Special Feature by Amelie David – This is Amelie’s first article for Evening Report. Rainbow Warrior Affair : 30 years later, French remain silent.
SPECIAL FEATURE: An Enduring Silence – Rainbow Warrior Affair 30 years later, France remains silent
Silence. French journalist Amelie David discovers the Government of the French Republic will remain silent over decisions it made to bomb the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour on July 10, 1985.[/caption]
AFTER A FEW EMAILS WITHOUT ANY ANSWERS, the call appeared to be the only way to reach somebody from the French embassy in Wellington.
And there it went. “Sorry but the French embassy decided not to make any comment on the Rainbow Warrior affair. Not at all”, said the lady from the press release office.
Her manner was sharp, edgy. I asked her why France has decided not to comment officially on the bombing. She changed her tone and added: “There is no particular reason, we just decided not to say anything about this.” It was the end of the conversation.
30 years later, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior is a very sensitive topic in France.
Further requests to the French Government were denied.
Initially, I thought that after 30 years, France may comment.
Especially considering, that for the first time since François Mitterrand left the Presidency in 1995, France has a Socialist as its president, François Hollande.
Back in France the French press have become disinterested in the issue. On offering them a story about the Rainbow Warrior, 30 years on they replied: ‘It’s either too late or the subject doesn’t arouse so much interest [among the public].’
Some editors even answered : “Sorry, but we don’t have room anymore for this kind of story, although, it is a really interesting one…”
[caption id="attachment_5194" align="alignright" width="300"]
Former president of France, the late François Mitterrand.[/caption]
EVENING REPORT EDITOR’S NOTE: Remember, it was Mitterrand who was ultimately responsible for the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior at Marsden Wharf in Auckland harbour in 1985. And senior leaders within the current French Government were also connected with the issue. France’s current Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabius, was in 1985 the Prime Minister of France. In 1985, it was Fabius’ task to deal with fallout from the bombing, confront the international controversy, the investigations, argue points of justification. Fabius was involved in decisions made to force an arrangement for the officers of the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur, to initially be imprisoned on French territory in the Pacific (Hao atoll), and finally to be repatriated back to France. Mafart and Prieur had been convicted of manslaughter in New Zealand for their part in the bombing and in the death of photographer Fernando Pereira, who was onboard the Rainbow Warrior at the time the bombs detonated. [caption id="attachment_5196" align="alignright" width="300"]François Hollande with Ségolène Royal, at a rally for the 2007 French elections. Image: Wikimedia.[/caption] And then there is Ségolène Royal, who is currently France’s Ecology Minister. Back in 2006, when she announced that she would run for the French presidential election, her younger brother, Antoine Royal, outed their sibling, Gerard Royal, for his involvement in the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. When speaking to Le Parisien, a daily French newspaper, Antoine Royal said: “By that time, Gerard, was a secret agent in Asia. He had been called in 1985 to go to New Zealand, in Auckland’s bay, for the sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior. Later on, he told me that he was the one who put the bomb on the Greenpeace’s ship.” But, despite this, after 30 years, according to the French Embassy in Wellington, the Republic of France will remain silent. It clearly will not be apologising for the only act of terrorism to be committed by a supposed friendly nation on New Zealand soil. [poll id=”16″]
Rainbow Warrior’s bombing : 30 years later, French can’t forget
[caption id="attachment_5201" align="aligncenter" width="640"]
Auckland City, Skytower at night. Image: Wikimedia.[/caption]
Feature by Amelie David.
The 30th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior is getting close. For French people living in Auckland, this sad episode became part of their personal history.
Elisabeth (Editor’s note: Elisabeth has requested that her surname not be published) remembers perfectly the day she learnt about the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. It was on the morning following the 10th of July 1985. The young mom from that time was in the Eastern part of France with her two daughters, both born in Auckland.
She had left New Zealand, her home for ten years, a couple of weeks prior to the bombing.
“I took few months off to come back to France with my two daughters so they could see their grand parents and I could help out my aunt to start her own business”, recalls Elisabeth, seated in her living room in Ponsonby.
On that morning, Elisabeth was having breakfast with her daughters.
Le Monde, a national French newspaper, lay on the table between the coffee pot and the bag of croissants from the little village’s bakery.
Elisabeth opened it and read the front page briefly before jumping to the second one: “Here it was! A small square at the bottom of the page. Few lines saying that the Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace vessel, has been bombed in the Auckland harbour…”, explains Elisabeth, who is now aged 65 years.
30 years later, Elisabeth can recall that moment perfectly. “I turned to my brother and said: “This is the French!”
After having lived in New Zealand for ten years, Elisabeth knew the atmosphere in the Pacific at that time: “I couldn’t think of somebody else willing to do that…”
The news was like a kick in Elisabeth’s head: “I was scandalized. New Zealand had been involved in every World War, helping us out, we couldn’t do that to this country. I couldn’t believe that our President, François Mitterrand, ordered this. It was terrorism!”
[caption id="attachment_5216" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Roiling ocean water after nuclear explosion beneath the French atoll of Mururoa.[/caption]
In New Zealand since 1975, Elisabeth was well aware of the ambience in the country regarding the French nuclear tests in the Pacific.
Even before 1985, herself and a couple of other French people, had been out protesting against the nuclear tests: “We had signed up a few petitions because we wanted to stand out from our home country government’s politic and also because it was part of our values, although none of us was a Greenpeace member.”
At that time, a large number of French people living in New Zealand shared Elisabeth’s point of view. But not all them were willing to sign up the petition.
“Some were afraid of reprisal from the French government. For instance, they thought they could loose their nationality.
“But some of us were not. So we signed it up and brought it to the senator when he visited. I think the first time we did this was in 1976. We met him because we were supposed to tell him our problems. So we brought up our concerns about those nuclear tests.
“When he handed the petition, he looked at us and said there was no way we could talk about this. He ripped up the paper. That was it,” Elisabeth said.
Through the following years, Elisabeth carried on protesting but she believes her name may have been put on a black list of the French government for this.
“For example, it took longer to redo my passport than usual. I think they wanted us to understand that we had to behave…” Elisabeth said with a shy smile.
That was the reason why it was no surprise to her that the Rainbow Warrior had been bombed. It was a shock, but not a surprise, and she couldn’t doubt of her own country’s involvement.
Not French anymore, but not totally a Kiwi
In October 1985, Elisabeth and her daughters flew back to New Zealand. All the French journalists covering the trial of the secret agents were with them on the plane. When the Aucklander-by-adoption landed at Auckland International Airport, in the country she had left few months before, it took her time to recognize it. She could feel that she was not really welcome anymore. France had became the new “F word”. French bakeries were empty. French products couldn’t be found in stores anymore. French flags were banned from windows and streets. “Everything was anti-French. We had to say which side we were on. We had to make things clear and say we disagreed with what happened.” She felt she was not really French anymore but neither was she totally a Kiwi. For first few weeks Elisabeth found it difficult to settle back into Auckland life. She was not alone. [caption id="attachment_5199" align="alignleft" width="225"]
François Profit.[/caption]
A lot of other people experienced this anti-French feeling.
François Profit, 58 years old, has been living in Auckland for three years now but he first visited New Zealand in the 1990’s.
At that time, he was settled in Tahiti and he owned a sailing company.
In July 1985, the Parisian was in France, getting ready to sail to French Polynesia, an eight month trip over the high seas.
Obviously, he heard about what happened to the Rainbow Warrior and followed up the story in the news.
But until the day he arrived in New Zealand and stood on the land of the long white cloud, he couldn’t imagine what it meant for locals.
“The first time I came here, it was in 1993. It was a family vacation. And even by that time, almost ten years after, we could still feel the resentment towards French people.
“New Zealanders were not really unkind to us, literally, but there was some hesitation on talking to us, because we were French”, explains François sitting on his garden chair, facing the beach on Mission Bay.
“It would be really nice to start talking about this back in France…”
30 years later, Elisabeth and François agree that things have changed. French people are welcome again in New Zealand.
Kiwi customers are back in French bakeries and the French flag can flutter everywhere. For all that, the Rainbow Warrior is always something people would talk about.
[caption id="attachment_5198" align="alignleft" width="225"]
French video journalist, Geraldine Clermont.[/caption]
Geraldine Clermont, 29 years old, realised it when she arrived in Auckland, four years ago.
The French video journalist was born in October 1985. Before coming to New Zealand, she barely heard about the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior.
“Some Kiwis, or even French, talked to me about this. They referred to it in some kind of jokes to make fun of French people. It’s not rude, but I can feel that it’s something important to them”, explains the young woman.
Interested in the topic, Geraldine researched about the 10th of July 1985.
What she found astonished her. “It’s incredible! It’s actually a terrorism act from the government, from the French government, in order to attack another country which is our friend!”
And what surprised her even more, is the fact that she never even learnt about it back in France: “It’s pretty crazy. I think it should be on school’s programme! It would be really nice that we start talking about this in France…”
Every year, Geraldine hears about what happened in Auckland’s harbour on that night of July 10th 1985.
30 years later, for French people living in Auckland, the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior is part of their history.
Every year, she can still feel how sad the whole country is about it, as are Elisabeth, François and other French people who live in New Zealand.
Nobody can’t forget.
–]]>
Children in New Zealand denied the right to hear
Source: National Foundation for the Deaf – It launched a GiveALittle page today.
[caption id="attachment_5182" align="alignleft" width="222"] Sophie’s life has dramatically changed for the better since her family realised the health system was not going to pay for the hearing aids and remote microphones she needed and they mortgaged their home to purchase them.[/caption]
Sophie’s life has dramatically changed for the better since her family realised the health system was not going to pay for the hearing aids and remote microphones she needed and they mortgaged their home to purchase them.
The National Foundation for the Deaf is launching a GiveALittle Page today to raise funds for a minimum of 50 pairs of hearing aids and remote microphones for children living with Auditory Processing Disorder.
Before her family did that, Sophie was a solitary figure observing life from the side line whereas now, she is going from strength to strength. She raises her hand to answer questions at school and doesn’t need to constantly look around to try and figure out what is happening around her. She is no longer exhausted by the stress of trying to understand the classroom environment and has become a popular girl in her class, often leading the play. Sophie is now on the path to being a successful student as she is able to hold her own educationally with her peers.
Sophie, aged 6 years is one of a number of children in New Zealand with hearing loss caused by an Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) which affects their ability to hear, learn and have a happy and carefree life that every child deserves.
Imagine if you will, the children whose families are not in the situation of being able to mortgage their homes to purchase the hearing aids and remote microphones they need? Sadly, there are hundreds of children that can’t get the support they need through the New Zealand health system. They are caught in the politics and we say enough.
The National Foundation for the Deaf is so concerned about the lack of support for these children and families that it has set up a Give A Little page. The National Foundation for the Deaf CEO Louise Carroll says “It’s a tragedy and an indictment when a national charity needs to step in to fundraise for hearing aids and remote microphones for children with any type of hearing loss.” We are fundraising to support 50 kids in New Zealand that come from families that cannot afford to buy the hearing equipment they desperately need.
Give at:
https://givealittle.co.nz/org/thenationalfoundationforthedeaf
For more information on APD – www.soundskills.co.nz
For family support information – Hear for Families: apdleoniewilsonkilby@gmail.com;
FB: Hear for Families – APD Support Group
]]>Children in Gaza’s hardest-hit areas showing signs of emotional distress a year on from war
NewsroomPlus.com – Contributed by Save The Children
Children living in areas of Gaza hardest-hit during last year’s conflict are still showing signs of severe emotional distress, including high levels of bed wetting and nightmares.
A new assessment by Save the Children found that:
- An average of 75% of children surveyed experience unusual bedwetting regularly.
- In one area, al-Shoka, nearly half the children interviewed wet the bed every night.
- Up to 89% of parents reported that their children suffer consistent feelings of fear, while more than 70% of children said they worried about another war.
- On average seven out of 10 children interviewed suffer regular nightmares.
Keith Rankin on Creating a Future: The Adjacent Possible
Analysis by Keith Rankin. This article was also published on TheDailyBlog.co.nz.
[caption id="attachment_5173" align="alignleft" width="259"] The Adjacent Possible.[/caption]
Change happens, or does not happen, as much through our beliefs about the ways the world works, as it does through how the world actually works. If we believe in things that are false, or in restrictive interpretations of reality, then what can happen is limited by these constraining orthodox interpretations.
Last week I wrote about money ‘as if’ it was a magic resin – a stock of appreciating wealth that, through a process of spending, can be converted into any good or service – but which diminishes when spent. Thus spending is easily seen as a loss of wealth, and saving money is seen as wealth enhancing.
This understanding of money is obviously false, but nevertheless, through our attempts to acquire money by selling stuff, has probably contributed significantly to what economic historians call ‘modern economic growth’. This also has the potential – by reducing life to a perpetual struggle to sell labour, services or commodities – to create a dystopian future. We need to be able to envisage alternative ways forward, moving forward from the growth for growth’s sake imperative.
Biologist Stuart Kauffman came up with the concept, later publicised by Steven Johnson, of the ‘Adjacent Possible‘. Immediate change is limited to options that are only one step (intellectual or biological) away. But once such changes are made, then new opportunities become adjacent (ie just one step away) and therefore possible.
The key ideas that I believe can lead a sustainable and prosperous economic future are not complicated. However they are two steps away; they are not adjacent to our present thinking about the way the world of money and markets works.
We can imagine ourselves as living in a conceptual room that has an entrance – through which we have come – and several possible exits, represented as doors that are ajar rather than closed. We are in the magic money room (otherwise known as the Scarcity Room), and have become quite comfortable there. After all, it has led us in the developed world to levels of material wealth that we could not have dreamed of 200 years ago.
The door that we need to pass through can be called the Keynesian door to the room of demand-side economics, spending and equity. We can call it the Abundance Room. It is a room of affluence and leisure, but not consumerism. Indeed we did kind of enter that room in the middle third of last century, but its messages were not well understood, and the magic-money neoliberals took their chance in the 1970s to paint the ideas in that room as inflationary. Further, there seemed to be too much emphasis on growth as a means to economic justice.
There was a big pull-back in the 1980s. Further, the Green movement was hesitant to embrace the economics of abundance, favouring the underlying non-spending austerity of the Scarcity Room. Indeed Florian Schui, in his 2014 book Austerity, The Great Failure saves a whole chapter (‘Austerity for the Planet’) to Green austerity.
To understand the underlying Keynesian vision, read Keynes’ 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our
Grandchildren. For an interesting precursor of Keynes’ vision of abundance, look to Simon Patten’s The New Basis of Civilisation, published in 1907. Other writers who have imbibed many of the ideas of the Abundance Room have been JK Galbraith, Paul Krugman, Jeffrey Sachs, Wynne Godley and Richard Koo.
On the far wall of the Abundance Room is the ajar door to what may be called the Sustainable Equity Room. One book that gives the true flavour of the Abundance Room, and that reveals the door to the Sustainable Equity Room, is How Much is Enough; Money and the Good Life (2012) by Robert and Edward Skidelsky. Through books like this, sustainable equity becomes an adjacent possible, a direction for change that can be discussed in open debate, and understood by a significant range of people.
What’s in the Sustainable Equity Room? Firstly, it’s all about collective economic security through public equity principles that complement the private market economy. We know that collective economic security leads to sustainable yet abundant living. We just can’t think about how to achieve this. Further, living in the present room, where we strive for security by accumulating unspent money, we keep debasing our public sector. The Sustainable Equity Room contains healthy ideas about public finance and public debt and public risk management as offsets to natural private caution. It’s not utopia or communism or anything like that. It’s just a market economy with a public vision; a market economy that works, and conserves rather than exploits.
To get to the Sustainable Equity Room, we must pass through the Abundance Room. That means learning about what money and wealth and debt are, and are not. We cannot easily find our good place to be if we are not sufficiently near to it.
—
]]>NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for July 3, 2015
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 4 media release snippets and 5 links for the day of Friday 3rd July.
Top stories in the current news cycle include responses to the transition planning announced for Christchurch and the unveiling of plans for a $120 million environmental attraction on unused red-zone land in Christchurch, an announcement that the Skypath for Auckland’s Harbour Bridge has initial resource consent, and the Press Council decision to uphold complaints against the New Zealand Herald and one of its former columnists over an interview with a waitress who accused the Prime Minister of repeatedly pulling her ponytail.
And news this afternoon, the Department of Conservation today laid charges in the Invercargill District Court against Sonny Tau for the alleged hunting and possession of a protected species under the Wildlife Act.
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
Bill To Better Support Sexual Violence Victims Underway : The first stage of the Government’s sexual violence reforms are underway with the passing of the first reading of the Evidence Amendment Act today, Justice Minister Amy Adams says. The Bill includes three core changes: improving the court process for child witnesses, enhancing court process for complainants in sexual offence cases and introducing safeguards for video record evidence of vulnerable witnesses.
Greenfield announcement: Two new greenfield Special Housing Areas (SHAs) that will provide up to 1800 new homes in Auckland have been announced today by Building and Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith and Mayor Len Brown.
* Business
New MD for Microsoft NZ: Microsoft today announced the next Managing Director of the New Zealand subsidiary will be Barrie Sheers, who will succeed current MD Paul Muckleston. Sheers has returned to New Zealand after more than 30 years working abroad for a wide variety of international tech businesses across the EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), Asia Pacific and Japan
* Primary Industries
Federated Farmers “Resilient Agri-Business” Conference: Massey Professor Ralph Sims challenged Federated Farmers National Conference today that New Zealand is not doing enough to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
LINKS OF THE DAY
FINANCIAL STRATEGIES & STATEMENTS: The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) today released its Investor Capability Strategy, which aims to build knowledge, understanding and confidence about making investment decisions. The FMA’s strategy supports the principles behind the Government Statement on Building Financial Capability in New Zealand released by the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs today. See:http://www.mbie.govt.nz/what-we-do/business-growth-agenda/capital-markets/government-statement-on-building-financial-capability
JOB MARKET GROWING DESPITE LOWER BUSINESS CONFIDENCE: Despite waning employment confidence according to Westpac: McDermott Miller, Trade Me Jobs continues to see healthy signs in the New Zealand employment market. Read more here:http://investors.trademe.co.nz/media/51749/MediaRelease_TradeMeJobsQ2_Final.pdf
COASTAL HAZARD REPORT RELEASED: Christchurch City Council has today released a report identifying areas at risk from coastal inundation and coastal erosion.To read the Coastal Hazard Assessment Report and for more information on coastal hazards visit: www.ccc.govt.nz/coastalhazards
SKYPATH RESOURCE CONSENT GRANTED: The Auckland Council has granted resource consent for the Skypath, a clip-on pedestrian and cycleway attached to the harbour bridge. Click here for more: http://www.skypath.org.nz/
AUCKLAND HOUSING MARKET SIMILAR TO SYDNEY: “Auckland’s housing market is driven by unique factors that don’t affect the rest of the country. Auckland’s large population, size and connections to multi-national businesses make it more similar to Melbourne and Sydney than Wellington and Christchurch, and the housing market reflects that,” says Bryan Field, MBIE’s Manager of Modelling and Sector Trends. The New Zealand Housing and Construction Quarterly publication can be downloaded from MBIE’s Building and Housing information website athttp://www.building.govt.nz/nz-housing-and-construction-quarterly
And that’s our sampling of the day that was on Friday 3rd July 2015.
Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest. –]]>Ron Mark New Deputy Leader of NZ First
MIL OSI –
[caption id="attachment_5158" align="alignleft" width="200"] New Zealand First Deputy Leader, Ron Mark.[/caption]
The New Zealand First party has confirmed that its caucus has voted Ron Mark as the new deputy leader. Mark’s appointment takes effect from today (July 3) . Out-going deputy, Tracey Martin, remains in caucus as a New Zealand First MP.
The party issued a statement this morning confirming:
A vote on Caucus positions was planned for March 2015, but this was overtaken by the Northland By-election and an additional MP coming into Caucus.
Four weeks ago Caucus decided to hold a number of elections as follows:
1. A vote for the new position of Associate Whip, to be held a week later.
2. A vote for the positions of Leader and Deputy Leader on Tuesday, 30th June.
Clayton Mitchell was the successful candidate for the Associate Whip position.
Winston Peters was re-elected as Leader by the Caucus.
Ron Mark was elected as the Deputy Leader with effect from 10am, Friday, 3rd July.
– See more at: http://foreignaffairs.co.nz/2015/07/03/report-from-new-zealand-first-caucus/
It stated: “As is the practice of New Zealand First following a General Election a vote is taken at an appropriate time for Caucus positions. The vote is always taken after MPs have had some time to familiarise themselves with both their roles and their colleagues.” Shortly after, Tracey Martin issued a public statement congratulating her replacement Ron Mark. “I look forward to having a positive and productive working relationship with him as part of a strong and democratic Caucus,” Tracey Martin said. “Together we will continue to take the party forward and make positive changes for the people of New Zealand. Over more than two decades I have been working with the party and as an MP, however, with my new office opening in Warkworth I’m now even better placed to provide help and support to local Rodney people with local issues. “I am passionate about education and challenging the government to improve the system for the benefit of all New Zealanders,” Tracey Martin said. – -]]>Radio: New Zealand Report to Australia’s FiveAA – Foreign Minister To Pressure Nauru on Good Governance
Selwyn Manning delivers his New Zealand Report to Australia’s FiveAA radio – Foreign Minister To Pressure Nauru on Good Governance – Recorded live on 3/07/15.
ITEM ONE: New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister Murray McCully has urged representatives of Nauru Government to meet him in Sydney next week where he is expected to issue an ultimatum – that the Nauru Government must abandon its culture of regressive democratic practices. McCully has been persuaded to pressurise Nauru by a group of prominent academics, including former New Zealand prime minister, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, and former Parliamentary speaker, Margaret Wilson. Twenty nine senior academics made their concerns public via an open letter and stated: “Last year, the (Nauru) government forced out of office the island’s (then) only judge, and suspended most of the opposition from Parliament indefinitely. “The (Nauru) government has also prohibited local media from speaking to the opposition, and has closed down access to Facebook for Nauruan citizens, amongst other things. “The dismantling of an effective judicature… together with the silencing of the media, opposition and even ordinary citizens on Facebook means that the government of Nauru is now virtually immune from scrutiny of its actions.” Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who until recently lead the New Zealand Law Commission, urged Foreign Minister McCully to take a more aggressive stance against Nauru. The group believe Australia is not able to apply pressure to Nauru due to its asylum-seeker Pacific Solution policy. New Zealand gives $2.3 million a year in aid to the justice and education sectors in Nauru. It is understood that McCully will threaten to cancel the aid contributions should Nauru Government refuse to meet with McCully. ITEM TWO If you travel to New Zealand, and on arrival a uniformed officer approaches… then issues you with a card with a portrait of a dog on it… don’t worry we haven’t all lost the plot. New Zealand’s Aviation Security Service (Avsec) has decided to issue the cards to travellers to promote the work of explosive detector dogs that are helping to keep our airports and travellers safe. Each card displays a biography of a canine detective. And this week Fairfax media profiled Detective Kelcie, a German Shepherd Dog from Wellington. This dog’s card states Kelcie likes to swim, can smell a bone from over a kilometre away, and she has been trained to detect bombs and explosives. Apparently the cards have become quite popular with both adults and children, which goes to show a friendly message can sometimes serve a serious purpose. New Zealand Report is broadcast live on FiveAA.com.au and webcast on EveningReport.nz, LiveNews.co.nz, and ForeignAffairs.co.nz. –]]>NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for July 2, 2015
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 6 media release snippets and 3 links for the day of Thursday 2nd July.
Top stories in the current news cycle and at Parliament includes the introduction of the Social Housing Reform (Transaction Mandate) Bill that gives government the mandate to sell state houses if passed, the drop in GlobalDairyTrade prices overnight at an alarming 6% overall and latest property figures that show the so-called ‘Auckland effect’ is leading to house prices in Hamilton and Tauranga going up.
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
NZ Begins Presidency Of UN Security Council : Prime Minister John Key has welcomed the start of New Zealand’s month-long Presidency of the United Nations Security Council in New York. Mr Key says New Zealand is committed to making its mark on the Council, and our first stint as President will allow us to build on the contribution we’ve made over the past six months.
Govt Urged To Review Processes For Valuing Crown Land : Unless the Government reviews its processes for valuing high country pastoral lease land, it will continue to give away millions of dollars to private interests that should be going to the New Zealand public, the Green Party said today.
Newborn Hearing Screening Strengthened: Health Minister Jonathan Coleman says newborn babies across New Zealand are now benefitting from an improved hearing screening programme. “Over 55,000 newborn babies are screened each year through the hearing programme. Early detection of hearing loss means appropriate intervention can be provided,” says Dr Coleman.
* Business
Draft Decisions On Copper Lines & Broadband Prices Released: The Commerce Commission has today released further draft decisions for consultation setting proposed prices that Chorus can charge for use of its local copper lines and broadband service over the next five years. These are wholesale prices that Chorus charges retail telecommunications companies.
Secretive Negotiations Leaked: Following on from a leak less than a month ago when Wikileaks posted 17 documents leaked from the secretive negotiations for a Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) recent texts from April and May 2015, including the proposed core text and annexes on domestic regulation and transparency, were posted today according to Professor Jane Kelsey. New Zealand is part of the group of countries calling themselves ‘the Really Good Friends of Services’ who are trying to negotiate the deal.
* Primary Industries
New Phase For NAIT Programme: July is the next phase for OSPRI’s NAIT (d National Animal Identification and Tracing) programme, this means that all cattle must be tagged and registered in the NAIT system. This is for tighter TB control and continued access to export markets.
LINKS OF THE DAY
STATE OF CSR IN AUSTRALIA AND NZ : On the release of the report – The State of CSR in Australia and New Zealand Annual Review 2015 – Sustainable Business Council Executive Director Penny Nelson said: “We have seen a significant shift for New Zealand businesses over the past year. Increasingly, leaders are bringing sustainability into the heart of their organisation’s strategies. The full report is available for free download at: http://accsr.com.au/csr-services/latest-research/
PUBLIC FEEDBACK SOUGHT ON TRANSITION: The acting chief executive of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), John Ombler, says he expects a healthy level of public feedback on the Draft Transition Recovery Plan for greater Christchurch, which was released today. The Draft Transition Recovery Plan can be viewed athttp://www.cera.govt.nz/transition
JOBS INCREASE BUT SALARIES TO REMAIN STEADY: Employment levels, business confidence and workloads are all increasing in New Zealand’s construction industry – but employees should not get their hopes up for a high salary increase this year as salaries for most roles remain steady, according to the 2015 Hays Construction/NZIOB Salary Guide. Click here for the full 2015 Hays Construction/NZIOB Salary Guide at http://www.hays.net.nz
And that’s our sampling of the day that was on Thursday 2nd July 2015.
Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest. –]]>Public urged to have their say on fire services – Paul Swain
Public urged to have their say on fire services
[caption id="attachment_5134" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Hon. Paul Swain.[/caption]
The Hon Paul Swain has endorsed the discussion document released recently on options for modernising New Zealand’s fire services.
Mr Swain wants people to have their say on how fire services should be managed and run to ensure they meet the needs of both urban and rural communities.
“We have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make sure we have fire services that are fit for the 21st century, and that operate seamlessly with all the other emergency service providers,” he said. “More importantly, whatever option is chosen, the discussion document has identified the need for more support for volunteer firefighters.”
Mr Swain lead an earlier review of the fire services in 2012. However the scope of the Fire Review Panel did not include funding or the employment frameworks. In response to the Panel’s report, the Government asked for a wider review that included those issues.
“This wider exploration, responding to and building on our work, has resulted in this excellent Discussion Document, and a robust set of options for change,” he said.
“My colleagues and I are delighted to see it’s driving in the same direction that we identified in our report in 2012,” said Mr Swain.
The Discussion Document looks at mandate and governance, legislation modernisation, funding, rural and urban fire services structures, coordination with other emergency services, and volunteer and workforce engagement and support.
“I urge people to look at the options and to put forward their views on what fire services they need in their own local communities.”
The Discussion Document and advice on making a submission are on the Department of Internal Affairs’ website, www.dia.govt.nz . Submissions close on 10 July 2015.
—
]]>STATE OF IT: Ideology Drives Government Into Desperate Seller Territory
Editorial by Selwyn Manning.
[caption id="attachment_183" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Selwyn Manning, editor.[/caption]
STATE OF IT: This week the National-led Government cited overseas investments made by the New Zealand Superannuation Fund as justification for offshore investors being permitted to purchase state house assets.
The argument goes that if it is ok for the Cullen Fund to make offshore investments then it follows that overseas entities ought to be free to invest in New Zealand’s social housing market, to exploit that investment and return profits to their state of origin.
The argument demonstrates how disciples of raw political ideology can quickly find themselves estranged from the very people, in whose interests, they are warranted to govern.
Of course, the backstory to this issue is the Government moving to create a law that will allow at least two Government ministers in its Cabinet (Paula Bennett and Bill English) the authority to direct the sell-off of state houses with a specificity not yet seen in New Zealand. It is the kind of law that would have prevented Murray McCully from being sacked as Tourism Minister in the 1990s.
Why is it doing this? Simply, the Government is desperate to create a market where, to date, no market existed, to encourage demand from offshore speculators and providers, and divorse itself of the responsibility of governing social provision.
This week, while squaring off against criticisms during Parliament’s question time, the Prime Minister John Key asserted that the in-flow of capital into New Zealand from offshore investors would be significant and that the out-flow of capital would be insignificant.
The devil, as they say, is in the detail.
That out-flow of capital the Prime Minister is sensitive to will be the sum of profits acquired off the back of former and current state tenants, profits topped up by New Zealand taxpayer subsidies.
But let’s also consider the return-on-investment offshore speculators will acquire from the future sale and trade of this country’s state housing stock.
The opportunities, and the subsequent out-flow of capital, will be significant and potentially extreme.
The legislation (which is designed to remove barriers so this new state house asset market can flow without bureaucratic weight) will, in effect, permit the fast track sell-off of this asset stock.
We understand from Government figures that it intends to shift 8000 state houses off its books. QV.co.nz calculates the New Zealand-wide average value of housing stock at $514,232.00 per unit. The annual market increase of bottom-line value is calculated at 9.0%.
Granted, this calculation does not match the exact value-per-unit that will be positioned for sale. For example, we know part of the housing stock has been poorly maintained. And it is obvious by the behaviour of the ministers involved, the Government has cloaked itself within a desperate-seller shroud.
But the QV.co.nz nationwide valuation does give us an idea of the potential profits to be made should an investor house-and-land-bank their purchases then simply wait for a couple of years while the former state house tenants and the New Zealand taxpayer pays the rent. Then, once the market promises a bounty, decide to flog them off and make a quick 20+ percent on the purchase price and siphon the loot offshore from whence they came.
Compounding this equation is the Government’s desire to sell, and sell fast, rather than strategise for the highest possible price. It appears that once the ministers have the legal status to acquire the experience necessary to safeguard their future careers, these taxpayer-paid real estate agents, fuelled by their desire to ‘sell, sell, sell’, will likely erode the book value of the state housing asset stock even further.
But then, perhaps we ought to give the Government credit. This is the kind of gift that will certainly entice foreign investors to enter this Key/English fire-sale market with the intent to exploit this country for all it is worth (pardon the pun). Will that create demand-heat above the scale of asset-dump? No, sorry, it’s not even an even bet. Sadly, it does seem this third-term government, fuelled by its long-disguised ideologic DNA, is suffering from a bad dose of arrogance over political pragmatism.
I have to agree with the New Zealand Herald’s John Armstrong who said this week: “Bill English’s willingness to allow an Australian housing provider to buy up to 500 New Zealand state houses veers perilously close to allowing blind ideology to get the better of political common sense.”
Clearly, the ministers have become impatient. Governance is too obscure for this party of economically-liberal zealots. For them, the status-quo is problematic, it provides public servants too much room to construct a bureaucracy that will in turn slow-down the rate of sale. So National’s ideologues will create a law that enables them to direct their officials, direct them to sell off specific stock to specific buyers.
It is bad lawmaking, designed around the party’s interests and not the nation’s. It will enable the Government to broker deals in the dark, in the privacy of back-rooms, to expedite the process of sale. How many blind-trusts will emerge as purchasers of these assets? How many politicians and National Party stake-holders will be invisible within those entities? This is the culture of suspicion the Government is creating. And the motivation is blind ideology.
This troupe of ideologues know they are a third term government that will never again enjoy current levels of popular support. Yes, the opposition remains weak. But they know that delicate balance will change in time.
They believe in the private market, they know what they represent, and they are desperate to create an ownership and services market so private interests can become the primary providers of governmental social services.
We now know the Government is well on its way toward implementing this once-hidden master-plan – to disestablish New Zealand’s social safety net, its welfare framework, and to disinvest itself of those governance responsibilities that have long been the burden of almost a century of successive New Zealand governments.
The question lingers… once this radical National Party plan concludes, or exhausts itself, will private social investors embrace the moral-ethos to provide a sustaining safety-net, or will they seek to profit from their investment?
You be the judge.
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Keith Rankin on Currencies: The Rules of the Game applied to Germany and Greece
Analysis by Keith Rankin. This article was also published on Scoop.co.nz.
This week’s financial default of Greece’s government reminds us that we should understand how exchange rate systems are meant to work, and why, more often than not, they don’t work for both technical and political reasons.
“The Rules of the Game” is an expression that relates particularly to the ‘gold standard’ era of the decades before World War 1, and the late 1920s. The fixed exchange rate gold-standard system had been postulated by Scottish philosopher David Hume – in the 1750s – as a fully automatic system of correcting financial imbalances (understood as trade imbalances) between countries. The key idea was that the amount of money a country had was a simple multiple of the amount of coinable gold (and/or silver) held by a country’s banks and Treasury. A country with trade surpluses, it was assumed, would experience a surfeit of money and hence inflation. A country with trade deficits, on the other hand, would experience a shortage of money and hence deflation. The inflation would erode the trade surpluses, and the deflation would correct the trade deficits.
The theory does not work for two reasons. The first is that the presumed direct link between money and prices does not really exist. The second is that the mechanism was spiked by all the governing authorities for two separate reasons, one applying to deficit countries and the other applying to surplus countries.
The Eurozone was meant to work just like this. It’s a fixed currency zone, and did indeed operate in 2001-08 as if it was a self-contained multi-national economy, with balanced trade with the rest of the world. So what should have happened between 2001 and 2008?
Greece and other mainly southern countries came to run trade deficits, and Germany and other mainly northern countries came to run trade surpluses. If the Euro mechanism had worked in an automatic way, Greece would have experienced resulting deflation, and Germany would have experienced resulting inflation. The result of these opposing flations should have meant a trade correction, with Greece exporting more and Germany exporting less, and the Euro financial crisis would never have happened.
The policymakers in Europe might be naïve, but are not that naïve. In the 1920s (and well before), central bankers understood that they had to operate the mechanism manually. (Instead of automatic adjustment, surplus countries lent to deficit countries, disabling the mechanism.) This meant that the central banks had to apply the ‘rules of the game’, from the manual. The idea was that, if this was the 1920s, the Greek Reserve Bank would run a restrictive deflationary monetary policy, and the German Reserve Bank would run a loose inflationary policy. The resulting deflation and inflation, it was believed, would correct the trade imbalances.
The Eurozone was not well set up for this, because there was a European Central Bank that could hardly apply opposing monetary policies simultaneously to different Euro national economies. Thus it was left to the national governments to try to achieve opposing flations through diametrically opposed fiscal policies. Hence the austerity imposed on Greece’s government. That’s the rule of this uniquely twenty-first century variant of the fixed-currency game.
The immediate and obvious problem, however, is that the rules apply equally to the surplus countries, of which Germany is the most important. By the set of rules applied to Greece, Germany was required to do the opposite. Germany was required to run an overtly inflationary policy, to counter the deflationary policy imposed on Greece. Greece followed the rules for five long years. But Germany did not even contemplate following the counter-austerity rules that just might have made the Euro-currency system work.
Why the reluctance to follow the rules? There are two reasons, both of which are well known to macroeconomic historians.
The first reason is that deflation is an ugly beast – as the Greek people have discovered – in that it aggravates rather than heals debt problems. Debts inflate when prices deflate. Unemployment becomes rampant as a result of deflation-induced private sector austerity as well as public sector austerity, creating a debt-deflationary spiral, converting recession into depression.
The second reason is that governments have almost never pursued inflationary policies when under these circumstances. (Japan and Switzerland pursue ineffective inflationary policies today, but under quite different political circumstances to Germany.) There are two main reasons. First, many countries like running trade surpluses, even though the long-run logic of trade surpluses is that you are effectively giving your exports away. These countries simply see persistent trade surpluses as a measure of national economic success, and not as a cause of multi-national systemic instability.
These beliefs that countries should run indefinite trade surpluses rather than pursue balanced trade are given a name: ‘mercantilism’. And this name describes the preferred financial policies (for centuries) in many northern European and Asian countries. Anyway, it is because of these strong mercantilist beliefs that Germany could not contemplate running any ‘uncompetitiveness’ policy designed to create a German trade deficit. Further, inflation is a process that exonerates debt and depreciates middle class saving. Therefore, because German culture emphasises the virtue of saving and the sinfulness of debt, any policy that is intended to achieve inflation, no matter how appropriate that policy might be, is just one step too far for (especially) Lutheran and Calvinist sensibilities.
The rules of the game do not work in the technical sense that monetary conditions do not determine inflation or deflation, as supposed, and unbalanced trade is not a simple consequence of national price levels. But, if they are to be applied, they need to apply even-handedly to all the players of the game. Germany is required to pursue counter-austerity policies at least as much as Greece is required to pursue austerity policies. Further, the rules of the game do work if applied with intuition and imagination. All countries benefit when their people and governments act to prevent the long-run accumulation of both trade deficits and trade surpluses. Indeed the emergence in Europe of negative interest rates is the most hopeful sign of this happening.
Germany has an out, because the Euro system is not a global monetary system, unlike the gold standards of 90 and 110 years ago. This out is for the Eurozone as a whole to become a mercantilist state (a Greater Germany), running indefinite trade surpluses with the rest of the world, in direct competition with China as an exporting state. It means that the Anglo-Latin-African world (rest of the world except Asia) must run ongoing trade deficits, and end up, eventually, something like Greece today.
The rest of the world has one major protection, however, the system of floating exchange rates. This is also a game with its own sets of rules; rules that are routinely broken by the Reserve Banks (central banks) of the world. In this game, countries like New Zealand with persistent external deficits are required to follow monetary policies that will facilitate a depreciation of their currencies. Under these rules, economies with persistent surpluses like China and Singapore and Saudi Arabia and now the Eurozone are required to run monetary policies that will facilitate an exchange rate appreciation. (And internal welfare transfers for less fruitful provinces such as Sichuan, Greece and East Germany.) These are financially balancing policies.
The biggest problem here is that most central banks have been asked to play a different game by their governments; the game of keeping inflation at about two percent. There’s a direct conflict between competing monetary policy objectives. But, even if there was no conflict, the mercantilist countries, for whom the priority is ‘making money’ rather than ‘balanced trade’, would still not follow the rules.
The IMF (International Monetary Fund) itself discusses, on its website, “the broader consequences for the international financial system when some countries run large and persistent current account deficits and others accumulate big surpluses”.
The games political economists believed in are often nice in conception but flawed in practice. If we are going to expect the rules of such games to be followed by some, and especially with the intensity that Greece is being forced to follow the deflation rule, then the rules of the game should be followed by all. The principle of balance is an important one. The rules to achieve balance can be adjusted where necessary, rather than ignored by some and imposed rigidly on others.
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]]>Tony Alexander’s Economic Analysis Sporadic Number 12
Analysis by Tony Alexander – Bank of New Zealand Economist
Headline: Sporadic 12, July 2 2015
[caption id="attachment_3709" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Tony Alexander, BNZ economist.[/caption]
In this issue of Sporadic I take a look at the many factors which are causing economic forecasts to be wrong and repeat earlier warnings that businesses need to explicitly allow for unpredictable operating environment changes.
Plus from this issue on I’m adding back in the section “If I Were A Borrower What Would I Do?” in which I also explicitly allow for unpredictability of interest rates.
Additionally, for over a month I’ve been noting the deterioration in NZ economic conditions and we can see the manifestation of this deterioration in the lower NZD and altered interest rates outlook.
I’ll start having a quick run-through of recent developments – the rather important ones this week being the crystallisation of the Greek default risk, the further deterioration in China’s economic outlook prompting more interest rate cuts there, and of course the extra 5.9% fall in dairy prices back to 2009 levels. It never rains…. – which reminds one of the building risk of a repeat of the 1997/98 El Nino weather pattern.
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Implications of Unforecastability Sporadic 12 I make between 100 and 150 presentations around the country and occasionally overseas each year (in October I will be speaking at numerous functions in London then Hong Kong and Tokyo), and occasionally speak at a conference and sit in on the preceding session. Ahead of speaking at a conference three weeks ago in Tauranga I listened to a speaker invite the audience to make sure they know exactly what it is they are selling to their customers. Applying the question to myself the answer is I sell two things.-Better understanding of what is currently happening in the New Zealand and international economies and why.
-Insight into whether it might be a good idea to make some tweaks in one’s operational and/or strategic plans to allow for things developing which may not match earlier expectations.
What I am not selling is actual forecasts of where things are going to go. That is because forecasts are too often wrong. That is especially so in the post-GFC world where most forecasts are proving off track. Apart from most of us picking the 1% rise in the official cash rate last year, interest rate forecasts have almost all been wrong since 2008. Seven years of failure. Worldwide. All those companies and investors buying into the concept of Peak Oil and oil prices holding above US$100 or $90 a barrel from here on out have wasted billions of dollars of investment in oil extraction from expensive sites, and even investment in expensive alternative energy sources. Bought a house in Invercargill anticipating a boom associated with oil extraction from the Great South Basin? Forget the boom, just enjoy the location, visit Stewart Island and Bluff, and relax in your affordable home reading a book outside beyond 10.00pm on summer nights. In Australia tens of billions of dollars of investments planned on the basis of iron ore and coal prices holding up are being cancelled now that prices have plummeted. On our West Coast (the real one, not the beautiful Waitakeres in Auckland which I visited last weekend) the collapse in coal prices has had a profoundly negative economic impact. Anyone buying dairy assets on the basis of Fonterra’s payout forecasts proving correct will have noted that two years in a row of starting with a payout forecast of $7 have finished with outcomes sharply different – $8.40 then $4.40. None of us can accurately predict the season’s earnings for our single biggest export. Anyone selling US bonds in the middle of last year in expectation of the imminent ending of money printing by the Federal Reserve causing bond yields to soar will have lost money because the yields instead fell! And where are all those people now who predicted Auckland house prices would collapse? Probably still renting, watching home ownership move out of their reach, with their partner asking ‘Are you really sure house prices will fall? Really sure? Still?” And back on interest rates, amidst expectations of accelerating NZ growth and rising inflation our central bank took its official cash rate up from 2.5% in 2010 to 3%. Come early-2011 they cut it back to 2.5% in response to weak data and the second Canterbury earthquake. Last year they raised the rate 1% to 3.5%, now they are again cutting it and the whole 1% increase could very well be wiped out. The European Central Bank did a similar thing in 2011 by raising their cash rate from 1.75% to 2.25%. It now sits at just 0.3%. The Reserve Bank of Australia raised their rate from 3% in 2010 to 4.75%. It is now only 2%. There are many more examples. The point is this – a broader extrapolation of what I wrote over five years ago thankfully in the context of interest rates, and for a couple of decades with regards to exchange rates. You cannot base your business growth and risk management strategies strongly upon a particular set of forecasts proving accurate. You need to explicitly note unpredictability and build two key things into your business. -Resilience. The ability to withstand and quickly respond to unexpected changes. -Customer centrality. Use surveys, loyalty programmes, big data, whatever to get as close to your customers as possible in order to make sure you are actually delivering what they want, know right away when you are off track, and can understand quickly when the broad market has changed. On that last point, if you are waiting for regular data releases from the likes of Statistics NZ, and analysis of such by us economists to tell you what is happening in your customer base, you’ll be out of business soon. It is not just that the data lags are as long, the coverage as patchy, and the data as inaccurate as they have always been, the key change is that in a world of big data you should know well before I possibly can what is happening in your market. In today’s world I need to know what you know already in order to speak about how our economy is faring. But that is an important issue I will come back to another time. For this Sporadic I want to place in front of you some understanding as to why our forecasts are proving really really wrong. Hopefully if you gain understanding you will take the next steps of reinforcing your own intelligence gathering systems, perhaps partnering with a firm which can do that for you, and building resilience into your plans. Post-GFC Behavioural Changes You and I, businesses and governments are more sensitive to prices and debt levels than before the GFC. This affects our willingness to alter how much we spend in response to changes in interest rates, exchange rates, personal incomes, lump sum receipts etc. These are really important coefficients in economic models developed over modern times of the 1980s – 2000s. Our altered behaviour is probably still altering and we do not have enough data to produce accurate, model-generated forecasts of where things like investment, consumption, growth, wages, inflation, interest rates, etc. will go. It may take a generation for things to settle down. China As discussed on and off for three years now, the more we are reliant upon China as a destination for our primary sector exports like dairy, forestry, meat, fish etc., the greater will be the volatility in primary producer incomes, investment, spending, regional economies, and eventually the overall economy. This arises because China tends to have some very large inventory cycles. Everyone buys at once because others are buying, everyone stops stocking up at the same time because others have stopped stocking up. Hence big cycles for iron ore, coal, wool, forest products and of course milk powder. But on top of that, in the case of milk powder at least, no-one seems to know what level stocks are actually at! If you have income in any way dependent upon primary sector exports (rural contracting, rural financial services etc.) you face higher volatility than before and you should adjust for that by lowering your debt to income limits, diversifying across primary sectors, showing a preference for fixed supply contracts… And just to top it off, volatility from China is enhanced by lack of knowledge regarding how China’s transition from export and investment-led to consumption-led growth will go (badly so far), how financial liberalisation and capital flows will affect Chinese asset markets and economic growth rates (witness the current official panic regarding the Shanghai sharemarket boom and bust), and what China’s growth rate and labour market strength really are. The data are rubbish. Booming Global Liquidity The Global Financial Crisis showed us all in the field of economics that we do not well enough understand the links between financial sector expansion and real economic activity. Ahead of the GFC and helping to cause it was a surge in private sector generated credit. Since then we have seen a surge in public sector generated credit as central banks have injected trillions of dollars into their and the world’s financial systems to first ensure liquidity and then boost asset prices, hopefully lower interest rates, hopefully spur investment, hopefully avoid deflation, and hopefully give economic growth enough momentum that things can return to normal. No country has reached that new normal point yet. In the United States money printing has stopped but the key question being asked is whether things are now “normal” enough to allow the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and not have the economy turn down again. After all, that is exactly what has happened twice in New Zealand. Based on our experience you’d give perhaps a 50% chance to Fed rate rises in the coming year being followed quickly by rate cuts from late-2016. The likes of the IMF, Bank for International Settlements and our own Reserve Bank have all recently expressed concern about financial stability stemming from the world being awash in capital and no-one knowing quite where it will pop up the disappear again. It is interesting to note in the context of this capital looking for a home that back in 2001 5% of managed fund assets were in non-core classes like residential property, hedge funds, commodities etc. Now that proportion is 25%. Disruptive Technologies New technology has completely changed the economics of the oil industry forever. The combining of 3D ground imaging, fracking, and horizontal drilling has allowed exploitation of shale oil reserves previously not accessible. The outcome is a structural adjustment downward in oil prices, plus a sharp lift in the speed of future oil supply response to any rise in prices. Companies are still drilling shale wells yet capping them right away. When oil prices rise they will uncap them and run down their in the ground inventory. Compare that with years and billions of dollars needed to develop traditional large oil fields. Uber has disrupted taxis services, Netflix television, Airbnb accommodation and so on. More disruptive technologies will appear and render unprofitable existing service delivery models and maybe even other basic dirty industries like oil extraction. Shocks Yes it seems true that there are more shocks occurring these days such as terrorist attacks, diseases, debt mountain collapses, and so on. But the bigger issue from here on may be shocks combined with a radical reduction in the ability of authorities to mitigate their impact. Interest rates are already low if not zero, or in the case of the ECB deposit rate, negative 0.2%. Government annual deficits are less than over 2008-11 but debt levels are higher. Ability to absorb shocks with deficit spending is reduced. In contrast to the case that a collapse in Greece now would (will) do far less damage than if it had happened in 2010, a new Lehman Brothers Bank collapse could cause more because of this lack of fiscal and monetary buffers. Money printing would attempt to fill the gap along with unwinding of the many macroprudential controls central banks are putting in to do a job previously they used interest rate rises for. The upshot of these many factors affecting the economic environment in which we operate is as noted above. Predictability has declined sharply. You must not tie your business strongly into one particular scenario. You need to embrace flexibility, boost customer information flows, establish an innovation chain and network, and challenge the traditional Kiwi characteristics which we may have been able to survive with in the past but which if they persist will confine us to mediocrity and a volatile primary and tourism sector-dominated economy over the coming century. For insight into those restraining characteristics see Sporadic 5 on NZ Business Culture. http://tonyalexander.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Sporadic-5-April-23-2015.pdf The Past Week Nothing much positive is there?- The ANZ Business Outlook Survey showed a decline in business confidence to a net 2.3% negative – the lowest reading since March 2011. Employment intentions are at a net 15%, a two year low, investment intentions 12%, similar but with both measures still above ten year averages.
- Greece has defaulted, and no-one knows what happens next.
- China’s main sharemarket has fallen 25% the past two weeks and things are so bad interest rates have been cut for the fourth time in about seven months.
- Russia has extended its ban on importing Western food including dairy by another 6 months.
- Westpac’s employment gauge fell to a two year low and wage expectations to a six year low.
- Dairy prices fell another 5.9% to sit 34% below early-March and the lowest since 2009.
You can view the full analysis by Downloading the Sporadic document here (
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Australia radio FiveAA’s Peter Godfrey and EveningReport’s Selwyn Manning deliver Across The Ditch – this week they discuss how New Zealand Government is now fully committed to its privatisation plan to sell off at least 8000 state owned houses to private and overseas interests. They also discuss the likelihood of former NZ PM Helen Clark running for the top UN job.
Across The Ditch – This Week NZ Govt Full-Steam Ahead With Housing Asset Sales + Helen Clark on UN Top Job – Recorded LIVE on 2/07/15.
ITEM ONE The National-led Government is moving to create a law that will allow two Government ministers in its Cabinet the authority to directly sell off state houses. The law in effect blurs the line of political governance and positions the ministers to specifically direct officials and manage the sale process. Critics, like Labour’s housing spokesperson Phil Twyford say the Nationals’ controversial legislation places ministers above the law. Twyford added: “This Bill is a charter for corruption at a time when these Ministers are planning to hock off billions of dollars of public assets. “National wants the power to do dirty deals, flogging off billions of dollars’ worth of land and housing, and it doesn’t want to be bothered with pesky public servants or the rule of law.” The Nationals are struggling to create a market for up to 8000 state houses. It’s preference is to sell off the houses to private interests that register as social housing providers. The Prime Minister John Key and Finance Minister Bill English have been on the Blackfoot this week after admitting they are keen to sell off the state houses to overseas interests. Both Key and English were happy and comfortable with reports detailing how Australian housing provider Horizon has positioned to buy up to 500 New Zealand state houses, to become the landlord of Kiwi state house tenants, and draw their profits back to Australia HQ. Even the ideological agnostic newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, criticised the Government’s encouragement of this purchase as “perilously close to allowing blind ideology to get the better of political common sense”. But blind ideology is what it is. The Nationals know they are a third term government and will never be as strong as they currently are. The opposition remains weak. The Nationals know time may change that balance and they are now desperate sellers. They believe in the private market, and they are hellbent on selling off state owned housing assets, desperate to create an ownership and services market, and for private interests to become the primary providers of traditional state controlled services. Put simply this National-led Government is now well on its way toward implementing its plan to disestablish New Zealand’s social safety net, its welfare framework, and to disinvest itself of governance responsibilities to this country’s peoples… Responsibilities that have long been the burden of a century of successive New Zealand governments. The question is, once this radical National Party plan concludes, or exhausts itself, will private social investors be prepared to place the morality that comes with responsibility above profit? ITEM TWO A few weeks ago I mentioned on our Across The Ditch bulletin that former New Zealand prime minister, and current United Nations Development Programme head, Helen Clark, looked well positioned to campaign for the top job at the United Nations. This week, while in New Zealand, Helen Clark hinted that she is interested in the position. Current UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s tenure concludes in the end of 2016. Helen Clark told the NZ Herald: “Well it is still relatively early days. The Secretary-General is three and half years into a five-year term and normally the issue wouldn’t be resolved until well into the fifth year so let’s say there’s a lot of shadow boxing at the moment.” Meanwhile New Zealand’s permanent representative or ambassador to the UN takes over this week the presidency of the UN Security Council. Over this side of the ditch, the Government has been criticised for being asleep at the wheel since it was voted onto the UN Security Council. Perhaps it has listened. In the past few days our Foreign Minister has been positioned as a point man in the latest attempts to get the leaders of Israel and Palestine to agree to re enter peace talks. Across The Ditch broadcasts live on Thursdays on FiveAA.com.au and webcasts on EveningReport.nz, LiveNews.co.nz, and ForeignAffairs.co.nz.]]>Jane Kelsey: Another week, another Wikileak – time to wave the white flag on TISA secrecy
Source: Professor Jane Kelsey.
[caption id="attachment_1844" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Professor Jane Kelsey.[/caption]
Less than a month ago, Wikileaks posted 17 documents leaked from the secretive negotiations for a Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). New Zealand is part of the group of countries calling themselves ‘the Really Good Friends of Services’ who are trying to negotiate the deal.
The process is taking place outside the World Trade Organisation in a move to bypass opposition to expanding ‘trade in services’ rules that favour transnational corporations and constrain governments’ right to regulate in the national interest.
Today, Wikileaks has posted recent texts from April and May 2015, including the proposed core text and annexes on domestic regulation and transparency, and provided expert analysis of those texts (wikileaks.org/tisa/).
In her analysis of the core text, University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey noted that the rules aim to tighten the handcuffs on the freedom of governments to regulate their services, and the way they are constructed is clearly designed to export them back into the WTO.
TISA is a companion to the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, with even more extreme secrecy conditions – in TISA, background documents are to remain secret for five years beyond the agreement coming into force of negotiations being abandoned. For the TPPA the secrecy hangover applies for four years.
‘There is clearly no tolerance for this secrecy within the countries participating in TISA. The steady stream of leaks makes a mockery of the confidentiality memorandum, and they seem set to continue.’
‘We are seeing a repeat of what has happened with previous agreements, including the TPPA and the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.’
The leaks of ACTA ultimately led the European Parliament to demand the release of the draft text, and in April 2010 the ministers, including New Zealand’s Trade Minister Tim Groser, agreed.
Indeed, Minister Groser said ‘New Zealand has supported the release of the negotiating text, in response to strong public interest, and I am pleased that we have now reached agreement with the other participants in this negotiation. This will make the ACT negotiations more accessible to the public and I hope that it will help the process of reaching a final agreement’.
The TISA negotiations are due to resume in Geneva next week. Professor Kelsey urged the participants to ‘face the reality that these leaks will continue, wave the white flag of surrender, and release the negotiating documents for public scrutiny – as we would expect to happen if the talks were taking place within the WTO.’
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]]>byWADE…terror training is beautiful…
like the biggest ever in the UK recently – certainly makes me feel safer…i know that the more training there is the better the chances that radicals will be killed and every dead radical brightens the world just that little more like blowing away another small cloud from in front of the sun… You can follow WADE (from a safe digital distance) at www.facebook.com/bywade or look at more stuff and buy things in obscene volumes to show how successful and cool you are at www.iammenotyou.com…]]>
NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for July 1, 2015
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 8 media release snippets and 4 links for the day of Wednesday 1st July.
Top stories in the current news cycle and at Parliament includes the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill (a new law that will give control of Ninety Mile Beach in the Far North to iwi) passing it’s second reading, the postponement of a decision on the future of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter and its 800 staff for a month till 3 August, and news that the average house price in Auckland has now passed $800,000 for the first time.
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
Free Healthcare For Under 13’s: From today all New Zealand children aged under 13 will be eligible to access free GP visits at any time of the day or night seven days a week, as well as free prescriptions.
Trains fuel debate: The National Government shouldn’t drag New Zealand backwards by replacing its climate friendly electric trains with carbon-polluting diesel trains, the Green Party said today.
Healthcare Affecting Suicide Rates : Regional New Zealand continues to suffer from a suicide rate comparatively higher than in cities and the government must take some of the blame for cutting health services, says New Zealand First. “Its investment approach and postcode healthcare system has left regional New Zealand with the barest minimum of mental health services,” said New Zealand First Health Spokesperson Barbara Stewart.
* Business
TruScreen Share Purchase Plan Exceeds Target: Kiwi cancer diagnostic company TruScreen (TRU) has surpassed its target of $1million of capital to be raised via a Share Purchase Plan (SPP) for New Zealand resident shareholders. TruScreen has developed a unique screening system for cervical cancer, closed its Share Purchase Plan on 26 June, 2015 with the company electing to accept oversubscriptions due to its popularity.
Real Estate Mobile App Gains Popularity: The highly competitive property market has sparked a surge in mobile app usage. Not only has the total number of Realestate.co.nz mobile app users grown at a much faster rate than other platforms in the last twelve months, but the average mobile app user visits the property portal significantly more often than they did the same time last year.
* Primary Industries
Sheep Unloaded In Mexico: The Ministry for Primary Industries has confirmed the 45,000 sheep and 3,200 cattle, exported to Mexico are now at a holding farm following their 15-day journey from Timaru. A total of 191 sheep and one cow died – 0.42% and 0.03% respectively of the sheep and cattle in the shipment. This compares favourably with the average mortality of 0.71% in 40 Australian live sheep shipments last year.
Irradiated Tomatoes Make Their Way To NZ: The first shipment of irradiated Australian tomatoes of 2015 is due to arrive in New Zealand this week, prompting a reminder to retailers and the hospitality sector to ensure their produce is clearly labelled as ‘irradiated’.
LINKS OF THE DAY
DAWN OF A NEW ERA FOR EDUCATION: Today marks a new era for teachers as the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand opens its doors, says Education Minister Hekia Parata. Read more here:http://www.education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/specific-initiatives/education-council
NZ SIGN LANGUAGE FUND RECEIVES $900,000 GRANT: Disability Issues Minister Nicky Wagner today announced the first 14 grants for community projects from the newly established New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Fund. For more information click here: www.odi.govt.nz/what-we-do/nzsl/nzsl-fund
VISITOR ARRIVALS KEEP BIOSECURITY STAFF ON TOES: Burgeoning visitor arrivals in May have seen biosecurity staff intercept a range of unusual and potentially alarming risk items at New Zealand airports and ports. Read about declaring risk items when you arrive in New Zealand: http://mpigovtnz.cwp.govt.nz/travel-and-recreation/arriving-in-new-zealand/items-to-declare/
PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE: Canterbury health officials are urging people to get vaccinated before the worst of the flu season arrives. For more information go to: www.fightflu.co.nz
And that’s our sampling of the day that was on Wednesday 1st July 2015.
Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest. –]]>
Going backwards off the rails
NewsroomPlus.com
Plans to purchase new diesel train units and to de-electrify the rail line from Palmerston North to Hamilton seem about as sensible as walking backwards down a train line.
Contributed by: Olexander Barnes
In front of the cenotaph next to Parliament today a group of unionists, politicians including Green Party MPs Gareth Hughes and Jan Logie, NZ First MP Denis O’Rourke, Greater Wellington Regional Council member Paul Bruce and members of Generation Zero gathered to voice their protest against the government and Kiwirail’s plans.
Around 50-70 people gathered at the start of the protest, they brought 5 empty oil barrels symbolizing the diesel.
The protest started with speeches from members of RMTU (xx and Generation Zero on the steps leading up to Parliament grounds who said that this was a step backwards, as well as saying that there is still a large amount of potential to boost the amount of freight being transported by rail, which would take trucks off the roads. This would have the double effect of reducing emissions and freeing up the roads.
Its out of the bag now, the plastic bag dilemma
NewsroomPlus.com
They were first patented in 1965, but really only gained popularity in the mid 1980’s.
Now there are between 500 billion and 1 trillion produced annually and New Zealanders uses approximately 1 billion of them each year. Yet only around 5% are recycled. Most are simply discarded with billions ending up in the world’s oceans, where it is a major killer of ocean life. This is the seemingly humble plastic bag.
There is a movement in New Zealand at the moment to try and limit the use of single use plastic bags.
- That an estimated 5.75 trillion pieces of plastic enter the world’s oceans each year.
- New Zealanders use approximately 1 billion plastic bags each year.
- The average plastic bag is only used for 12 minutes before it is discarded.
- Several countries have already banned or restricted plastic bag use – these include Rwanda and Bangladesh.
- Golden Bay managed to go plastic bag free in 2005 but relapsed in 2008.
NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for June 30, 2015
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 4 media release snippets and 5 links for the day of Tuesday 30th June.
Top stories in the current news cycle, aside from the backdrop of a possible Greek tragedy, include a small raft of Government policy changes that come into effect tomorrow (children under 13 to benefit from a free GP/pharmacy scheme, drivers pay less to licence their vehicles, and funding boosts for palliative care and paid parental leave), an Otago University study has come out identifying a relatively high but preventable incidence of rickets in some parts of New Zealand, and the issue of state house sales continues to generate heated debate. SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
Suspected Supermarket Duopoly: New Zealand First is calling for an inquiry into the true state of supermarket competition in New Zealand as the high price of milk hurts families and households.
* Business
NZ Dollar Makes Recovery: The New Zealand dollar advanced overnight following a knee-jerk decline yesterday after no agreement was reached between Greece and its creditors at the weekend.
Revised Fees Sustainable For Airport: Wellington International Airport’s revised landing fees mean the gateway’s returns fall within an acceptable range, the Commerce Commission has confirmed.
* Primary Industries
Productivity Growth Must Be “Unlocked”: Declining growth in public R&D spending, an ‘enabling’ policy environment and access to technology are three of the critical factors which must be addressed in order to ‘unlock’ future productivity growth in the New Zealand food and agribusiness sector, according to a newly-released report.
LINKS OF THE DAY
ONLINE TOOL TO MONITOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN NZ LAUNCHED: The Human Rights Commission launched an online tool to monitor the Government’s human rights record today, the first of its kind in the world. Explore the NPA online tool: http://npa.hrc.co.nz/#/
AUDITOR-GENERAL’S PLAN: The Auditor-General’s office plays an important part in strengthening accountability, integrity, and transparency in the public sector. Read more about the 2015/2016 Annual Plan here:http://www.oag.govt.nz/2015/annual-plan LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY: Labour productivity increased 1.4 percent in the year ended March 2014, Statistics New Zealand said today. For more information about these statistics:http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/economic_indicators/productivity/ProductivityStatistics_HOTP78-14.aspx
DWELLING CONSENTS DECREASE IN CANTERBURY: Building consents for new dwellings in Canterbury have decrease. “Canterbury dwelling consents more than tripled between 2011 and 2014, but have been decreasing since then,” Statistics NZ business indicators manager Neil Kelly said. Click here to view the statistics:http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/industry_sectors/Construction/BuildingConsentsIssue_HOTPMay15.aspx
OLDER DEMOGRAPHIC ON THE RISE: The 65+ age group nearly doubled in number between 1981 and 2013 – from 309,795 to 607,032 people – according to 2013 Census results released by Statistics New Zealand today. The 65+ age group increased from 9.9 percent to 14.3 percent of the population in that period, and is projected to grow to 23.8 percent in another 30 years. Click here to view statistics: http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-65-plus.aspx
And that’s our sampling of the day that was on Tuesday 30th June 2015.
Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest. –]]>Jane Kelsey: Minister Groser’s attack shows criticism of TPPA is hitting home
Source: Professor Jane Kelsey.
[caption id="attachment_1844" align="alignleft" width="150"] Professor Jane Kelsey.[/caption]
‘When the minister of trade feels it necessary to publicly attack critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement with such vitriol, it shows our arguments are really hitting home’, said University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey in response to a speech today by Trade Minister Tim Groser to the US NZ Council.
‘It is especially insulting to those health professionals, lawyers, parliamentarians, local government politicians, and Maori leaders, as well as communities all around the country who have expressed grave concerns about part or all of the TPPA,’ Professor Kelsey noted.
‘It would be much more constructive for the Minister to engage with their genuine concerns’.
Professor Kelsey observed that the minister’s bottom line of comprehensive liberalisation on all agricultural products, phased in over time, has been reduced to requiring that dairy is not excluded from the deal.
‘The Minister clearly knows he will have very little, if anything, to show in terms of market access for dairy. That is already being rationalised as the first steps to a future bounty, and that New Zealand can’t afford not to be at the table’.
‘We need to be able to assess for ourselves whether we can actually afford to be at the table. The Australian Productivity Commission last week called for transparency and a genuinely independent cost benefit analysis before their government signs up to any TPPA deal. We need the same’.
Professor Kelsey said she has no doubt that some of the worst aspects of previously leaked texts have been mitigated. ‘That is to be expected, both because governments put their most extreme positions on the table and then claim they have compromised, and because of the severe backlash against leaked proposals from the many communities who would be affected.’
‘It is disingenuous for the Minister to dismiss concerns about the TPPA. We know from the recently leaked investment chapter and the so-called transparency annex on the activities of agencies like Pharmac that there will be serious consequences. They may not be immediate, but they will be very real’.
New Zealanders also have the right to know the options the Minister will have to choose between and the government’s position to date on those matters in the negotiations.
One outstanding issue that will have major impacts on New Zealand’s health budget and access to affordable medicines is the period of data exclusivity for biologics medicines.
Equally, US demands that New Zealand ratifies the UPOV 1991 Convention* is part of the Waitangi tribunal claim lodged just last week. Maori are entitled to know where the government stands.
‘To claim this would disclose New Zealand’s negotiating position is sheer nonsense. The other parties know what our government has argued. Yet the secrecy agreement they have signed means New Zealanders will not have that information for at least another four years.’
* International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants
]]>Housing NZ reports: State housing being redefined across Canterbury
New warm, dry, healthy homes are being built right across greater Christchurch.
The Canterbury earthquakes damaged more than 95% of Housing New Zealand’s 6200 properties across the region but also created a rare opportunity to repair and improve existing stock and to build hundreds of new homes.
The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Programme is charged with repairing up to 5000 earthquake-damaged properties by the end of 2015 but its other major activity is the construction of up to 700 new homes, also by the end of this year.
To date, more than 200 new homes have been completed.
Housing New Zealand has many build partners who also employ their own contractors and staff to help build these new homes.
All up, an estimated 1000 people are working on Housing New Zealand homes right across the region.
These new properties have all the features of a modern home – double glazing, insulation, curtains and other properties that keep them warm, dry and healthy for tenants and their families.
From Riccarton to Richmond, Somerfield to St Albans, Papanui to Phillipstown, these new homes have been welcomed by tenants and their families.
Here is a gallery, showcasing just some of the new properties, Canterbury tenants now call home.
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NZ announces Cyclone Pam tourism recovery package
New Zealand foreign minister, Murray McCully. Image courtesy of Scoop.co.nz.[/caption]
Foreign Minister Murray has announced a $26 million package, aimed at helping the tourism sector in Vanuatu recover following Cyclone Pam.
“Tourism accounts for 20 per cent of the Vanuatu economy and employs 26 per cent of the labour force. Getting the tourism sector back up a running is vital to Vanuatu’s long-term recovery from Cyclone Pam,” Mr McCully says.
“The funding announced today is split into two distinct parts. A $10 million package which will help restore confidence in Vanuatu as a tourist destination and a $16 million programme of infrastructure redevelopment, focused on the waterfront and cruise ship precinct in Port Vila.
“The tourism component will focus on increasing tourism income and employment opportunities through an international marketing campaign, raising standards, and developing new tourism products and services.
“Our support for the redevelopment of the waterfront will greatly improve the cruise ship visitor experience and better connect the cruise ship precinct with local tourism operators and markets.
“This investment will also help ensure these vital facilities are able to cope with growing arrival numbers and are more resilient to future storms and extreme weather events.
“This recovery package is in addition to the $5 million in funding for humanitarian and early recovery work provided by New Zealand in the three and a half months since the cyclone hit. It will also be supplemented with other support in areas such as education, water and sanitation once Vanuatu presents its overall recovery plan,” Mr McCully says.
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New Zealand Dance upcoming tour to showcase new Kiwi talent
MIL OSI – Source: New Zealand Dance
Audiences are invited to discover new Kiwi dance talent when four very different choreographers present their brilliant new works on Footnote New Zealand Dance.
These fresh works from New Zealand choreographers Anna Bate, Natalie Maria Clark, Jared Hemopo, and Katharina Waldner (who returns from the UK for this season) explore the physical language of hip-hop, the rigors of modern daily life, sensory perception and the ever-shifting lens of history.
Opening in Wellington in July, the debut of these new short works couldn’t come at a better time for Footnote New Zealand Dance as the company looks forward to celebrating its 30th anniversary in late August.
“One of the roles of our NOW season, and of the company more generally, is to give opportunities for talent to grow and to innovate. The leaders of the future may be in our studio right now” says General Manager Richard Aindow. “These brilliant, vibrant works were exactly what we were looking for during the selection process of choreographers for NOW 2015, so we can’t wait to put this programme of four short works in front of audiences for them to discover and to enjoy.”
NOW 2015 tours to three centres nationwide, Wellington, Auckland, and Hamilton, opening in Wellington Thursday 09 July and closing 19 July in Hamilton at the Meteor. For ticketing and other information visit footnote.org.nz
– –]]>Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup: Dangers for democracy in today’s cyber bullying law
By Dr Bryce Edwards.
[caption id="attachment_4808" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Dr Bryce Edwards.[/caption]
Every MP, bar one, will vote this afternoon for a piece of legislation that seeks to protect those being “harmed” by material on the internet. But the Harmful Digital Communications Bill is being widely criticised as dangerous in the way it seeks to regulate online activities. So is online democracy under threat?
Could Patrick Gower be taken off the internet? Of course this is a ridiculous question – with many possible replies – yet it’s also a useful question posed by opponents of new cyber-bullying legislation that will be passed today in Parliament. It was posed on Twitter by the biggest critic of the new bill, blogger No Right Turn (@norightturnnz), who tweeted to Gower “Did you know that if the harmful Digital Communications bill passes, your job will be illegal?” – see my blog post, Top tweets about the Harmful Digital Communications Bill.
Essentially the argument made by critics is that the new laws against cyber bullying have the potential for eroding free speech online, especially threatening the expression of views that challenge the powerful or the corrupt. The No Right Turn blogger says that the new legislation being passed today includes criminal provisions which means the new law could “effectively ban serious TV journalism” – see: Much worse than I thought.
Here’s the elaboration: “the law considers radio and television to be “electronic communications”, and hence “digital communications”. Which means that when Paddy Gower exposes some politician’s misdeeds on 3News, with the intent of informing the public so they can end his career, he could go to jail for it. This law isn’t just a threat to the internet – its a threat to our democracy”.
In another post, the blogger uses the example of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics, and suggests that “if Hager had published them online rather than in hardcopy, he could be facing jail under this law” – see: National wants to jail people who expose politicians. No Right Turn says “the law is overbroad, vague, and criminalises speech which any reasonable person would wish to see protected”.
Such arguments are not new. In the Herald last year, Chris Barton put forward the same argument: “Take, for example, someone posting information that shows a politician is corrupt. It’s certainly going to harm the politician, but in doing so also provides a significant value to society. Yet under the bill, it’s the poster, not the politician that who be prosecuted” – see: Harmful digital talk and unintended consequences.
Media under threat
Potential threats are increasingly being acknowledged by those in the media, who see significant unintended consequences of the legislation for newspapers and wider media. Today’s Press editorial condemns the new legislation as being a muddle that could cause great harm – see: Digital communications statute a threat to free speech.
The editorial points to woolly definitions in the legislation, especially the subjectivity of what causes “harm” and “offence”, and it suggests that the new rules could be used to inhibit free speech about religion. It also complains that the Government has ignored the Law Commission’s recommendation to exempt mainstream broadcasters and publishers from the scope of the rules.
The must-read analysis comes from TV3’s executive producer of The Nation, Tim Watkin – see: Je ne suis pas Charlie say NZ MPs: eroding free speech. He says “exercising your right to free speech in New Zealand is just about to get a bit harder”.
Summing up the problem, Watkin writes that the legislation is well intended, but “its attempt to tackle bullying is so cack-handed and ill-drafted, that it may undermine journalists’ ability to critique, cartoonists’ ability to lampoon and satirists’ ability to just take the mick”.
What is “offensive” anyway?
The new law does have very good intentions. It seeks to deal with some of the horrible, damaging and unfair material that is published online. But how do we decide what is unfair? Whenever the state seeks to determine what should and shouldn’t be published, there is difficulty deciding where to draw the line.
Often the concept and criteria used is that which is deemed “offensive”. But what happens when “one person’s obscenity is another’s work of art”? Professor of Law, Ursula Cheer, looks at such questions in her very thorough and thoughtful blog post, Harmful Digital Communications Bill: panacea or problem?
Among her concerns are that, although the new law isn’t likely to lead to widespread censorship, there could still be a chilling effect on free speech. For example, she says that it might be easier for some internet providers to simply take down any material that is complained about, rather than go through the processes of determining the validity of a complaint. She also points out that the police will have wide discretion on whether to prosecute or not. You can see Cheer’s five-minute interview on The Nation: Law Professor Ursula Cheer.
Also questioning the concept of “offence” is the head of research with the New Zealand Initiative, Eric Crampton, who says that it would be good if everyone is nicer in society, but there are problems when the state makes it mandatory – see: Communications Bill aims to make everybody nice.
Alternatively, shouldn’t the Government and authorities actually concentrate on using existing laws and mechanisms for dealing with what is offensive or harmful? This is the question put in Chris Barton’s excellent feature, A digital bill that’s far too broad. He puts forward many criticisms of the new legislation and suggests that some of the alternatives are already working well.
The only MP likely to vote against the controversial legislation is Act MP David Seymour, and he argues that there are other means that could be used to improve the situation. For example in Nicholas Jones’s article, Cyberbully law ‘too vague’, Seymour says, “Loopholes could be closed by amending existing laws, he said, including extending the intimate covert filming provisions in the Crimes Act to cover “revenge porn”.”
Political populism from nearly all parties
[caption id="attachment_5030" align="alignleft" width="150"]
Hon. Judith Collins MP.[/caption]
The new legislation has been introduced alongside the so-called Roastbusters controversy. Because of this, a “law and order” populism has pervaded much of the debate over the issue. Unsurprisingly, all the parliamentary parties – except for Act – are backing the legislation. Although originally introduced by Judith Collins, it is now being pushed though Parliament by Amy Adams, and you can see her 12-minute interview about it on The Nation – see: Justice Minister Amy Adams. For a transcript of the interview, see: Amy Adams defends anti-cyber bullying bill as critics say free speech will be criminalised.
Labour is also voting in favour of the new bill, despite having “grave” concerns about it – see Daisy Hudson’s Controversial cyberbullying law one step closer.
Why are so many politicians supporting what they know is poor legislation? According to Tim Watkin, “New Zealand MPs are so keen to be seen to be “doing something” about cyber-bullying that they are about to pass a poor piece of law that will do something terrible”. He says “it’s either stupid politics or cynical politics” – see: Je ne suis pas Charlie say NZ MPs: eroding free speech.
Libertarians of the right have been relatively silent on the problems and dangers of the bill. But blogger David Farrar has registered his concern – see:
Harmful Digital Communications goes to committee stage, and Cameron Slater has his dissenting position – see: Is the National’s Harmful Digital Communications Bill their own Electoral Finance Act?, and I have many things to say that will always “harm” someone.
Finally, MPs have tried to bolster support for the new clampdown by airing some of the tweets they have received. These are read out by the politicians in Aimee Gulliver’s MPs read mean tweets. But are they really that offensive? One tweeter, @Dianne_Khan responded to say, “Just watched the mean Tweets thing, and many of them were just rhetoric, not mean. There are plenty of worse out there, often by MPs!” and “What would interest me also is hearing others read the mean Tweets that some of those MPs have sent, particularly Ms Collins”.
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]]>NewsRoom Digest: Top NZ News Items for June 29, 2015
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 5 media release snippets and 3 links for the day of Monday 29th June.
Top stories in the current news cycle include Civil Defence saying a state of emergency remains after about 60,000 hectares of farm land has been affected by this month’s flooding in Whanganui and Daryl Evans, of Mangere Budgeting Services, saying if state houses are sold to an overseas-based organisation there will be uncertainty for tenants if that organisation can’t provide security of tenure.
NEWSROOM_PLUS extra – : Follow the links below for an interesting read about flag changes and selling state houses to Australia:
http://newsroomplus.com/2015/06/28/flag-1/
http://newsroomplus.com/2015/06/29/social-housing-1/
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
US/NZ Forum Kicks Off: Foreign Minister Murray McCully today welcomed the start of the US/NZ Partnership Forum which is taking place in Auckland this week. “The Forum has a long history of bringing together a range of participants from multiple sectors to discuss the relationship between New Zealand and the United States,” Mr McCully says.
Tauranga Special Housing: Two Special Housing Areas (SHAs) with the potential for 210 new homes in Tauranga were approved today by Cabinet, Building and Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith has announced.
* Business Kiwi Dollar Falls: The New Zealand dollar fell to a fresh five-year low as investors exited riskier assets in favour of safe havens as Greece and its creditors failed to reach agreement at the weekend ahead of a looming debt repayment deadline tomorrow.
Pushpay Eligible For Grant: Pushpay Holdings has confirmed it is eligible for a $960,000 research and development grant from Callaghan Innovation that will help mobile payments app developer scale up the platform that allows US church congregations to easily make donations.
* Primary Industries
Under-Utilisation Of Facilities Cost Meat Company: Blue Sky Meats, whose shares trade on the Unlisted platform, reported a 36 percent slide in annual profit, which it blamed on the under-utilisation of its processing facilities.
LINKS OF THE DAY
ENVIRONMENT WEBSITE WADES DEEPER INTO WATER DATA: Environmental monitoring website Land Air Water Aotearoa (LAWA) is expanding its repertoire, offering more data about New Zealand’s most valuable natural resource, water. LAWA now displays real-time data on river flow, groundwater and rainfall levels at over 1,000 sites around New Zealand. See more here: ww.lawa.org.nz
HIGH RATES OF UNEMPLOYMENT AMONGST DISABLED PEOPLE: Tracking Equalities at Work research released by the Human Rights Commission yesterday shows that New Zealand’s disabled population has nearly double the level of unemployment than non-disabled people. Disability Rights Commissioner, Paul Gibson says that it is a human right to work and clearly New Zealand needs to do better in this area. Read more here: www.hrc.co.nz
BUSINESSNZ FORECAST INDICATES SLOW ECONOMIC GROWTH: New Zealand’s economic fundamentals are pointing in the right direction but growth is slowing, according to the BusinessNZ Planning Forecast for the June 2015 quarter. Download the BusinessNZ Planning Forecast here: http://www.businessnz.org.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/105673/Forecast-June-2015.pdf
And that’s our sampling of the day that was on Monday 29th June 2015.
Brought to EveningReport by Newsroom Digest. –]]>NZTA Report: Final pre-cast concrete segment is poured for the Waterview tunnel
Key facts about the East Tamaki Pre-Cast Factory Components produced:
- 24,000 tunnel lining segments
- 2,406 culvert units
- 279 bridge beams
- 95,000 cubic metres of concrete
- 3,500 tonnes of conventional reinforcing
- 4,500 tonnes of steel fibre reinforcing
Anatomy of a ‘housing scoop’
NewsroomPlus.com
Credit where credit’s due. TV3’s crew on The Nation do a great job in helping set the news agenda for the week – essentially part of their remit given the nature of the news cycle, and ditto TVNZ’s Q+A.
There is barely anything that brings a smile to the face of a current affairs reporter more quickly than finding any form of hand grenade with the pin still intact. One of The Nation’s weapons – you could never call him a hidden weapon – is that master of the staccato, Pattrick (Paddy) Gower. The delivery of another ‘exclusive’ on Saturday received the full treatment, or at least as much of a treatment as could be squeezed into a five minute scoop.
The premise of the scoop about the Government’s flagship policy on state housing, was sound enough.
Paddy: “It can now be revealed the houses could be sold to [pause for dramatic effect, but with no apparent exclamation..] Australia”.
If you read the full transcript below, as compiled by NewsRoom_Plus, you’ll be able to follow the careful paint-by-numbers crafting of the scoop, along with some syllogisms along the way:
- First the tease – a potential buyer for state house has emerged.
. - It wants to sell to “private providers”. Are charities private providers? Is it right to use the word corporation for a charity?
. - Amp up the angle from a single, successful and well-regarded Australian charity looking at the process Treasury is running to sell housing stock – that is, the deeper context that five minutes can’t cope with – to ask “Will you allow Australians to buy New Zealand state houses?”
. - Validate there is an interested ‘buyer’ called Horizon Housing.
. - Validate the Government is “interested in doing business with them”. For emphasis and effect note that this isn’t just business time, it’s “serious business”.
. - Bend the logic just a tad and intimate the houses are “going offshore”. Mere semantics.
. - Underscore and get the ball rolling on the ‘wrongness’ of this with throws to Andrew Little, and Metiria Turei. With Winston Peters to follow as added punch.
. - Set up an antagonist or some form of friction, if there is one, for good measure – Iwi aren’t playing ball, cut to soundbite that indicates the view that the market value of problematic houses – remembering Mr English says it’s meant to be about the tenants most of all, not the houses – would, as a starting point, be zero.
. - Flag the importance of the news with two key words to leave the audience with … “extremely controversial”, before trailing off with factual details of the process that’s underway.
No ripples, no story
When a story like this ‘breaks’, it’s generally a clarion signal to arms for political parties and other opposition groups, whereas the rush to release press statements at the weekend, and today, went in a moderate trickle like this:
Saturday 27 June
- 10.39 am – Green Party – Don’t sell our state houses to the Aussies, Mr English!
- 10.45 am – NZ First – National to put State Houses and taxpayer dollars in overseas hands
- 10.52 am – Labour Party – English wants to flog state houses to Aussies
Sunday 28 June
- 10.05 am – State Housing Action Network -Shameless Desperation in proposed State House selloff to Australia
Monday 29 June
- 6.42 am – State Housing Action Network – Australians warned off buying New Zealand state houses
- 12.46 pm – NZ First – State house sell-off to benefit Australia’s less well off
Having also kept a close eye on the Government’s planned sale of state houses, it’s easy to imagine that the Government might well have welcomed yet another potential source of confusion and diversion entering the picture. And the Prime Minister’s interview with Morning Report’s Guyon Espiner this morning – transcript below – wasn’t about adding lots of clarity.
After all who doesn’t like a story that gets turned into a minor beat up, not to mention stirring up some faux anti-Australian cards that could play into your hand?
Is there a voice of reason in this?
Scott Figenshow, the US-born executive director of Community Housing Aotearoa (CHA), was a go-to for radio at RNZ and Newstalk today and had some good points worth extrapolating:
- If there is going to be any twisting of the idea of organisations with international links it’s true that Habitat for Humanity and the Salvation Army aren’t unique to New Zealand
- The difference is both of those organisations aren’t unknown, overseas providers – they have long histories here of delivering community outcomes
- The Salvation Army signalled they want to work in partnerships not alone, nor did they ask to be pushed out
- The process has some months to run yet and people should read documents like the Social Housing Reform Programme (SHRP) Market Information and Feedback Discussion Document of 17 June out of Treasury to get up to speed
- Anyone bagging the Iwi Chairs Forum stance on a nil-consideration transfer for housing stock, just doesn’t get the investment ‘gap’ to take “old, cold and mouldy” housing and convert it to better housing and better communities
- There are two loopholes that are being ignored in the current Community Housing regulations – one of them is the door is being left open to organisations that aren’t Not-for Profit or Not-for Dividend entities (something Horizons Housing is) and the door hasn’t been shut to organisations not based in New Zealand (something Horizons Housing can’t see it is.. yet).
Figenshow can be a good advocate. He’s dead right that the state of the ‘third sector’ of housing in New Zealand – state housing, social housing, community housing – is the poor cousin not just in terms of funding, but the way that the regulatory and policy environment has been stop-start, start-stop, and then – now supposedly – stop-start.
Unfortunately insisting that the environment we’re in needs to be spoken about as ‘transfers’ not ‘sales’ isn’t going to win the dominant narrative stakes as theyr’e currently being framed – either by soundbite-seeking pollies or by the media.
Figenshow and others in the sector, many of whom aren’t always being put on the airwaves, know full well too that for a long time Australia’s social housing environment has been seen as a virtual nirvana compared to the entirely sub-scale, stop-start nature of things here.
Has Government – successive governments by the way – shown a lack of clarity. Yep, but that doesn’t mean the shortcomings sit just with the politicians.
It’s fair of Figenshow to object to the risk of “replication” if a Horizon Housing did enter the ‘market’, but outside of rare urban exemplars like Wellington City Council’s housing programme, what is there that is in danger of being replicated at scale? (Not including, which is the real tragedy in all this, Housing NZ).
Let’s not be disingenuous
It would be disingenuous to deny the fact that organisations like Horizon Housing have a strong record of success. It would be ignorant not to acknowledge that they are the very organisations that Housing New Zealand and the community housing sector have been ‘reverse scoping’ almost constantly in recent years, including trips organised with the help of the New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development.
It can’t be a surprise, let alone a shock, that the door might swing this way.
All of which makes it ironic that another of this Government’s major chess pieces – the Minister of Everything, Steven Joyce – just happens to be across at a meeting with our CER partner Australia today.
What’s he doing in Sydney, apart (I can just hear Paddy Gower saying this) from not hiring expensive cars for the day?
Well he’s attending at speaking at none other than the Infrastructure Partnerships Australia Major Projects Symposium, with the express purpose of promote New Zealand as an investment destination. And if you’re looking to locate just how this is relevant to housing and social housing in particular just go to http://www.infrastructure.org.au/Search.aspx and enter the word housing.
It’s a sure bet that the next time Messrs Key, English and Joyce – oh, yes and Minister for Social Housing Paula Bennett – get together, there will be plenty of notes to swap about applying international lessons to providing social housing for low-income New Zealanders.
“Social bonds, social housing and Serco sounds like a good combination doesn’t it?”
Contributed by Stephen Olsen – in recent times before joining NewsRoom_Plus, Stephen worked for both CHA and the Australasian Housing Institute in dual part-time positions as a communications manager and publications editor. While working at CHA he designed the Doorways2Housing campaign and co-produced a video production about housing in West Auckland called the Outrageous Bus Tour.
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TV3 – The Nation – Saturday 27 June
The Government appears to be changing its approach to its flagship policy of selling off state houses. It is now talking about leasing properties rather than selling them to community providers. And there’s interest from at least one overseas player – the Australian non-profit Horizon Housing.
Lisa Collins: This year we’ve been keeping a close eye on the Government’s planned sale of state houses. That took another step this week as Treasury held meetings around the country with potential buyers, gauging the level of interest and getting feedback. From those meetings The Nation has learnt two things – the Government is radically changing its approach and a new potential buyer has emerged. Patrick Gower with this exclusive report.
Gower voiceover (visuals driving by state houses): New Zealand state houses – the Government has put them on the block. It wants to sell a lot to private providers because it believes they’ll do a better job. A big idea put forward in this year’s State of the Nation speech.
Footage of John Key delivering speech: So we’re taking a very different approach to provide quality social housing for New Zealanders who need it.
Gower voiceover (visuals including Sydney Opera Hose, Australian flag): A different approach is right. The buyers were initially meant to be community groups like the Salvation Army. But get this. This is really different. It can now be revealed the houses could be sold to.. Australia.
Gower to Bill English: Will you allow Australians to buy New Zealand state houses?
Bill English, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance: Yeah that’s possible.
Gower voiceover : And there’s already a keen buyer. Horizon Housing. It provides community housing in Australia, and has been in New Zealand scoping our stock this week.
Audio of Horizon Housing CEO Jason Cubit speaking from Brisbane: So far it looks interesting to us. Now we’d like to expand our business because we’re good at it. We’re normally very viable and we can hopefully make some surpluses and reinvest it back into the New Zealand economy.
Gower voiceover: Bill English keen to do business.
English to Gower: If they can register as a community housing provider, they have to be able to meet the criteria. Ahh if they’ve got expertise, particularly in larger scale operation of owning lots of properties. Ahh then we’re interested in doing business with them.
Gower voiceover: If Horizon gets involved it will do some serious business.
Jason Cubit: We’d need hundreds to consider doing it. Three, four, five hundred would be a minimum. We’re good at what we do and that’s why we’re interested.
Gower voiceover: The Government wants to sell 1000 to 2000 houses this year. And Horizon Housing is prepared to buy four to five hundred state houses minimum. That’s at least a quarter of what’s on offer potentially going offshore – across the Tasman.
Cut to Labour Party leader Andrew Little: This is not what taxpayers expect their taxpayer dollars to be used for. To line the pockets of an Australian organisation for the housing needs of the most vulnerable New Zealanders.
Cut to Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei: They are so desperate to rid themselves of the housing stock, they will go to any lengths to do it, including selling off to Australian agencies.
Gower to English: This is a long way isn’t it, from the Salvation Army owning these houses to some Australian .. corporation essentially, owning them.
English: I don’t think it’s a long way at all. We’re looking for people who can help us get a better result for our tenants.
Gower voiceover: Horizon manages 2,600 homes and has a property portfolio worth $100 million. In Queensland and New South Wales it is a not-for-profit. It puts its profits back into its services.
English: We’re not ruling out bidders or community housing providers just because they have some Australian content. In fact the banks who are going to be participating in this are largely Australian owned banks.
Cut to Winston Peters: This comes way out of left field. It shows how desperate they are.
Gower voiceover: English is even prepared to sell to other countries too.
English: I’d be pretty surprised if there are others. Possibly the UK where there’s a lot more experience in doing social housing.
Gower voiceover: The houses are New Zealand assets. The whole idea of the Government’s policy is that the community housing providers will do a better job than Housing New Zealand.
English: There has been quite a lot of taxpayers’ money go into these houses but in the end the tenants are more important than the houses.
Gower voiceover: The Australian interest will be welcomed by the Government because, it isn’t going well. The Salvation Army pulled out, and Iwi have put in a low-ball offer.
Cut to interview with Haami Piripi, of the Iwi Chairs Forum, from previous episode of The Nation:
Piripi: We would argue that the market price is zero.
Lisa Collins: So are you saying, just to be clear, that if you take this on, iwi wants the houses for free?Piripi: That would be our starting point.
Gower voiceover: And the Government has had to adapt. It is now talking about leasing properties, rather than selling them.
Gower to English: It looks like a back down on your major policy.
English: Well no it isn’t. We’d probably prefer sales. Ahh if there’s an opportunity though, that’s going to work for tenants that involves leasing then we wouldn’t want to rule that out.
Cut to Andrew Little: It’s a Government that’s desperate to make a plan that can’t work so far, to work. They’re looking for any body who’s going to take it up.
Gower to camera: Nobody expected these houses to be sold to foreign buyers. Because there was absolutely no mention, not a hint, from the Government that this would happen. Yes the Australian buyer has the expertise to do the job, but that won’t stop this from being extremely controversial.
Gower voiceover: So a real sales job coming up for English.
Closeout by Lisa Collins: And great work behind the scenes form Torben Akel, Catherine Walbridge and Brook Sabin on that piece. Now the Government will seek expressions of interest from those keen on buying or leasing those houses in September and October. And the successful bidders will be announced next April.
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Radio New Zealand – Morning Report – Monday 29 June
This morning, Guyon Espiner interviews John Key about the possibility of state houses being snapped up by an Australian housing provider, Horizon Housing:
Prime Minister John Key: Remember what we’re doing here (is to) increase the stock of houses provided by social housing providers. So if you buy them on the basis that we’re selling them, you just can’t knock them over for instance and build a whole lot of private sector homes. So everybody agrees I think we need more of them because there’s clearly a demand. People agree that they need to continue to be improved and maintained in good order. So this outfit as I understand it, and I don’t know a huge amount about them, but they’re a charity in Queensland and they are a community housing provider. So on the basis that they’re going to simply buy these properties, maintain them and ensure that they’re well looked after, and provide the other services they provide I’d say it’s not a bad fit.
Espiner: So how does it improve the housing needs of low-income New Zealanders to have Australians owning the houses?
Key: I don’t think it matters whether they’re Australian. The issue that matters is are they in the business we’ve been talking about, in other words are they community housing providers, social housing providers. So the way it benefits us is that these are homes in areas where we think that they’re somewhat more superfluous to our requirements and that frees up capital, and then that capital can then be used say, for instance, as part of, you know, developments that we’re doing for affordable housing and the like.
Espiner: Wasn’t part of the argument that the Government wasn’t as responsive, and didn’t have the expertise and the local links to the community – so that’s why you were talking about, and the conversation has been about iwi, the Salvation Army, and other charities and groups in New Zealand who have real links into society and may be able to look after these people better…
Key: Well I would have thought that (they’re) likely to be the dominant purchasers. It’s very difficult to know of course because we’re just going through a process, but..
Espiner: .. but this is roughly a quarter of the homes that you’ve got for sale, if it is four or five hundred…
Key: Yeah, I mean ultimately let’s wait and see. As I said I don’t know a tremendous amount about them, and you know it’s one thing for someone to come over and show interest, and for the Minister of Finance to say well look in principle, theoretically they could fit the criteria. (Now we have to) see if they’ll actually go through it, but the purpose I would have thought if this outfit buys (houses) is for them to satisfy themselves that they can add value, because ultimately the provision of social housing, there is some money in that, but it’s um not the most lucrative thing in the world. I don’t know what other services they can or want to provide.
Espiner: But surely the idea was, as I said, to have local expertise and local engagement with these people. They offer none of that.
Key: We don’t entirely know all of those other details, I certainly don’t know yet. My point would simply be that, firstly, let’s go back to base one. What’s our core objective, that there are more social houses, we’re certainly going to fulfil that. Secondly there may well be advantages of social housing providers, with the links or different services they can provide, (which we) can’t rule out here (as I) don’t know what other things they particularly do. And thirdly … it’s all relative, if not them then maybe someone else is interested – maybe they’re not… that’s the final tendering process I guess that the Crown has got to go through. Ultimately someone will be selected, hopefully on what they bring to the table.
Espiner: It looks a little desperate though. You talked about the Sallies, they weren’t interested. Iwi wanted the houses for nothing, that presumably isn’t a goer. And now we’ve got the Aussies saying well we could do it.
Key: I don’t think that’s right. What it shows you is that there are international players who are involved in this sort of thing, and in this case they’re a charity in Australia. Quite what their interests in New Zealand would be, I don’t know. But maybe they’ve got wider actions here, I mean, there are lots of charities in New Zealand that have significant international linkages. It’s not unsual. Many of them are international charities that have an outpost if you like, or a posting, in New Zealand. Let’s kind of wait and see, but you know we don’t say that Greenpeace can’t offer or play a role in New Zealand simply because they have a big international footprint, and New Zealand’s not their head office.
Espiner: But they’re an advocacy group aren’t they, that’s hardly the same as providing social housing for low-income New Zealanders.
Key: There are other charities that operate in New Zealand and social providers that operate in New Zealand and also operate internationally.
ENDS
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