather in Auckland for a three day summit, hosted by the Government and Global Education Leaders’ Partnership (GELP)that is devoted to meeting the needs of students in a rapidly changing world. The summit concludes tomorrow.http://www.gelpnz2015.org/programme/programme/

GROWING OLD IN NZ: New Zealand ranks 12 out of 96 countries in an annual ranking of the best and worst places for older people to live – but only 30th for safety and transport – according to the Global Age Watch Index, a report commissioned by Help Age International. Go here for more: http://www.helpage.org/global-agewatch/population-ageing-data/country-ageing-data/?country=New%2BZealand

LIFE INSURANCE REPORT: Melville Jessup Weaver (MJW) has released “A Review of Retail Life Insurance Advice – An opportunity for a new beginning.” The report examines the retail personal risk insurance market (life and income protection) and in particular the role of advisers. The report can be found here: http://mjw.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/MJW-Independent-Report-Final-November-2015_pwd.pdf

MIGRATION AND TRAVEL: New Zealand residents took 217,000 overseas trips in October 2015, up 5 percent from October 2014, according to Statistics New Zealand. More details at: http://bit.ly/1OmQa3I

PATIENT SERVICES REPORT: From 2011 to 2015, more people per 10,000 population had access to scheduled surgery and the gap between the DHBs with the highest and lowest intervention rates narrowed, according to a follow up report by the Office of the Auditor General. Read more: http://www.oag.govt.nz/2015/scheduled-services?utm_source=subs&utm_medium=subs&utm_campaign=scheduled-follow

RURAL WOMEN AWARD: The Enterprising Rural Women Awards were held in Nelson on Saturday 21 November. More information on winners is available at: http://www.ruralwomen.org.nz/news-and-inspiration/enterprising-rural-women-award-winners-announced

TURE WHENUA MĀORI SUBMISSIONS: A summary of the submissions made on the exposure draft of Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill has been released and is available online at: https://www.tpk.govt.nz/en/

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Monday 23rd November.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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Keith Rankin on Empathy and Combative Young Men

By Keith Rankin -

November 21, 2015

Egyptian-man-walks-in-front-of-a-wall-sprayed-with-graffiti — ]]>

Opinion by Keith Rankin. This article was also published on TheDailyBlog.co.nz.

When scary things happen that we don’t understand, in France or elsewhere, we seem determined to resist by trenchantly refusing to understand. When in doubt about what to do, we should first decide what not to do. And to decide this, we should always apply the first law of holes (“when in a hole, stop digging”).

We don’t need sympathy for “terrorists”, but we do need empathy, and we need to know the difference. Empathy is the capacity to imagine any situation from another person’s point of view.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is Muslim (though emphatically not Shia Muslim) and, as a supra‑national movement, does draw inspiration from the early military conquests of the seventh century.

In the time when Europe was at the weakest it’s ever been in the last 2,500 years, the Mediterranean area was a demographic and political opportunity for a new hegemon. By the 10th century of the common era, Islamic Spain probably had the highest living standards ever known or unknown in global history. Defeated militarily in Spain in 1492, after centuries as a standard-bearer of science and mathematics, Islam remains an important cultural force that has much good to offer the world.

What most characterises ISIL, however, is neither its Muslim-ness nor its propensity to gratuitous violence. It is its youth, and its rejection of the system of nation states. I believe, to address the ISIL problem, we have to look more generally at the world from the point of view of its marginalised young men, and from the understanding that Islam is a culture that never has and probably never will interpret the world as principally a patchwork of independent sovereign nations.

What is it that young people – young men in particular – need from life? I would break it down into three essential things: venturing opportunities (action; risk-taking; fellowship; affiliation), income-earning opportunities (providing), and homes (security) from which they can meaningfully engage with the wider world. As men get older, the sometimes destructive venturing imperative morphs into a contribution imperative, the basis of publicness that characterises the mature expression of all humanity.

In the meantime, our global capitalist world operates like a perpetual version of the game ‘musical chairs’; a game which requires that there be losers – loser communities, not just loser individuals. In some of its phases capitalism creates many more losers than in other phases; these are the phases that increasingly emphasise the need to be ‘competitive’, and that word’s softer synonym ‘aspirational’. Capitalism’s only answer to its systemic tendency to create ever larger numbers of losers is economic growth. (We can think of growth as an offsetting process of creating new chairs – spaces and places – at the same rate that naked capitalism removes them.) Inequality and austerity are the two realities that make modern capitalism into an increasingly lethal cocktail of more losers and fewer winners.

Social Darwinism is not a new imperative. The years 1914 to 1945 reflect the endgame of Victorian Social Darwinism. The ideology is back: the unsurvival of the unfittest. But the ‘unfittest’ are not dying. Capitalism needs its losers to live on as indebted consumers, living increasingly meaningless lives in increasingly ghettoised suburbs of western cities. In these human wastelands – populated by many young people with few opportunities to do valuable work, let alone to venture – the marginal product of labour is zero. Life is not good when you know that your economic value is, at best, zero. (The generation of young men who couldn’t wait to fight in World War 1 likewise led lives, often in rural ghettos where the marginal product of labour was also zero.)

Young men loiter. Gangs form. Where there’s shared cultural identity in marginalised communities, that culture defines the threat which others see.

ISIL is an international mix of uncompromising ‘brothers’; those within the ‘Middle East’ who have lived through lethal violence perpetrated in their homelands, and of the most ghettoised young Muslim men from Europe and North Africa. (In the former group I would include the Chechen fighters who are likely more interested in fighting Russia than France.) These youths are radicalised – bomb by every bomb or air-strike or other violent act from an occupying force – that affects them, their families, or families like their families. Further, there is a striking generation gap within Islam, fuelled by the youthful imperative to act and to belong to an action group.

So how can ISIL be effectively opposed? It’s through depriving their destructive fire of oxygen, not adding fuel to that fire. And through working to ensure that youth generally have constructive outlets for their venturesome spirits.

We know that dystopian Malthusian growth is not inevitable. The twentieth-century welfare states showed us how collective income security leads to sharply reduced birth rates. But these states experienced growing economies, and never evolved to deal with twenty-first century limits to growth.

We can adapt the income-sharing process to a global economy that grows in productivity but not necessarily in population or aggregate output. And, through economic opportunities made possible by income-sharing, we need to allow young men to participate in joint‑ventures – as young New Zealand men (and women) do through travel and sport and business and hacking and music and graphic art – so they can experience danger and winning and losing while minimising the harm they do to themselves and especially to others.

The ‘terrorism’ we face today is symptomatic of the unaddressed ills of an economic order that systemically creates losers, and in increasing percentages. When these losers form alliances around particular cultures, we attack these cultures rather than the absence of economic and social spaces that make good and meaningful lives possible.

Economic security is a collective, not individual, enterprise. To choose a benign rather than a malign future, we have to think of money as a social means, not as an individual end. Our future needs to incorporate income‑sharing and opportunity‑sharing. That’s not communism or anything like it. It’s simply about giving capitalism a public face to complement its already well-developed private aspect.

Love your enemy; respect your adversary. (My favourite movie of all time was Joyeux Noël.) Our apparent enemy is not a bad person or a bad culture. Our adversaries are just as confused – just as wilfully blind – as we are. And on the theme of fraternising with one’s ‘enemy’, I suspect that New Zealanders are less Islamophobic (indeed less xenophobic) than most westerners; possibly because of Gallipoli. In 1915, young naïve New Zealand adventurers met similar young Turks and Arabs across the hilltops, gullies and trenches, and saw that they were basically the same; good combatants and good men.

Today’s world is full of frustrated internationally footloose young men. Nations erect fences and walls to keep them out. Other nations imprison and expunge them. Still other nations complain that there will soon be too few young people to provide services for their old people, arguing that older people must cling onto their income‑earning opportunities; their musical chairs.

Look. Today’s young people are our future – our global future – for better or worse.

—

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Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: Little’s Labour, after a year

By Bryce Edwards -

November 20, 2015

Political Roundup by Dr Bryce Edwards

Where is Andrew Little taking the Labour Party? And how well is he doing it?

New Zealand Labour Party leader, Andrew Little.

This week marks one year since Andrew Little was elected leader of the Labour Party. His year of consolidation and rebuilding is now over, and with his first party conference behind him, it’s time for some verdicts on how he is doing and the broader health of Labour.

Little gave himself an evaluation on TV3’s Paul Henry Show this week – see his five-minute interview, It’s about not being John Key – Andrew Little. Following on from this, Patrick Gower gave Little a “7 out 10” rating – see his interview, The week in politics with Patrick Gower – November 19, 2015. Gower gives Little points for competence, but says he’ll be worried about his lack of “cut through with the punters.” Gower also speculates on the upcoming caucus reshuffle, suggesting that Kelvin Davis will replace Nanaia Mahuta on the front bench.

Little’s leadership

Andrew Little’s leadership appears to be safe after a strong appearance at the recent annual Labour Party conference. His keynote speech was widely praised, with Audrey Young writing a report that typified the positive coverage: Little smashed it – literally.

After the conference many commentators praised his role in restoring order and stability to the party, as the conference appeared to be entirely free of traditional internal strife – see Chris Trotter’s Andrew Little as Napoleon in the ‘Peace of Palmerston North’. See also, Ross Henderson’s Andrew Little leading a Labour Party on the rise.

It wasn’t just leftwing commentators praising Little. One National Party-aligned newspaper columnist was invited to a breakfast meeting with Little while the conference was on, and reported: “It was a good talk, made all the more enjoyable for the fact that Little was not condescending, sarcastic, impatient, bored or smug. He didn’t have a fake grin plastered all over his face and he didn’t act like he was a big deal. He was even-tempered and he talked like an actual human being” – see Liam Hehir’s Andrew Little looks a capable challenger to John Key.

Colin James has also reported on “a much tidier, more stable and cheerier, even enthusiastic, atmosphere than for years” in Labour, and pointed to Little’s very strong efforts to build a better coalition with the Greens and New Zealand First – see: Labour’s big question: yes or no, for or against?

Yet not all were convinced by Little’s conference performance, nor where he is taking the party. The Dominion Post’s editorial was particularly scathing, saying that Little “has little charisma and a lack of new ideas”, concluding that Andrew Little is not the man to lead Labour out of the wilderness.

A Hollow Party?

The Dominion Post was particularly critical of Little’s attempt to strip his party of all contentious policies just in order to bring about unity and reduce dangers of criticism: “This was creating a desert and calling it peace. Little now stands on a bare platform with no significant policy. The fact that nobody much cared when he threw out the old policies might be taken as a sign of a newly unified Labour Party. Or it might be a sign that Labour is a corpse. It doesn’t have the strength to fight or even to disagree with itself. So the attempt to hide everything behind closed doors wasn’t even needed. Having no policy to sell, Little tried to sell himself. His “impassioned” speech was in fact awkward and unconvincing.”

Others on the left and right of the party had similar criticisms about Little’s strategy, which seemed to hollow out the party. For example, blogger No Right Turn announced he could not vote for a party that chooses its policies on the basis of getting into power: “This is Labour’s problem in a nutshell: the party is empty at its core. They don’t stand for anything, except possibly for Grant Robertson getting paid $250,000 a year instead of Bill English. They have no values, and no policies that won’t be chucked away after the next poll” – see: Standing for nothing.

Similarly, see Steven Cowan’s Nothing new on offer from Labour and Phil Duncan’s Empty Andy and the ‘Eh?’ team.

Also on the left, Chris Trotter explained that Little and Labour were “attempting to emulate the highly successful, Crosby-Textor-guided, National Party campaign of 2008. This entails shedding all the policies that the punters don’t like or can’t understand”, but that this was a major mistake – see: Reclaiming The Dream: Labour’s annual conference lifts spirits and raises hopes.

Trotter says that in order to win, Labour needs to show that it stands for something, and that “Equivocation cannot do that. Inoculation cannot do that. Turning yourself into the smallest possible target for a hostile news media cannot do that.”

On the right, Fran O’Sullivan also complained “Little’s inoculations are not acts of policy bravura” – see: Andrew Little’s grab for territory is weak. She argues “Instead of knowing what Labour stands for, Little has simply introduced more policy uncertainty” and believes John Key will benefit from Labours prevarication.

O’Sullivan also laments Labour’s mildness on capital gains, and explains how easy it would be for Labour to increase capital gains taxation significantly if it wanted. She points out that Labour now seems to be to the right of National in terms of capital gains taxes, and that “Little has unwittingly handed Key a powerful wedge at the next election to argue that National is tougher on property speculators than Labour is”.

On the axing of the capital gains tax, Tim Watkin asks: “It’s one of the most redistributive taxes around and if Labour isn’t proudly for redistribution, what it is for?” – see: Labour: Taking out the trash, hanging up new tinsel.

But it was TVNZ’s Corin Dann who really gave Labour a hard time, with his searching interview on Q+A: The future of the Labour Party with Andrew Little (10:48).

Where is Andrew Little taking Labour?

On the Q+A programme, I made some points about how Little was taking his party in a more traditional policy direction focused on economics and material conditions, especially in terms of the focus on jobs – see the eight-minute video: The Panel: The Future of Labour.

I elaborated on this in a blog post, Andrew Little is killing Labour’s identity politics. Martyn Bradbury made some similar points in his blog post, Labour Party conference 2015 – winners and losers.

Similarly, Vernon Small, explained that social policy had been removed from the party’s agenda – see: Labour takes policy debate behind closed doors at annual conference and No controversial policy expected at Labour conference.

Activist Stephanie Rodgers attended Labour’s conference and didn’t think identity politics was being supressed – see her blog post: Labour, identity, class and winning.

She argues in favour of Labour’s focus on such issues, and Chris Trotter is in agreement, although confirming that such tendencies were being suppressed at the conference – see: Of Dreams And Nightmares.

There was one major foray into what might be seen as “social engineering” – Labour’s new sugar policy. Vernon Small outlines how the policy came across as “half-baked” and was sold by a very uncomfortable Andrew Little – see: Not Labour’s sweetest moment.

Labour’s radicalism

Labour hasn’t been entirely denuded of any significant policy. In fact, according to Pattrick Smellie, it’s in housing that “Labour can be said to have developed over some seven years a rounded, differentiated policy to National’s” – see: Finding the gaps is Labour’s challenge.

And of course, Phil Twyford’s private members’ bill to ban some house purchases by foreigners will be considered by Parliament – see the Herald’s Foreign buyers ban to go before Parliament.

Grant Robertson has also been singled out as creating interesting and potentially radical new policy in his Future of Work programme, which could even end up championing some form of universal basic income policy – for a very interesting discussion about this, see Vernon Small’s Labour gets act together on deportations, but ‘future of work’ still in rehearsal.

But what is the actual health of the wider party? This week, Claire Trevett got her hands on the party’s current financial records, and revealed Labour’s finances in the red. She also reported, in response, Labour calls on members to donate. And the Herald has even joined in the campaign to save Labour, with an editorial, Labour coffers of concern to all donors. But what about the levels of members and activists? Keir Leslie asks (and answers): How Many Members Does The Labour Party Have?

Finally, what political direction would you send Andrew Little and Labour in? For the opinions of “18 smart New Zealanders” – including Sue Bradford, Neil Finn, and Jim Anderton – see: What Should Andrew Little Say? 18 Clever People Draft His Speech.

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NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for November 20 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

November 20, 2015

There's rising tide of concerns in the wake of yesterday’s report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment about the potential impacts of rising sea levels. — ]]>

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 8 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Friday 20th November. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include Airline pilots accusing the government of moving too slowly to tighten airport security, rising tide of concerns in the wake of yesterday’s report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment about the potential impacts of rising sea levels and the official start to the first flag referendum.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: Bill’s passage keeps Auckland Plan on track; Recovery Plan for Lyttelton Port released; Speech to Association of Salaried Medical Specialists annual conference, Wellington; Waitangi Treaty Grounds governance reformed; Voting opens to choose the future of NZ’s flag; Employment Court Judge appointed; EOI now open to Community Housing Providers; NZ better prepared to deal with WMD trafficking; RSE employers praise seasonal worker scheme; Proposed upgrade for bus regulations; $6m rebuild for Te Wharekura o Maniapoto, Te Kuiti; Major milestone for Waikato Expressway; Submissions open for United Nations report

Greens: Just 2 percent of kids cycle to school because of Govt inaction; 25 years of the rights of children but Government failing to deliver; Get bee-harming pesticides off the shelf and out of our environment; Government’s climate denial puts peoples’ livelihoods and assets at risk; Safer roads in time for summer

Labour: Investigation needed into roadshow promo

New Zealand First: Speech By Rt Hon Winston Peters In Christchurch – Meadow Mushrooms Expansion; National believes it can ignore flag change opposition; PM Wrong Over ‘Malaysian 36’ – Bring Them Home; Nathan Guy’s Attack Upon Russia Reckless – Peters; Congratulations To Taranaki On Extending Supergold Card Travel; Australia Cites ‘National Interest’ In Stopping Foreign Sale

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

BUS REGULATIONS: Proposed changes to a Land Transport Rule will allow buses to carry more passengers between New Zealand’s main centres and pave the way for hybrid diesel-electric buses. Submissions close 21 December 2015. The consultation draft rule amendment, overview and submission form is available at:http://www.nzta.govt.nz/VDAM-Amendment-2016

HOUSEHOLD SPENDING: Household income was $134.4 billion (up 0.8 percent), while household spending was $135.3 billion (up 3.3 percent) in the March 2015 year, according to Statistics New Zealand. Read more:http://bit.ly/1kJ8lqX

LYTTELTON PORT RECOVERY: The Lyttelton Port Recovery Plan has been released which allows for the port to be rebuilt and repaired in a timely and appropriate manner. See details at: http://www.cera.govt.nz/lprp

MBIE TOURISM DATA: The Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE) has released the Regional Tourism Estimates for the year ending March 2015. Detailed pivot tables and regional summaries can be found on MBIE’s Regional Tourism Estimates web page: http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/sectors-industries/tourism/tourism-research-data/regional-tourism-estimates

PAYING TAXES: New Zealand has retained its 22nd ranking out of 189 economies in its ease of paying taxes, according to Paying Taxes 2016, a study by PwC and the World Bank Group now in its tenth edition. Paying Taxes 2016 is available to view at: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/tax/paying-taxes-2016/download.html

REFERENDUM VOTING PAPERS: Voting papers are being delivered to over three million New Zealanders from today, as the first referendum on the New Zealand flag gets underway. More information about voting in the referendum is available at http://www.elections.org.nz/flag

SEASONAL WORKER REPORT: Two recent reports show benefits of the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme to employers, workers and the Pacific region. For copies of the reports:

www.employment.govt.nz/er/rse/monitoring/employers-survey-2015.pdf and

www.employment.govt.nz/er/rse/rse-remittance-pilot-project.pdf

UN WOMENS’ REPORT: Public consultation has commenced on a draft report for the United Nations outlining New Zealand’s efforts to eliminate discrimination against women. The draft report and information on the submission process is available at: http://www.women.govt.nz

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Friday 20th November.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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Tony Alexander’s Weekly New Zealand Economic Overview

By Selwyn Manning -

November 20, 2015

Economic Analysis by Tony Alexander.

[caption id="attachment_3709" align="alignleft" width="150"]

Tony Alexander, BNZ economist.[/caption]

This week I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days in Christchurch and start the Weekly Overview discussing how construction of low rise office buildings has soared since I last had a decent walk around a year ago. In two more years the CBD will look amazingly different from the building site it is currently.

In the Housing section I discuss some of the factors driving apparent fear of the Auckland housing market and predictions/dreams of a substantial price correction. Such a correction remains exceedingly unlikely given the supply shortage and population growth. The more interesting development in housing is anyway outside of Auckland in the regions. Anecdotes abound of rising house prices and listings shortages in many parts of the country. Each week the probability grows that the Reserve Bank will extend its 30% investment property deposit requirement out of Auckland. But will they demand 15% in some places, 45% in others? Potential for this tool to become a Muldoonist nightmare is high. On the currency front the NZD has weakened this past week partly in response to the 7.9% fall in dairy prices and the terrible events in Paris. But exporters should remain wary of expecting substantial weakness in our currency. Our economy is in far better growth and structural condition than most others.

Click here to Download document Full Analysis (pdf 271kb)

The Changing Christchurch CBD I spent a couple of days in Christchurch this week delivering four talks and was impressed by the change in the CBD from about a year ago when I think I last took a look at what the centre was like. There are many four to six story buildings going up including the BNZ building in Cashel Street into which we will be moving hundreds of staff just over a year from now. Other banks have buildings on the go, the new police station is going up, buildings are being erected along the old “strip” area beside the Avon River and so on. There are still not that many functioning shops in the centre beyond the Restart Mall and Ballantynes though bit by bit more are showing up. The challenge for operators will be not so much to get Christchurch people visiting in a couple of years as I am sure everyone will want to see what the new centre eventually looks like. Instead the challenge will be getting them to visit the many malls less often and instead come into town for shopping and a broader inner city urban experience which malls never offer – strolling in parks, along the river, discovering non-chain shops, eating in non-chain cafes and restaurants, giving their children and grand-children a unique experience of connectivity with the city (e.g. Charlies Ice Cream) that a mall can never deliver. To achieve those repeat visits will take a great city layout which appears to be underway. But the experience as such may be more than two years down the track although the tram is apparently very popular. Parking will be critical and if the approach of charging people as much as possible is implemented, perhaps by handing building contracts over to private sector operators, then the city will only end up back where it was before 2011 – a place most people visited just occasionally when they found themselves not in the handy vicinity of a mall. Overall I was impressed by the development underway but there is still a lot of questioning in business circles over the time being taken to get the convention centre back up and running and uncertainty regarding whether or not a new stadium will appear. There are some tourists in the city including at the Novotel where I stayed. But walking around the Cashel Mall area Tuesday morning and afternoon I felt there were fewer people around than one, two, and three years ago and wonder if the planners have given thought to whether that is really the case or not. The CBD currently is and for the next year at least by the looks of it will be essentially a building site. But two years down the track something truly fantastic will be taking shape and I look forward to spending more time there then. Housing A number of people are saying that the biggest threat to New Zealand’s economy is the Auckland housing market. This is not correct. A threat has to be assessed based on the probability of its occurrence and the apocalyptic scenario people postulate of prices falling over 40% is very unlikely to occur unless we get a combination of foot and mouth, Mount Rangitoto bubbling, and a technological discovery allowing houses to be built for half their current cost. (Imagine the vested interest lobbying to prevent such innovations ever being implemented.) This common expression of fear about Auckland is probably driven by three things. One, failure of the market to stop rising and fall back as 99% of people have predicted since 2008. The desire to one day be right and the inability to understand why they have been wrong leads people to assume unsustainable unpredicted forces have been at work and eventually the truth will come out and past wrongs will be righted. Second, an expression of not so much impotence but impatience on the part of the central bank which feels it has taken its eyes off the ball by letting an asset market surge in a manner all central bankers decided post-GFC would not be allowed to happen again. They are struggling to develop and implement new weapons to influence the housing market now that changes in the official cash rate are off the table because of entrenched low consumer goods and services inflation. Third, concern about the deteriorating housing affordability for young people leading to a misplaced leap of logic that because young people are supposed to be our most valuable asset and because there is a thing happening which makes them unhappy that thing will eventually be removed one way or the other – don’t know how but worldly or other-worldly forces will eventually gallop over the brow of the hill and save the day. Fourth, a desire by many frustrated buyers for a price correction so they can purchase and make a future capital gain. You may recall that in one of the three surveys I used to run I would ask respondents to indicate whether they were happy or sad that house prices were rising. A majority were happy. Remember that as you lobby politicians to implement measures which will lower house prices and cause voters to opt for the other party. Note how Labour have dropped their logical policy of raising the retirement age from 65 (it makes huge sense as our life expectancy is rising. Affordability of superannuation for taxpayers is a completely separate issue.) Labour have also dropped their capital gains tax proposal. However I consider it highly likely that under a future government different from the current one we will see the two year bright line test for capital gains tax imposition to be extended to five years, then seven years, and one day ten years. Speaking of extending things. Watch for the Reserve Bank extending the 30% minimum deposit requirement for mortgages taken out to buy investment properties from Auckland to other regions if not all the country if the non-Auckland market produces price rises which start to scare them. This is an example in fact of the way in which the RB is outright experimenting with non-OCR tools to influence bank housing risk. They will be wondering how messy the 30% tool will become if they need to extend it to other regions. Will they stick with 30%? What about 15% in some, 45% in others? It could become a Muldoonist nightmare. Oh, and be ready for Auckland’s 30% to be boosted to 50% if that market reignites in the New Year. Trigger? When the Chinese economy stabilises, growth lifts, and the Beijing government relaxes rules on private capital outflows in order to achieve their goal of making the Yuan a truly global currency like the US dollar. They will have no choice in relaxing the capital outflow rules if global acceptance is what they want. Timing of such a thing is however anyone’s guess. Remember how so many people ascribed foreign Chinese as main players in soaring house prices? I have yet to have a single person say to me that the sharp lift in dwelling sales outside Auckland and upward pressure on prices is being driven by foreign buyers let alone a Chinese hoard. NZ Dollar Our currency was pressed downward slightly against the USD this week toward 64.5 cents from 65.5 cents by two factors. First the terrorist attacks in Paris which naturally prompted a wave a risk aversion amongst investors which usually means cutting back positions in far flung currencies like the NZ dollar. Second, the further 7.9% fall in average dairy prices at Tuesday night’s Global Dairy Trade auction. Dairy prices on the auction have now declined by 17% since early-October and sit 56% down from the early- 2013 peak. Back in August after prices had fallen 50% from March levels things were off 67% from early- 2013. There is a sizeable but not substantial difference between 56% and 67% declines therefore we should expect to see continued expenditure restraint in the dairy and dairy support sectors which will be one of the factors capping growth in the NZ economy over the coming year or two. However there are plenty of other factors which will underpin GDP growth near 2% such as construction, migration, low borrowing costs, non-dairy exports, and services sector growth. Thus it still seems unreasonable to expect that the Kiwi dollar will undergo further substantial decline from current levels. Exporters and people with funds offshore which they wish to convert into NZDs might be advised to take advantage of these occasional downward spurts in our currency to purchase some Kiwi dollars. Importers and those with timing flexibility wanting to shift funds offshore might be advised to simply wait for the next inevitable blip up. Note that it is highly likely we will see increased currency volatility over the coming year. United States monetary policy is set to be tightened for the first time since 2006 and not only is a nine year gap a long period of time over which links between key variables can have altered, all such links have been blown asunder by the GFC. No-one has any strong idea of what will happen with the US housing market, business investment, employment, confidence, share prices, retail spending, and currency as US monetary policy tightens. Debate regarding the impact of rising US rates will be huge, fluctuations in interest rate expectations may be highly frequent, and this will cause gyrations in the USD’s relationship with other currencies and flip-flops in market risk tolerance levels. One key factor helped the NZD from falling further this week – the stronger than expected retail trade numbers released on Monday showing core spending in real seasonally adjusted terms up by a healthy 1% in the September quarter. Note also the strong rebound in consumer confidence reported last week which suggests continued good consumer spending growth in the next six to nine months. Against the Australian dollar the NZD has declined over the week courtesy of a much stronger than expected jobs growth number across the ditch for October. While Australia’s economy is being negatively affected by the end of the commodity super cycle and slowing growth in China, there is good strength in the services sector, residential construction (though it varies a lot from state to state), tourism, and retail spending recently. The Reserve Bank of Australia has recently made comments indicating they see the economy slowly transitioning toward growth driven by the non-mining sector and the probability that the cash rate will be cut below the 2% level it was taken to in May are fairly low. Against the Euro the NZD is down only marginally from a week ago with the Euro understandably weaker over the week in response to the terrorist attacks in Paris boosting expectations of continued low business investment growth as confidence takes a hot, and a higher chance of the ECB continuing money printing beyond September 2016. If I Were A Borrower What Would I Do? Nothing in this past week has jumped up in front of me to make me believe that the outlook for NZ interest rates has altered. The currency is doing the usual toing and froing. The economic data still suggest reasonable but not stellar growth ahead, dairy prices paint the same weak picture for the sector in the short term that they have been doing since March, world growth prospects still contain downside risks, Australia’s growth is holding up with highly mixed performances between sectors, NZ consumer and business sentiment measures are reasonable, and the key problem facing our central bank has not changed. That problem is that they would like higher interest rates to help curb what they perceive to be rising risks facing the financial sector as a result of strongly rising house prices. But with inflation at 0.4% and a high risk that their forecasts of inflation rising to 2% predicated on a strong pass-through of the weaker NZD are wrong yet again (and most of us have been wrong in this area) they cannot raise rates as they may lock in deflation. The RB are likely to cut the cash rate a final 0.25% come December 10 with the probability of a cut enhanced recently by the terrorist attacks offshore and weak dairy prices, but reduced by our recent strong consumer sentiment and retail spending numbers and accelerating regional housing markets. A rate cut below 2.5% is not a highly probable scenario and borrowers should note that with US monetary policy to tighten soon the chances are very high (surely this time around) that we have seen the lows for medium to long-term fixed borrowing costs. Were I borrowing at the moment I would have a strong bias toward locking in a two year fixed rate. For Noting You may recall a couple of weeks ago that we got data showing employment falling by 0.4% during the September quarter. We noted that the labour market tends to be a lagging indicator of the state of the economy rather than a leading indicator of what lies ahead. Here is a way of backing that up. Although employment fell in the quarter, on Monday we learnt that the value of retail sales rose by 1.4% or by 1.6% if we focus on volumes. That strong result was partly driven by a 5% surge in motor vehicle sales, and such spending on long lasting (durable) items is not what occurs if people are concerned about their future income levels. Core retail spending which excludes fuel and vehicles rose by a healthy 1% after being flat in the June quarter (cautious consumers wondering what falling dairy prices meant), and having soared 2.2% in the March quarter and 1.9% in the last quarter of 2014. Retailers have basically enjoyed a strong lift in sales over the past year with the growth in the entire year to September versus the year before a healthy 6% compared with long-term average annual volume growth of only 2.5%. –]]>

Prankster, art-hacker, erstwhile social deconstructionist

By Selwyn Manning -

November 20, 2015

NewsroomPlus.com Contributed by Adam James Ring Somewhat underprepared and filled with the daily dread of the disorganised writer, I made my way to the iconic Embassy Theatre in central Wellington to meet my patron and steal his day pass to the 2015 Semi-Permanent design conference. As people began to stream down the large, winding stairs during the first programme break, I nervously chewed the lid of my now empty coffee cup and waited for him to show in the downstairs foyer. I think I was chewing the lid just to have something to do – the mechanism of a nervous habit. Standing there, I felt like I was waiting for the End Times, or perhaps a bride who I didn’t want to marry. After getting the pass adorned round my neck like a Hawaiian Lei, and pretending to listen as the tall man told me about the day’s event, I went in search of more legal stimulants. The sweet caress of caffeine – via Sweet Mothers Kitchen – came quickly from behind the espresso machine and was soon weaving its magic upon my tired and misfiring brain synapses. The funny thing about being a freelance journalist is that most of it is just turning up. Sure, it helps if you can write and it’s beneficial to have some passing interest in current events, but mostly it’s just being there. ‘There’ being wherever something is happening. That being said, it is extremely helpful to do your background work so you actually know where you’re going, why you’re going and what you’re supposed to do while you’re there. As I hadn’t done any of this, I had no idea who was speaking next at this event and no plan of how to cover it. Squinting at the card on my lanyard, as I walked back towards the theatre, the small, tidy printed schedule told me ‘1:50 – Presentation: Ryder Ripps.’ Ryder Ripps… where do I know that name from?

ryder-ripps-body-image-1421953963 — Photo: Vice

After finding a seat in the crowded theatre, I settled in just as Ryder Ripps started his talk. As I listened to him give an overview of his internet-slacker teenage years, it finally dawned on me that I did know who Ryder Ripps was – he’s the guy that The New York Times called the “consummate Internet cool kid” and he’s the guy who launched Internet Archaeology – a greatest graphic hits of the internet culture’s formative years – and he’s the guy that caused a shit-storm of media and art world stink with Art Whore – an Artist in Residence piece at NYC’s Ace Hotel where he paid two escorts to paint penises in his absence. Hearing him talk – even the way he talked – was like listening to some kind of digital human-hybrid. Equal parts hacker-cool and art-scene arrogant, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel in my mind with the 90’s New York hyper-cool scene of filmmaker Harmony Korine. Here’s the thing: Ryder Ripps isn’t just an ‘internet cool kid’, nor is he merely a trickster artist – he’s a concept art maverick. His internet, advertising and art output – including recent solo exhibition ‘Ho’ – sits comfortably in the same realm as some of the true greats of modern conceptual and abstract art. His conceptual creations are on par with UK art god Damien Hurst or Italian art-hacker, Maurizio Cattelan. He is one of the torch bearers and reference points for the style, expression and culture of this generation. Ryder has been called a prankster – a moniker he shares with Cattelan – and not without some deserving praise. That he spent most of his talk at Semi-Permanent making infantile and flippant jokes, is a sign of someone who really doesn’t care about his professional image, or who at least wants people to think that he doesn’t. Either way, it’s still better than what a million other designers/ artists are doing right now. Much of his dry humour – used lavishly throughout – was directed sarcastically at both the audience and himself. The simultaneously self-deprecating and audience-alienating drawl of someone who is literally too cool for school. Parts of his talk were a pointed yet playful stab at the tender ribs of SERIOUS DESIGNERS. His use of throw away images and conjured up screenshots of pure HTML websites, a la Warren Buffet’s 90’s-minimal Berkshire Hathaway site, revealed someone unwilling or unable to be pinned down or rendered mainstream. His overwhelming unorthodoxy is evident in everything from his early work choices, his anti-establishment attitudes, or the way he seems willing to regularly bite the hand that feeds.

Speaking of his agency OKFocus and how they go about getting work, he built up the anticipation with mock seriousness – “Everyone asks what the secret is to getting work, and I NEVER tell them. But I’m gonna tell YOU.” To a conference of designers, graphic artists, communication pros, branders and marketers who were perhaps there for some professional, detailed advice and tips, he dished up the illuminatingly simple and so, so dry – “Do good work – wait for emails”.

The thesis for his idiosyncratic and spasmodic presentation could be succinctly summed up with his statement “People don’t complain enough”. He spoke of how “designers should dislike more things than they like” and proceeded to show a range of photos from his recent travels to illustrate that a designer should try and fix what’s in front of them first.

A wobbly handle on an expensive luggage case, a vent that stupidly points down thus staining the carpet, the need for some kind of arm brace to hold a smartphone so one can also hold their baby.

An endless collection of sundry design flaws that people should complain about more, thereby generating enough dissatisfaction to want to fix it. His vision of what Design is, constitutes a pragmatic and visionary simplicity – ‘fix stuff that’s broke’ could be his working mantra. His “People don’t complain enough” comment would no doubt make a great t-shirt, though I’m unsure if kids these days still do that. Maybe it should be digitised then transferred directly onto skin like a temporary tattoo.

Photo: Ryder Ripps Instagram Master Ripps didn’t speak too much about his conceptual art, focusing more on his design work – it was a design conference after all – though he did mention some of his past and present gigs that were the most impressive or at least the most attention grabbing. He’s worked with rap producer Mike Will Made It, fashion designers, corporate giants like Nike, and he even met recently with Kanye West – who apparently loved his satirical site WhoDat.biz – with some talk of a possible collaboration. And this is a guy who participated and perhaps masterminded a fake/ real boy band called #HDBoyz – dubbed ‘the first boy band in high definition’. His satirical and innovative outbursts are the surface data of a deeper and motivating restlessness. He’s the Tyler the Creator of internet cool. Always surprising and often hated. As an insight into his brilliance, he spoke of his first paid internship while he was 19 or 20, and how, when asked to pitch an idea for Burberry, he suggested elite email addresses at $50,000 a pop. The user would have the prestige of a luxury email address @burbury.com. When his employers said it was a terrible idea, he quit and (eventually) went on to better, more self-directed pursuits, after some time buying and selling vintage synthesizers on EBay. Sometimes genius masquerades as stupid banality and this IMHO is very much the case with Ryder Ripps. He’s an artist of ideas more than mechanism. But he’s still an artist, and an important one. There is a common argument that some people will have over what constitutes good abstract art. Some will look at a piece by someone like the great NZ figurative expressionist artist Max Gimblett and say, “Well, anybody could do that! He’s just painted a stripe on an interesting shaped canvas!” To which the correct response should be “Yes, anyone could do it, but he’s the only one who actually is doing it!” That Ryder Ripps is an inconsistent and unpredictable combination of prankster, art-hacker and erstwhile social deconstructionist, or that he doesn’t paint his own art, or that he perhaps generates phony culture, is more or less irrelevant to the bigger picture. He is an overactive developer of new ideas which are far more relevant to the internet-heavy age we live in than any number of contemporary artists with critical acclaim. To my mind, put simply, he embodies the new generation of plugged-in, individualistic and self-referencing human beings. A true maverick in a vast and pixellated field of creative wannabe’s and internet culture-vultures. –]]>

Across The Ditch: Dedicated in Memory of the Legend Jonah Lomu

By Selwyn Manning -

November 19, 2015

Across The Ditch: Dedicated in Memory of Legend Jonah Lomu – EveningReport.nz’s Selwyn Manning and Australian radio FiveAA.com.au’s Peter Godfrey speak of the passing of New Zealand’s Rugby legend Jonah Lomu.

Jonah Lomu, New Zealand’s legendary Rugby superstar passed away on Wednesday at the age of 40. Last night (Wednesday November 18, 2015) it was reported that Jonah likely died of a cardiac or pulmonary event while at home in Auckland surrounded by his family, Hours before, he had arrived back to New Zealand from Dubai where Jonah, his wife and sons, Brayley (6) and Dhyreille (5), had holidayed after having attended the Rugby World Cup in the United Kingdom, where he officially kicked off the world cup at the opening ceremony. Jonah was a superstar on and off the Rugby field. He took the Rugby world by storm in the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa – notching up 15 tries in the 1995 and 1999 tournaments. And he was the youngest person to pull on the All Blacks jersey at 19 year and 45 days old. He played for the All Blacks 63 times, and at 6’5″ and weighing 119 kilo grammes, he could run 100 metres in 10.8 seconds with a Rugby ball in his hand. On top of this, the All Blacks played Jonah on the left wing. In that position he was virtually unstoppable. Former Australian Wallabies great Peter FitzSimons said last night, Jonah in full stride was like a human freight-train in ballet shoes. As an All Black Jonah scored 188 points between 1994-2002. Jonah’s Rugby career was cut short after it was revealed in 2002 he had a relatively rare kidney disease called nephrotic syndrome. He was actually diagnosed with the disease at the end of 1995, but details of his condition were kept private for some time. In May 2003 Jonah was placed on dialysis treatment while he waited for a donor kidney. In July 2004 Jonah received a kidney transplant and then enjoyed relatively good health. But seven years later his body rejected the donated kidney. And since 2011 Jonah relied on dialysis treatment in order to stay alive. PERSONAL MEMORIES: Personally, I will always remember the first time I saw Jonah. I was working for a south Auckland newspaper and received a call from a man called Phil Kingsley Jones, who managed some up and coming-young sports kids. He spoke of this fine young man, from Mangere – one of South Auckland’s poorer suburbs. He said Jonah was destined to be an All Black. A couple of years earlier, as a 15 year-old, Jonah had caught Phil Kingsley Jones’ eye while playing Rugby for Wesley College near Pukekohe. When I met him he was about 17 years-of-age, Phil arranged for me to meet Jonah. There was a young mother who needed a liver transplant. She was trying to raise money to pay for the operation in Australia. At the time, liver transplants (of the kind of procedure she needed) were not performed in New Zealand. The two of them were standing outside the Post Office in Papakura, about 25 kilometres south of Auckland. It was raining. There was Jonah – while only 17 he was already a giant a man at over 6’5″. He stood beside the young mother holding an umbrella and shielding her from the cold wind. He was softly spoken, almost shy at that age. He gently spoke of why he was helping the young mother raise money for her treatment. He said, in south Auckland people were getting to know him because of his Rugby playing, so if he could help her in his way to get this life saving treatment then it was the right thing to do. His kindness made an impression not just on me but on a whole nation. Through these short years since he became famous, Jonah Lomu kept doing things for people who needed a hand. It wasn’t just his skills on the Rugby field that made him a superstar, but acts of kindness like keeping a vulnerable young woman company on a cold winter New Zealand day. REMEMBERED BY HIS MENTORS & OPPONENTS: Jonah’s former manager Phil Kingsley Jones told the New Zealand Herald on Wednesday: “Today is one of the saddest days of my life, hearing that one of the most wonderful young men I have ever known and who was like a son to me, has been taken from us. “Jonah was a big part of my family and we are all shattered by his passing. He gave the world so much pleasure. Most people think of him as a rugby superstar, but to me he was always that young man from Welsey College who was great company. “I have seen him grow from the young man he was, to the perfect gentleman he had become. We had exciting times together and I will treasure his memory always. The world will will be a poorer without him.” SKY Television has launched a pop-up channel “in memory and tribute” to Jonah Lomu. Australian Rugby great Nick Farr-Jones said: “I think that we can always talk about what were the best World Cups, but when you talk about who was the most influential in a World Cup, you’ll never go past him in ’95.” Farr-Jones added: “Thank God I didn’t play against him.” Former All Blacks captain Tana Umanga said: “There’s never been another Jonah Lomu, has there? Everyone’s tried to manufacture one or tried to put forwards out to the backs or put someone on the wing who had the same size as him. “There was no one like him. To be honest there probably never will be.” Jonah was award the New Zealand Order of Merit honour in 2007. He is survived by his wife Nadene and sons, Brayley (6) and Dhyreille (5). Across The Ditch is broadcast Live on Australia’s radio FiveAA.com.au and webcasts on EveningReport.nz LiveNews.co.nz and ForeignAffairs.co.nz.]]>

NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for November 18 Edition, 2015

By Selwyn Manning -

November 18, 2015

This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 7 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Wednesday 18th November. It is best viewed on a desktop screen.

NEWSROOM_MONITOR

Noteworthy stories in the current news cycle include the findings from a Salvation Army report that children do not have adequate or proper access to housing, the price of whole milk powder has taken another hit in the overnight GlobalDairyTrade auction and the Meat Workers Union has won a favourable ruling from the Employment Court in their long standing dispute with AFFCO.

POLITICS PULSE

Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:

Government: Another 54 Communities of Learning formed; Parole-like supervision regime now in place; Aviation agreements will put more kiwi-trained pilots in Vietnamese skies;Awards celebrate seabird protection; Captioning to be extended to Prime Television; Pay equity meeting an important milestone; Expert group set up to review insolvency law; PM saddened at passing of Jonah Lomu

Greens: Another case of pay hypocrisy from the Government;NZ must not extradite people to be tortured

Labour: Big gaps in rushed returning offenders law; End homelessness now – scrap flag vote and stop state house sell-off; The Pacific loses a great friend

Māori Party: Māori Party Celebrates Correction Of Whanganui District Name; Māori Party Backs Urgent Bill To Supervise Deported Offenders

New Zealand First: Jonah Lomu

NZ National Party: Craig Foss praises Wairoa schools for working together for kids

LINKS OF THE DAY

Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014.

APEC SUMMIT 2015: The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit 2015 commenced today in the Philippines. More details at: http://apec2015.ph/

BIODEGRADABLE PLASTICS: A UN report released today, “Biodegradable Plastics and Marine Litter. Misconceptions, Concerns and Impacts on Marine Environments”, finds that complete biodegradation of plastics occurs in conditions that are rarely, if ever, met in marine environments. The full report can be downloaded at:http://unep.org/gpa/documents/publications/BiodegradablePlastics.pdf

COMMUNITIES OF LEARNING: Another 444 schools have formed themselves into Communities of Learning, taking to 793 the number that have agreed to work systematically together under a government policy for raising student achievement. For more information about Communities of Learning go to http://www.education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/specific-initiatives/investing-in-educational-success

INVISIBLE SUPERCITY: According to latest report of The Salvation Army Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit on housing need in Auckland – Invisible in the SuperCity – children were found to be sleeping outside in cars and garages. Read more: http://www.salvationarmy.org.nz/research-media/social-policy-and-parliamentary-unit/reports/invisible-supercity

MOVEMBER MO DOLLAR: Today, the Movember charity committed to men living happier, healthier, longer lives unveiled a unique initiative featuring some of New Zealand’s most influential faces, minted on a limited edition one dollar coin – the Mo Dollar. For more information visit: http://www.modollar.nz

VACANCIES RISE: The number of job vacancies advertised online rose by 1.8 per cent in October, while there was a 4.3 per cent rise across the year, according to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) latest Jobs Online report. Read more: http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/employment-skills/labour-market-reports/jobs-online

VIRTUAL DRIVING SITE: A ground-breaking new virtual driving website is being launched by the AA to help better prepare tourists for driving in New Zealand. The AA Visiting Drivers Training Programme can be accessed at:http://www.aa.co.nz/visiting-drivers

And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Wednesday 18th November.

Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest.

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Pacific Media Centre, TJ Aumua

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