This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 5 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from
Wednesday 29th July.
NEWSROOM_MONITOR
Top stories in the current news cycle include the possibility of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks coming down to the wire after years of negotiations while Labour Party says the deal will make medicine more expensive to buy, the Reserve Bank Governor reiterating that interest rates are likely to fall further and the Government announcing an independent review of the Department of Corrections’ monitoring of the man who went on to kill Blessie Gotingco.
Note: As well as providing a precis of leading broadcast bulletins each day, our NewsRoom_Monitor service does a daily paper round with succinct ‘news picks’ from the main metropolitan papers emailed by 9am each morning. If you’re interested in a free trial please email monitor@newsroom.co.nz
POLITICS PULSE
Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:
Government: New Deputy Chief Censor appointed; Multi-million dollar classrooms opened at Ngaio School, Wellington;Statement on Tony Robertson; Clinicians asked to showcase IT ideas; Launch of new family violence work programme; Report forecasts ‘unprecedented’ construction activity; Focus on individual housing need drives results.
ACT Party: Blessie’s killer shows more changes needed.
Greens: Reserve Bank’s failings hurting businesses and households; Pharmac cost increase, under TPPA, must come from new funding; Government delay in Māori Language week an embarrassment; Even the lawyers say stock numbers should come down.
Labour: Brutal health cuts confirmed, crucial services suffer; 90,000 cars reclassified in botched ACC ratings; Flag the referendum if 50% or more don’t vote;Real cost of Pharmac betrayal revealed; All options need to be put on meat sector table; Serco knew names of attackers for months.
New Zealand First: Travel tax harmful for tourism industry; New Zealand First shut out of debate on TPPA;Little public pressure for flag change; Increase in double bunking pure folly.
Maori Party: Poroporoaki (Farewell) for Anzac Pikia
LINKS OF THE DAY
Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first started production in August 2014. We are currently building an archive of these at: http://newsroomplus.com/resources/resourceful-links/
CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITY: The total value of building and construction activity in New Zealand is forecast to top $200 billion over the next six years and peak at an all-time high of approximately $37 billion in 2016 according to the latest National Construction Pipeline Report. The report is available at: www.building.govt.nz/building-value-productivity-partnership#national-pipeline
REGULATING FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS: Pacific youth in South Auckland are calling on World Health Organisation officials from ECHO to help push policies that would regulate fast food restaurants in low-income suburbs. Click here for background information about ECHO: http://www.who.int/end-childhood-obesity/en/
POLICY SUPPORTS GROWTH AND INFLATION GOAL: The Reserve Bank today confirmed that at this stage some further monetary policy easing is likely to be required to maintain New Zealand’s economic growth around its potential, and return CPI inflation to its medium-term target level. Click here for thoughts on the Inflation Outlook and Monetary Policy: http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/news/2015/news-release-gw-speech-inflation-outlook-july-2015.html
PROPOSAL FOR PLACE NAMES: The New Zealand Geographic Board (NZGB) Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa advises that only one month remains before public consultation closes for seven name proposals for geographic features and places around Te Ika ā Māui / the North Island. Visit the LINZ website for information about these names and general place naming: http://www.linz.govt.nz/regulatory/place-names/place-name-consultation and alsohttp://www.linz.govt.nz/regulatory/place-names
And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Wednesday 29th July 2015.
Investigation by Carolyn Skelton.Negative side effects of isotretinoinIn my research of the acne last resort drug, isotretinoin, I came across a couple of issues related to the impact of Big Pharma, Pharmac, and potential impacts of the TPP. I began my investigation of the last resort acne drug isotretinoin, because of evidence of the devastating impact it has had on the lives of some young people. A significant number of women in the US gave birth to deformed babies after using the medicine, in the early days of its use before side effects became obvious. There have also been ongoing allegations, accompanied by personal testimonies of isotretinoin users and people close to them. These include young people, like Olly and Jessie who experienced depression and committed suicide after taking isotretinoin.
Other Posts in this Investigative Series:
Costs of medicines to rise under TPP?
In researching isotretinoin I have come across issues related to patent laws, and the ability of Pharmac to make it possible for many important drugs to be affordable for most Kiwis.
John Key has admitted that the cost of some medicines in NZ will rise under the TPP, but he and Tim Groser are trying to play down the extent of this. See John Key’s reply to question from Andrew little in Question Time yesterday; and the Transcript of Tim Groser on TV3’s The Nation last weekendTPP, drug regulation, drug trials & profit motive
They also claim that the TPP will not stop Pharmac from being able to regulate use of medicines. However, with rising costs, and the potential for pharmaceutical multinational companies to contest Pharmac decisions, there are causes for concern about the extent that Pharmac will be able to regulate the use of prescription drugs. The importance on strong regulation of the acne drug was the focus of part III of my series on isotretinoin.Many people in the US unnecessarily suffered adverse side effects of isotretinoin, because Roche Pharmaceuticals rushed to market this drug (brand name Accutane) as a magical cure for acne in order to maximise profits. In the early days of prescribing isotertinoin in the US, many women using it gave birth to children with awful defects. This was covered in part II of my series.
Further campaigning is still continuing against the over-use of the drug which can potentially cause depression, psychiatric disturbances, suicidal thoughts, sexual dysfunction and more. It is also relevant that another other drug developed by Roche to combat flu (Tamiflu), was bought up big in many countries. It has turned out not to be the wonder drug as marketed by Roche. Today’s UK Independent article refers to this as an example of the way research evidence is suppressed by drug developers:
A campaigning organisation Alltrials is now calling for the results of all drug trials to be made public. They argue that drug companies and academic researchers tend to suppress evidence of adverse reactions to trialed medicines. This week they highlighted news articles about an investors’ group calling for more information about the activities of pharmaceutical companies they invest in:
This suppression of research evidence is contrary to the claims of Big Pharma wanting more transparency around Pharmac decisions. See Gordon Campbell on this and other issues with respect to the TPP and Pharmac here; and here.
TPP & potential for drug multinationals to dispute NZ decisions
More information from Pharmac could make it easier for multinational drug companies to challenge decisions of national agencies like Pharmac. Tim Groser has tried to damp down claims that this will happen with Investor State Dispute Settlements under TPP, as argued here in the Guardian:
Key and Groser claim it is no different from other trade deals with China and South Korea in enabling corporates to sue decisions by the likes of Pharmac, and that it hasn’t yet happened. However, these countries are not crucial ones for developing new drugs. The big pharmaceutical corporates are largely based in the US, and to a lesser extent in Europe. And it is these companies that will get more power under the TPP.
While Big Pharma can do research that produces some very useful medicines, the good they do can be undermined by the profit motive. National pharmaceutical agencies like Pharmac, need to be able to operate objectively, in the interest of potential drug users, without being pressured by corporate entities.
TPP, Pharmac, generics & patent laws
The government updated NZ’s Patent Law in 2013, but it looks like the TPP will conflict with some aspects of it requiring the Act to be amended, as suggested by Jack Redfern and Gareth Dixon in August 2014. This possibility is reinforced by John Key’s statement today that the costs of medicines will rise under the TPP, when previously he had denied this would be the case.
Curiously, the government did not make changes to the patent law as requested by NZ-based affiliates of multinational pharmaceutical companies (including Roche that initially developed the acne drug) in their 2009 submission to the proposed changes to the 1953 Patent Act. This was, with respect to extensions of patent periods, to Pharmac’s single supplier, price-referencing approach, and to its tendency to wait out patent periods til they can access cheaper generics.
The drug companies’ claim was that Pharmac’s processes were undermining the price of drugs internationally, driving down the profits such companies would get. The multinational affiliates claim in their submission, that there are not big financial profits in developing new drugs. Interestingly, they are critical of Pharmac prioritising protection of the public against the potential social costs of patents, at the expense of “property rights” [of patent owners]. They claim the latter should be the main focus of patent laws
After Roche’s patent for isotretinoin lapsed, and its marketing of it became suspect, US agencies were less inclined to buy their brand of the drug Accutane. This is where a small NZ pharmaceutical company Douglas Pharmaceuticals, benefited from their generic version of the drug. They became Pharmac’s supplier for the medicine and then were able to sell it in the US.
By the time this happened, Pharmac and other medical agencies, concerned with users’ safety, were well aware of the potential side effects, issuing strong warnings. Pharmac is about to move away from Douglas Pharmaceuticals as supplier of istoretinoin. An international corporate that specialises in producing generic medicines, will be Pharmac’s chosen supplier as from later this year. The reason probably is because this company’s NZ branch, Mylan (NZ) can supply the drug (brand name Isotane) more cheaply. Mylan’s CEO has come out against the TPP
Itsourfuture reports:
The [TPP leaked] draft would make linkage mandatory, as it is in the US, allowing drug companies to fend off generics by claiming patent infringements, the website reported. It cited Heather Bresch, chief executive of generic drug maker Mylan, as saying mandatory patent linkage would amount to “a recipe for indefinite evergreening of pharmaceutical monopolies.”
Bresch has said that “ the current deal was a way for the brand-name drug industry to “maximize its monopolies.”
However, this still means that, under TPP, overseas-based companies like Mylan could challenge NZ authorities and laws (eg to make the patent period longer here), while NZ companies like Douglas Pharmaceuticals could not.
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest features 5 resourceful links of the day and the politics pulse from Tuesday 28th July.
NEWSROOM_MONITOR
Top stories in the current news cycle include more leaked documents that show the funding of District Health Boards could be in for a shakeup with Health Minister Jonathan Coleman signalling the Government is looking at changes to DHB funding, figures showing three times as many mortgages are being approved for property investors than for first home buyers and the controversy over Mt Eden remand prison has deepened again today after two people were arrested in raids targeting the criminal activity.
Note: As well as providing a precis of leading broadcast bulletins each day, our NewsRoom_Monitor service does a daily paper round with succinct ‘news picks’ from the main metropolitan papers emailed by 9am each morning. If you’re interested in a free trial please email monitor@newsroom.co.nz
POLITICS PULSE
Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:
Government: Government drive to lift regulatory quality; Electricity market more competitive than ever; Meeting with US Secretary of State; New initiative to improve overseas driver safety
ACT Party: National colonises Labour’s policy manifesto; Funnelling immigrants into the regions may be good politics, but it’s poor policy
Greens: Sick New Zealanders will pay under John Key’s TPPA
Labour: Meth ring under Serco’s nose; Ministers failing women and their own targets; Dismantling Pharmac’s power a betrayal of NZ
New Zealand First: Waikato hospital dependent on foreign qualified doctors; Labour and National Party Leaders should just give up and Join New Zealand First; Fears of massive foreign farm buy-up; Parliamentary walk out
LINKS OF THE DAY
Links of the day have been a feature of NewsRoom_Digest since we first startingproduction in August 2014. We are currently building an archive of these at: http://newsroomplus.com/resources/resourceful-links/
MINISTERS FAILING WOMEN: New figures showing just five Ministers have met the Government’s own reduced targets for appointing women to state sector boards is evidence National is failing Kiwi women, Labour’s Women’s Affairs spokesperson Sue Moroney says. View the Ministry for Women’s 2015 Gender Stocktake here:http://women.govt.nz/documents/2014-gender-stocktake-state-sector-boards-and-committees-2015
TRAVEL TAX OPPOSED: The Government must rethink its new Travel Tax because it is bad policy which will harm New Zealand’s economy, a coalition of tourism, travel and aviation organisations says. To read the CATT submission, visit www.tianz.org.nz/main/policy-issues/
VISITING DRIVER SAFETY TRAINING: A new online training module focusing on safe driving in New Zealand provides offshore travel sellers with the information they need to prepare people for a Kiwi self-drive holiday. The module is available at http://www.drivesafe.org.nz
And that’s our sampling of “news you can use” for Tuesday 28th July 2015.
Analysis by Keith Rankin – This article was also published on Scoop.co.nz.
In response to my Money, Flow and Debt (Daily Blog and Evening Report, 25 July 2015) one reader responded to my comments about money hoarding and compensatory debt thus:
“Keith – the [river-causeway] metaphor did not help my understanding unfortunately – which is pretty basic already. So please explain simply. I assume greed is the motive behind the $ hoarders – how do you change that? The few wealthy people I have met, can’t help themselves – they have to continue increasing their wealth well past providing for their needs – it is like an obsession that I can’t get my head around. And this greed is behind the banks that are only too pleased there are hoarders (being hoarders themselves personally). So they have a system where they can create money out of nothing (book entry debt), but don’t create the interest required – which of course eventually creates winners and losers – and of course the hoarders are in like wolves to increase their hoard from the losers = increasing obscene inequality. Oh well, say the banks, lets create some additional money (out of thin air) to help the losers pay back their loans and interest (still not creating enough for the additional interest) ie so economic growth can continue – but the only people who believe in continued economic growth on a finite planet are madmen – and economists. So what is at the end of your causeway?”
These are pertinent questions, and I think my answer did them justice.’
“‘Greed’ is a term that means different things to different people. It is two of the seven deadly sins; ‘avarice’ and ‘gluttony’. Gluttony, or conspicuous consumption, is probably not relevant here. Indeed, by not spending their money, people may be averting this particular sin, thinking that their ‘frugality’ (actually miserliness) is virtuous. Google this: ’15 Celebs Who Lead Frugal Lives’. Avarice (refer dictionary.com) on the other hand is an ambiguous term that includes both the “insatiable greed for riches” and the “miserly desire to gain and hoard wealth”. In the distant historical context of the seven sins, avarice was probably understood as miserliness. In a capitalist context it probably also means something like ‘upward social mobility’. Thus the early merchant and industrial capitalists were trying to buy their way into the landed gentry.
“For some, their money mountains are a result of miserly greed. For others, the mountains of money are simply a measure of success in doing what they do best; with the market rewarding them through a kind of ‘winner takes all’ formula. However, even for these, the accumulation of money/success tends to be intoxicating, and they find it difficult to let go of the money, either through genuine investment (which is a form of spending) or through philanthropy. Further, even many in this second group of rich tend to resist paying taxes. The mere possession of lots of money can corrupt otherwise good people.
“The matter of interest, as in your comment, is something of a red herring. It’s simply a price, normally paid by borrowers to lenders (plus a markup for financial intermediaries such as banks), but which (when negative) can be paid by lenders to borrowers. When unspent money is abundant and bankable borrowers are scarce, then, in a free market, deposit interest rates should be negative.
“Money is created ‘out of thin air’. That’s the nature of money; it’s a technology, not a commodity. But it’s created in a context, not out of caprice. Money that’s withdrawn from circulation no longer functions as money. So the financial system – through private or public initiatives, or a mix of both – must create new money to compensate for the money withdrawn from circulation. Note that I said “banks can, with lesser or greater difficulty [emphasis added here], offset the dampening effect of the money hoarders”. We see that, when financial crises are imminent, when the accumulated unspent hoards become too great, then banks (often through other financial institutions) must adopt predatory lending practices in order to perform this money-cycling function.
“On the question of economic growth, I intimated that there is a green solution. The essential idea is that we do not need to maximise output in normal times, though productivity growth should always be seen as a good thing. The system of income distribution needs to work in a way that allows ordinary people to choose to work less (rather than to earn more) as an option for an improved living standard. The solution here is through the recognition of public equity as the basis for a publicly-sourced income stream that complements private earnings. Once public equity is recognised and supported, economic growth ceases to be the only way to reduce inequality.
“My causeway need have no end this millennium, so long as we adopt sustainable income distribution practices. My fear is that, by the year 2100, we will have entered a new dark age, following a rapid Malthusian collapse. My optimism however, is that the people (especially the young people) in places like Greece and Spain and Detroit may be getting to grips with the issues – including the well-heralded internet issues of the ‘free economy’ (as in ‘free services’ rather than ‘free-markets’) – and are creating parallel social technologies that substitute in part for the monetary system we have come to know but not understand.”
Hot-Topic.co.nz
Headline: A tale of two hemispheres
At the end of June, Professor Jim Renwick of Victoria University gave his inaugural lecture. As you might expect of a climate scientist, it concerns what we know about the climate system and where we’re heading. He pulls no punches. Jim has been kind enough to put together a text version of the lecture for Hot Topic: it follows. You can watch the full lecture, with accompanying slides, on the video embedded at the end of the post.We live in a golden age of earth observation. With a few clicks of a mouse on a web browser, any of us can see the state of the global ocean surface, the current condition of the Greenland ice sheet, how much rain is falling in the tropics today, and on and on. Plus, the International Space Station (ISS), and a series of satellites such as MODIS give us wonderful images of our home planet. The climate science community can tell, with unprecedented coverage and timeliness, just what is going on in the climate system. It is a great time to be a climate researcher, but also a worrying time, in both cases because we can see exactly what is changing.
One thing the ISS pictures emphasise is just how thin the atmosphere is, a thin blue layer between the solid earth and the blackness of space. Not only is this life-supporting envelope very thin, some of the key gases in the atmosphere are there in only trace amounts, so we can change the properties of the atmosphere easily, by targeting the right gases. The discovery of the ozone hole 30 years ago brought this home with a bang. And we’ve found that build-up of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere can have a profound effect on the climate system, right down to the bottom of the oceans.
Carbon dioxide is important because it’s a crucial control on the surface temperature of the earth. It is very good at absorbing heat (infrared radiation) welling up from the earth, then re-radiating both up and down, in the process warming the earth’s surface. The effect is very like a blanket put on a bed – what’s under the blanket warms up. More CO2 is like putting another blanket on the bed and less is like taking away a blanket. No CO2 and the earth freezes – temperatures like we had in the South Island in late June would be the norm everywhere, all the time. While there are several other “greenhouse gases”, carbon dioxide is the most important since it stays in the atmosphere so long, hundreds to thousands of years.
Since direct atmospheric measurements began in the late 1950s, CO2 concentrations have gone from 315 ppm to about 400ppm (0.04%) now. Concentrations of CO2 are rising steadily, but the numbers hardly sound “dangerous”. But one thing to realise is that many natural changes take place over thousands to millions years. So instead of human time scale of the last 60 years, we must look on the planetary time scale… Luckily, ice cores store bubbles of ancient air that can tell us what CO2 concentrations were, far back in time. If we join the ice core record up with the observations from Hawaii, we get a very different picture – and now it does look alarming!
CO2 in the atmosphere has increased blindingly fast, by planetary standards. We have really put a lot of it up there in a handful of decades. For many thousands of years before the present, back to the beginnings of agriculture and modern civilisation, CO2 concentrations have been fairly steady, between 260 and 280ppm. Suddenly (in geological terms) they are 40% higher at around 400ppm.
So, how far back do we have to go to find the last time CO2 was this high? The answer is about 3 million years. We are making changes in decades that left to its own devices, the earth system might take hundreds of thousands of years to effect. Back then, in the “mid-Pliocene warm period”, temperatures were around 2-3°C higher than present, but sea levels were around 20m higher. That much sea level rise takes time, but it will happen again if we allow CO2 levels to stay up there.
How do we know about what was in the atmosphere 3 million years ago? From the chemistry of rocks – no ice core goes back far enough so we must look at the chemical composition of the rocks laid down then, as they carry the fingerprint of the chemical composition of the atmosphere. That is, we can read it in the earth itself. The flip side of this is that sediments being formed today will tell the story of today’s big CO2 spike. In other words, our actions today are being written into the crust of the earth and will be visible for millions of years to come, if there are any able to read it.
But what about what happens in our lifetimes, what’s happening now? The geological record is no help there – we must just experience it as we go. Global mean temperatures are going up, just what we’d expect from increased carbon dioxide levels. Things are simple at that level: more CO2 = higher temperatures. But climates vary strongly around the world, and so does climate change, as a result of geography, latitude, land mass size and so on.
For example, surface temperatures are changing at wildly different rates in different places. Over the last 60 years or so, the global average warming has been around 0.6°C. The Arctic has seen much more and the southern oceans and Antarctica much less. This brings up the issue of “Polar amplification”, the observation from the geological and paleoclimate record that both poles always warm or cool about twice as much as the global average. This is visible for the cooling at the last glacial maximum, and for the warming during the mid-Pliocene warm period. We know from the past that this always happens, but we are now learning that the two poles do not respond at the same rate. The Arctic, with its thin layer of sea ice and snow, can warm quickly. The Antarctic, with its massive ice sheets and turbulent circumpolar ocean, warms only very slowly, over centuries.
Where this difference between the hemispheres is really visible is in sea ice. In the Arctic, sea ice is disappearing at a rapid rate, while it is increasing (slowly) around the Antarctic, especially over the last 5-10 years. How can Antarctic sea ice extent be increasing, in a warming world?
The number one reason is geography. The Northern Hemisphere features ocean at the pole and lots of land in the middle latitudes. At the pole, there is only a thin cover of sea ice, a few metres thick. The Southern Hemisphere is almost the exact opposite, a big continent over the pole and almost no land in the middle latitudes. At the pole, vast ice sheets have built up, thousands of metres thick.
Following from that, the winds in both hemispheres are quite different in form too. In the Northern Hemisphere, the winds are strong over the oceans but not so much over land, and over the Arctic, the winds are very light on average. So the Arctic Ocean is mostly quiescent, with weak currents and little vertical mixing. Any extra sunlight absorbed when Arctic sea ice melts stays in the upper ocean, warming the surface quickly and promoting more melting.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the westerlies are very strong and unimpeded over the southern oceans, the most turbulent region of ocean in the world. Here, water is mixed down several hundred metres, so the heating from absorbed sunlight gets drawn down to depth quickly, leaving the surface temperature mostly unchanged while waters warm at depth. So that “ice albedo feedback” works less well for the sea ice over the southern oceans.
The Antarctic sea ice grows out around the edge of a continent, over very turbulent waters, with strong winds and storms above. It seems almost miraculous that it manages to grow to such an extent, so regularly every year. The westerlies, their strength and position, are very important for determining how the sea ice grows. And those westerlies have been strengthening and contracting farther south over the last few decades.
The strength of the westerly winds and the turbulent storm tracks that accompany the strongest winds, are controlled by the north-south temperature gradient, the difference in temperature between the tropics and the poles. A bigger difference means stronger winds. How that is changing is a key to understanding what’s going on with Southern Hemisphere winds, and with the sea ice. There are several things that affect the north-south gradient…
The ozone hole (surprisingly!) – removing ozone from the atmosphere over Antarctica cools the polar region (since ozone absorbs sunlight), so increases the north-south gradient.
CO2 (GHG) increase – away from the earth’s surface, greenhouse warming increases temperatures faster in the tropics than at high latitudes, so also increases the gradient.
El Niño/La Niña (ENSO) – an El Niño event warms the tropics and increases the north-south gradient, while a La Niña does the opposite, for a few months. Crucially though, the ENSO cycle puts kinks in the westerly flow, making it more southwesterly in some places and more northwesterly in others.
Putting it all together, it adds up to the non-uniform pattern of sea ice change we have seen in the last 40 years: increases over the Ross Sea (south of New Zealand) and over the Weddell Sea in the far South Atlantic, where the winds have trended more southerly (colder), and decreases near the Antarctic Peninsula, where the winds have trended northerly (warmer). Other factors in the overall sea ice trend include the melting of ice from the Antarctic ice sheets, putting easily-frozen fresh water into the southern oceans, and changes in ocean surface waves that have affected the break-up and merging of ice floes.
Meanwhile, back in the Arctic, we have a fairly quiescent situation with the sea ice melting away at an accelerating rate, as the ocean surface soaks up sunlight. The differences in what’s happening with sea ice at both poles has a lot to do with the detail of geography, winds, the nature of the ocean circulation, and even El Niño and the ozone hole. What we are seeing from year to year are intermediate steps along the way to that generally warmer world, with less ice all round and “polar amplification” at both ends of the earth. We will get there, if we wait long enough.
So what’s in store for the future? The last IPCC report demonstrated clearly that the amount of global warming we experience depends a lot on how much more CO2 we emit. The two extreme scenarios considered by IPCC were the low-carbon future of scenario “RCP2.6” and the high-carbon future of scenario “RCP8.5”. I call these the blue future and the red future, from the colours used in the IPCC report. Under the blue future, emissions are projected to go to zero by around 2060, then become negative after that (CO2 removal, using technologies we haven’t quite invented yet). That scenario stops the warming before we get to 2°C change, and is the only one considered in the IPCC report to do so.
The red future is “business as usual”, just keep burning the coal and oil like we have the last few years. That results in global change beyond anything seen for probably 50 million years. This is the “crocodiles swimming at the North Pole” scenario.
So, what about that blue future…? The one all the governments signed up to in Copenhagen a few years ago? There is a clear illustration of the situation in the Ministry for the Environment’s “Discussion Document” issued in May as part of the brief and poorly-publicised public consultation round on what our future national emissions targets should be. That document shows that we have a limited budget of CO2 we can emit, since the stuff stays in the atmosphere so long and just builds up. To have a good chance (67%) of staying under 2°C of warming, we have a limit of 2900 Gigatons (2.9 trillion tons) of CO2. The bad news is that we have already used two thirds of the budget, and at current rates it will be all spent within 20 years. So some really significant action is needed if we are serious about reining in climate change.
We have all heard of the 2°C limit, the “safety guardrail” that we don’t want to cross. Yet 2°C is nothing magical, no guarantee of safety. Already we have had nearly 1°C of warming and we know already that floods and heat-waves are more likely than they were 50 years ago. Still, keeping under 2°C of warming may stop the big ice sheets from melting too much and would avoid the really extreme changes that are possible.
Whatever happens with the total warming, things are bound to play out differently around the globe. For instance, we can look at how long it would take to get to 2°C warming in different places, assuming “middle of the road” emissions. A paper in 2011 by Manoj Joshi and co-authors did just that, and found that much of the Arctic will have passed 2°C of warming within the next 10 years. Going by the huge increase in wild fires in Alaska in recent years, the Arctic may have already over-achieved. Farther south the changes are slower, and over New Zealand and the southern oceans, we’ll have to wait until late in the century. Most of the climate change issues for us will come sooner from what happens to our neighbours and trading partners. There are economic, social, and moral issues associated with climate change impacts in other countries that will put pressure on New Zealand, well before the climate turns nasty here.
More importantly than temperature change, rainfall patterns are shifting. It is becoming drier in the subtropics and wetter nearer the poles (and on the Equator). At the latitudes of Australia and northern New Zealand, we are likely to see a lot of drying over coming decades. In the Northern Hemisphere, a very worrying sign is the drying out of the Mediterranean region, from North Africa to the Middle East to southern Europe. This is already a place with lots of issues – political unrest, terrorism, war, economic crises, huge flows of refugees… beyond its direct effects, climate change is an aggravator of all these things. Organisations like the World Economic Forum and the World Bank, even the Pentagon, recognise this and list climate change as an immediate threat to social order worldwide
And let’s not forget sea level rise – another big worry, largely because it is so inexorable, and so much of the global population lives close to sea level. Once perturbed, the ocean circulation and the big ice sheets take a long time to respond, so we are in for a long period of sea level rise regardless of the emissions future. Going back to the blue and red futures, the models show sea level rising steadily through this century and beyond under both scenarios. Even on the zero-carbon track, we are set for at least 1m of further sea level rise, over centuries. And as the geological record says, we will see 8, 10, even up to 20m or more if we carry on as we are going now.
So, what are the consequences, the impacts? Key ones that concern me are:
Drought – recent droughts and heat waves in North America and Russia have led to partial crop failures and price spikes for corn, wheat and other staples. Future droughts have obvious impacts on food security and water availability for large fractions of the global community.
Flood – as we have seen three times in New Zealand in the past two months. Warmer air holds more water, and the near-one degree of warming so far globally has put about 5% more water vapour in the air compared to the 1950s. So it’s fair to say that some of the rain that fell on Dunedin, Kāpiti and Whanganui was there as a result of the warming we have already had. Further warming just means more moisture and an ever-greater chance of heavy rain.
Coastal inundation – higher sea levels, even small-sounding amounts like 30cm or so, lead to dramatic increases in the chance of inundation events when there are big swells and strong winds.
Health issues – as the globe becomes more “tropical”, tropical pests and diseases can spread farther. Malaria, dengue fever and other diseases are broadening their range right now. The same goes for plant and animal pests. And the health dangers of heat waves are only too apparent, as we have seen in India and Pakistan lately.
Fire – the incidence of wild fires, and the length of the fire season, is increasing almost everywhere. Siberia and Alaska are now experiencing major forest fires regularly, events that were almost unknown 30 or 40 years ago.
This is what we face. In fact, this is what we are starting to experience already. So how do we get on top of it? Can we get on top of it?
Yes! There are many technologies and ideas on the shelf that we can use right now. Renewable energy is an obvious one (go China!). For all their coal-fired power stations, China is leading the world on solar panels and wind power installation and technology. New Zealand can ride on the coat-tails of the Chinese and go to 100% renewable energy – despite a high base, we can go a lot further here. And if we wished, New Zealand could be a world leader on renewable technology – are we content with being a “fast follower”?
Same story with electric vehicles (go Tesla!). The transport sector a big one in New Zealand and transport emissions have grown rapidly in the last two decades. We love our cars – which is fine, if they aren’t burning fossil carbon. Let’s see moves to bring electric vehicles in to the country in much greater numbers, while at the same boosting public transport and making the most of renewable power sources. That could cut our emissions significantly in just a few years.
In the agriculture sector, continued intensification of dairy farming is exactly the wrong direction to be going. It is just not sustainable, especially in dry regions like Canterbury, in terms of water quality, water availability, and greenhouse gas emissions. A much better approach in the short term would be intensified afforestation, which would at least buy us some time to do the research on ruminant emissions.
The solutions that already exist can work in New Zealand and can be applied world-wide. We need all of the above, and we need to find new and better approaches every day. As put so eloquently by the Pope just last month, there are moral dimensions, questions of equity, of love for one another, that must take centre stage. Narrow economic considerations must be secondary, as no known economic modelling framework can cope with the true realities of climate change.
What is lacking across the board is political will. Governments set the scene for a country’s economic and social activity. All countries, including New Zealand, need to tackle climate change head-on through legislation, through incentivisation of desirable investments and behaviours, through economic instruments that encourage research and innovation in the sectors that we need to boost.
The recent ruling by the Dutch courts that their government is harming the population if they do not adopt stringent emissions reductions (25% reduction in 5 years) is exactly right. Governments the world over are indeed putting their citizens more at risk every day by not dealing effectively with climate change. Where is the sense of urgency? Sure there are many worries and concerns in the world, but unmitigated climate change exacerbates almost all our short-term concerns, and ultimately trumps everything. Do we really want to put billions of lives at risk through hunger, thirst, disease, dislocation and conflict, in order to appease the corporate sector and win the next election?
As a global community, we have squandered the last 25 years. The Paris meeting in December (COP21) is a critical opportunity to really get good things happening on a global scale, and on the home front. Greenpeace’s protest at Parliament in June was spot-on – what we really need is climate action, now!
Source: Asia Pacific Lawyers Network.“Evidence is mounting of increasing numbers of internet romantics and international travellers risking their lives after being deceived, coerced and ultimately exploited by sophisticated international drug cartels,” New Zealand death penalty defence barrister, Craig Tuck said today.
“The cartels willingly sacrifice, for profit, drug carriers (often referred to as ‘mules’) in countries where execution is a potential sentence for those caught transporting,” he said.
“The ‘mules’ or disposable people – are essentially treated as a renewable resource in the drug supply chain, where they are quickly and easily replaced – if caught and executed as part of the so called ‘war on drugs’,” Mr Tuck said.
Mr Tuck is part of MULE, a new group of lawyers, internet scam victims, cybercrime and media specialists working to track down and expose scams that are resulting in an increasing number of people facing execution in the Asia Pacific.
Mr Tuck is directly involved in three death penalty cases in Indonesia and China, and advising on several others, which he says appear to be the tip of a vast and emerging iceberg, where new and frightening drug supply chain exploitation is occurring.
“Drug scams can embroil all manner of deception. Often they involve a suggested rendezvous with an internet lover, but not before sourcing ‘documents’, clothing or equipment in a secondary country, enroute, for the loved one. This is when drugs are often secreted into the exploited person’s possessions,” Mr Tuck said.
One of Mr Tuck’s most recent clients, New Zealander, Antony De Malmanche, recently received a 15-year prison term for trafficking 1.7kg of crystal methamphetamine into Bali. His defence team argued that he was a victim of human trafficking and provided detailed information about the drug cartel that exploited him at trial.
“Mr De Malmanche, who has a mental health history, was looking for love on the internet when “Jessy Smith” began grooming him with 450 pages of online exchanges. Mr De Malmanche was then offered an expenses paid trip to meet her and detoured to Guangzhou, China, where he was asked to carry a bag for her, before flying on to Bali where the drugs were found concealed in his luggage,” Mr Tuck said.
“Jessy Smith has never been caught and now appears in a number of other scams that are getting global attention,” he said.
Australian jockey, Anthony Bannister, is on death row in China for possession of the drug ‘ice’ found inside his luggage. He is thought to be a victim of an elaborate scam involving documents needed to divorce a Filipino woman; he had met and married in Japan. Mr Bannister is said to suffer from a low IQ.
And Australian grandmother Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto is another suspected romance scam victim now facing execution by hanging in Malaysia after being found with 50 grams of methamphetamines in a bag she says was handed to her at Shanghai airport. Mrs Pinto Exposto said she believed the luggage contained retirement documents for her US soldier internet paramour and willingly passed the baggage through a detector despite no custom officer requesting her to do so. The United States military is warning that soldiers’ identities are increasingly being stolen as part of such online romance scams,” he said.
New Zealander, Sharon Armstrong, who is now a part of MULE, was also caught by the internet romance ruse and spent two and a half years in an Argentinian prison for trafficking what she thought were legal documents needed by her internet lover, but that turned out to be 5kg of cocaine. She is now speaking about her own experience and is determined to expose the scams and scammers.
Mr Tuck said these were just some of many cases showing similar hallmarks and which all pointed to a sophisticated network of drug trafficking aimed at vulnerable travellers who were able to be exploited.
“Across the planet we are seeing patterns of drug cartel behaviour resulting in ‘mules’, who are essentially the bottom of the cartel food chain, being shot, hung and beheaded – then replaced by new recruits.
We have found many of these drug cartels originate in Africa and are functioning largely out of Guangzhou, China, where drug precursor chemicals are readily obtainable and where international transport links make trade in drugs easier,” he said.
“The most efficient way for these cartels to move drugs around is with unsuspecting human ‘mules’, who are often distracted, or blinded, by a range of needs that are identified and exploited by the cartels – including the need for love and companionship. These people are generally groomed over a long period of time, online, where access to information is readily obtainable through social media sites such as Facebook.
Many say these drug mules should have known better, but few realise how easy it is to fall prey to these criminal gangs and the deft touch with which the drugs are planted – it is almost an art form when you hear how the drugs get secreted in a person’s luggage,” Mr Tuck said.
“The casualties don’t end with the lives of those carrying the drugs; families are being served life sentences. They have little access to information on arrest, minimal legal or diplomatic assistance from governments; and a lifetime of pain following loss after death penalties, or harsh prison terms, are imposed,” he said.
“We have formed the international organisation MULE to assist by increasing access to support and information, evidence gathering and communication, and most importantly, experienced and competent lawyers familiar with working across jurisdictions and in highly sensitive political and cultural environments,” Mr Tuck said.
Those with information about similar scams, such as those described above or those requiring more information about the work of MULE, contact: Asia Pacific Lawyers Network public affairs manager, Mandy Wyer, +61 418 270 656.
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 9 links for the day from Monday 27th July.
Top stories in the current news cycle include concerns over a leaked document that reportedly shows the Government plans an overhaul to the governance of District Health Boards, responses to the weekend’s announcement of government reforms to entice migrants to live in the regions and the commencement of Maori Language Week.
NewsRoom_Monitor: As well as providing a precis of news bulletins from RNZ and the opening news on both TV channels each day, our NewsRoom_Monitor services does a daily paper round with succinct ‘news picks’ from the main metropolitan papers emailed by 9am each morning. You can sign up to trial just this part of NewsRoom at http://newsroomplus.com/free-trial/
POLITICS PULSE
NewsRoom will publish its regular snapshot of the Prime Minister’s post-Cabinet Press Conference tomorrow.
Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:
Government: Reappointments to Education Payroll Limited Board; Agency sought to help reduce cyberbullying; Apprentices served well by Code of Practice; Minister celebrates 40th Māori Language Week; Inspection of Waikato DHB’s mental health service; Improved access to up-to-date cancer info; celebrating 150 years since Wellington became the capital; Successful negotiations to liberalise tariffs on IT products to benefit NZ exporters; Food Safety Minister to travel to Vietnam; Improving spread of skills, investment across NZ, Minister seeks assurance following arrest; Judge Armstrong Appointed To Māori Land Court; New classrooms confirmed to meet Auckland growth
Labour: Government’s plans to take a scalpel to democratically elected health boards considered deceitful; Key is trading away New Zealand land and homes; Bank puts the squeeze on mid Canterbury farmers; Spin lines show a department in chaos; Ladder removal gets tenants fired up and endangers lives; Labour will fix broken health and safety bill; Nats miss another opportunity to fix housing crisis
Greens: MPs should back Te Reo in schools; Privatising environmental decisions will cost the environment and the public
New Zealand First: Health and safety reforms – a Pandora’s box for New Zealanders; Australian diver killed by shark highlights Stewart Island fears
NZ National Party: PM reiterates commitment to open New Zealand
ACT Party: Council must keep its hands off our AECT dividends
Maori Party: Getting behind Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
Immigration changes welcomed: The change to the Immigration points system for provincial New Zealand is good news for hospitality, says Bruce Robertson, Hospitality New Zealand Chief Executive.
NZCTU: 10 Pike Rivers since Key’s “broken” promise – widow: A family held a silent vigil with 291 crosses as the Prime Minister gave his key-note speech in Auckland at the National Party annual conference at Skycity.
Volunteers’ fears safely relieved by Health and Safety amendments: Volunteering New Zealand is pleased that many volunteers’ fears that their roles and responsibilities would be increasingly complicated by the Health and Safety Reform Bill will today be relieved following the release of the revised report from the Transport and Industrial Relations Select Committee.
COMPANY POLICIES: 61 per cent of New Zealand employers admit that they don’t have a diversity policy in place for hiring new staff, according to findings in the recently released 2015 Hays Salary Guide. Get your copy of the 2015 Hays Salary Guide by visiting http://www.hays.net.nz/salary-guide
HEALTH AND SAFETY REFORM BILL: On 24 July 2015 the Transport and Industrial Relations Select Committee finally reported on the Health and Safety Reform Bill. The Bill was introduced to Parliament in March 2014. To read more on the proposed Bill, please click here: http://www.bellgully.com/resources/resource.04034.asp
INTELLIGENCE SERVICES: The NZ Council for Civil Liberties is pleased to host Get Smart – the People’s Review of the Intelligence Services – with meetings to be held in Wellington (29 July), Auckland (6 August). For more information see: http://nzccl.org.nz/content/get-smart-intelligence-review
NO MORE HIROSHIMAS: CIVIL SOCIETY UNITES TO ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) member Emily Watson to speak about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the humanitarian movement for nuclear disarmament.
Emily attended the Treaty Conference in New York in April/May, where she worked with WILPF’s Reaching Critical Will team.
When: Thursday, August 13, 6.30pm
Where: WG608, Sir Paul Reeves Building , AUT City Campus
Sponsored by the Pacific Media Centre, AUT University.
Organised by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Tamaki Makaurau (WILPF).
hager case has raised some big issues…is it time to professionalise journalism? …personally i think the hand-writing a tag or a name sticker that says “reporter” is the standard we should maintain in new zealand because then we can all keep our secrets….
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…]]>
Eyes of Fire (fifth edition) launched Friday July 10, 2015.[/caption]
Opinion piece by Professor David Robie of AUT’s School of Communication Studies – David travelled on board the Rainbow Warrior for 10 weeks before the bombing and wrote the book Eyes of Fire. A fresh edition of Eyes of Fire was launched on July 10, 2015. This article was also published at AUT News. To purchase Eyes of Fire, you can so so via Little Island Press.
New Zealand wasn’t the only target of French state-backed terrorism three decades ago. Nor was the Rainbow Warrior when this peaceful environmental campaign ship was bombed by secret agents under our noses.
The attack on the Greenpeace campaign flagship on 10 July 1985 was part of a Pacific-wide strategy to crush pro-independence and nuclear-free movements in both New Caledonia and French Polynesia during the 1980s.
This was not widely understood in New Zealand at the time or reported on by local media.
Opération Satanique, as the “satanic” Rainbow Warrior sabotage plan was aptly named, got the green light because of political rivalry between then socialist President François Mitterrand and right-wing Prime Minister Jacques Chirac that pushed them into cynical point-scoring against each other.
Although misleading and laughable as early Australian or New Zealand press reports were about who was thought to be responsible for the bombing in Auckland Harbour – focusing on mercenaries, or the French Foreign Legion based in New Caledonia and so on – there was certainly a connection with the neocolonial mind-set of the time.
New Caledonia then had the largest military garrison in the Pacific, about 6000 French Pacific Regiment and other troops, larger than the New Zealand armed forces, with about one soldier or paramilitary officer for every 24 citizens in the territory – the nearest Pacific neighbour to Auckland, less than a three hour flight away.
A small Pacific fleet included the nuclear submarine Rubis, reputed to have picked up one unit of the French secret service agents involved in Operation Satanic off the yacht Ouvea, scuttling her in the Coral Sea, and then spirited them to safety in Tahiti.
Rights violations
A long line of human rights violations and oppressive acts were carried out against Kanak activists seeking independence starting with a political stand-off in 1984, a year before the Rainbow Warrior bombing.
Parties favouring independence came together that year under an umbrella known as the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS) and began agitating for independence from France with a series of blockades and political demonstrations over the next four years.
The struggle echoed the current Melanesian activism in West Papua today with advocates seeking political justice and independence from Indonesian colonial rule.
The Greenpeace tragedy was one of several happening in the Pacific at the time, and this was really overshadowed by the Rongelap evacuation when the Rainbow Warrior crew ferried some 320 islanders, plagued by ill-health from the US atmospheric mega-nuclear tests in the 1950s, from their home in the Marshall Islands to a new islet, Mejato, on Kwajalein Atoll.
Bloody incidents
Over the next few years, after the start of the Kanak uprising, New Caledonia suffered a series of bloody incidents because of hard-line French neo-colonial policies:
The Hiènghene massacre on 5 December 1984 when 10 unarmed Kanak political advocates were ambushed by heavily armed mixed-race French settlers on their way home to their village after a political meeting. (Charismatic Kanak independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou lost two brothers in that ambush when almost all the menfolk of the village of Tiendanite were gunned down in one deadly night.)
The assassination of Kanak independence leader Eloï Machoro and his deputy, Marcel Nonaro, by French special forces snipers at dawn on 12 January 1985 during a siege of farmhouse at Dogny, near la Foa.
The infamous cave siege of the island of Ouvea when French forces used a “news media” helicopter as a ruse to attack 19 young militant Kanaks holding gendarmes hostage, killing most of them and allegedly torturing wounded captives to death. The 11th Shock Unit carried out this attack – the same unit (known then as the Service Action squad) to carry out Operation Satanic against the Rainbow Warrior.
The human rights violations involved in this attack were exposed in the 2012 docu-drama movie Rebellion by director Mathieu Kassovitz, based on a book by a hostage negotiator who believed he could have achieved a peaceful resolution.
France had its problems in Vanuatu too. Founding Prime Minister Father Walter Lini’s government expelled ambassador Henri Crepin-Leblond shortly before the election on 30 November 1987, accusing Paris of funding the opposition Union of Moderate Parties – a claim denied by the French.
There were also riots in French Polynesia when young Tahitians set the capital ablaze with demands of an end to nuclear testing and to colonial rule. But these came a decade later in September 1995 after mounting tensions.
Two years later, in December 1997, a French Polynesian journalist known for his liberal views Les Nouvelles de Tahiti editor Jean-Pascal Couraud, known as “JPK”, disappeared and he was believed assassinated by local presidential special ops militia.
Social scars
The social scars from these events affected France’s standing in the Pacific for many years. While relations have dramatically improved since then, it still rankles with both many New Zealanders and Greenpeace campaigners that Paris has never given a full state apology.
Then it seemed highly unlikely that in less than two decades nuclear testing would be finally abandoned in the South Pacific (1996), and Tahiti’s leading nuclear-free and pro-independence politician, Oscar Manutahi Temaru, would emerge as French Polynesia’s new president four times (from 2004) and usher in a refreshing “new order” with a commitment to pan-Pacific relations.
Although Tahitian independence is nominally off the agenda for the moment, far-reaching changes in the Pacific region are inevitable.
Watch a Pacific Media Centre video interview with David Robie here:
Analysis by Keith Rankin – This article was also published on TheDailyBlog.co.nz.
To sort out our intransigent economic problems, ordinary people need to understand how things actually work today and how things do not work. The peasants need to challenge the priests, as they did in Luther’s time when the sacred texts were translated into the vernacular, allowing the obfuscation of the priests to be exposed. The Peasants Revolt of 1525 was a direct result, first of Gutenberg’s printing press, and then of Luther’s challenge to a then morally bankrupt Catholic Church.
Macroeconomics sounds big and complicated, and best left to the experts; but that’s not so. Of course there can be lots of complexity around the edges, but the central truths are very simple. Further, like most important ideas, they can be best appreciated through imagery that cuts through the jargon. I will paint, here, a simple picture with words.
So I invite you to consider a causeway that crosses a wide river estuary, above the tidal zone. The causeway itself represents the passage of time. The flow of the river represents ‘the (global) economy’ of goods and services. Pipes (eg concrete tubular sewer pipes) connect the upstream side of the causeway with the downstream side.
Each pipe represents a fixed period of time – eg one month – and only one pipe (representing ‘the present’) is open at any point in time. Thus the river flows through which ever pipe is open. The central macroeconomic concept is that of flow. (The important microeconomic concept is that of price.)
Living by the portals of the open tunnel are identical twins, Mr and Mr Market. The water flowing into the tunnel represents goods and services being sold to Mr Market, the ultimate middleman. This Mr Market buys the goods and services supplied by us at prices informed by the other Mr Market (the auctioneer) who sells goods and services to us on the downstream side of the pipe. As producers we work upstream of the causeway, and as consumers we live downstream.
Messrs Market, who manage the core money supply, pay money to us when we sell our stuff to Mr Market. That money is paid with the full expectation that Mr Market will fully recoup that money on the other side of the tunnel, as we buy the stuff that we made.
This is the central idea of what economists call equilibrium. The goods and services flow through the tunnel, from producer to consumer. Money flows above the causeway in the same direction as the river, and flows through the pipe (from Mr Market to Mr Market) in the opposite direction to the water’s flow.
Microeconomics is about the mix of goods and services produced. The economy grows through a mixture of knowledge accumulation and people (including their governments) choosing to spend a significant portion of their money on investment goods. If Mr Market detects a high demand for goods such as machines and systems and structures, then price signals will be conveyed to producers who will produce more of these things. Thus next month’s upstream output will be bigger, and more water (goods and services) will flow through next month’s pipe.
The important point is that, in this equilibrium construct, all the money flows, just as blood flows. With investment the flow expands over time. The Markets manage this flow; they do not inhibit it.
The common misunderstanding about money is that it is wealth (a stock that, through work, we make), and therefore it should accumulate rather than flow. So the reality in most of human history since money was invented (the period 1950-75 might be historically exceptional, as Thomas Piketty suggested) is that not all the money flowed. Rather dollops of it accumulated, resin-like, on top of the causeway. The holders of this unspent money (spending abstainers) interpret these dollops as their wealth. Rather than flow across the causeway to Mr Market (on the downside of the pipe), they expect this money to flow along the causeway, into the future. Further, through a process akin to magic, they expect these dollops of unspent money to expand over time.
(While there is an individual rationale for ‘precautionary saving’ – otherwise known as private austerity – systemically this is destabilising or unbalancing behaviour. The Quakers of the industrial revolution were not austere hoarders of money – they invested their earnings through spending on plant and machinery.)
Economists know that what financial alchemists call compound interest is an illusion, made credible by an actual process of economic growth. Further, they know also that the non-spending of earnings impairs economic growth; productive investment is stifled when we buy fewer investment goods. And they know that a lack of spending on consumer goods seriously dampens our willingness to buy investment goods.
The good news is that we have banks, which can, with lesser or greater difficulty, offset the dampening effect of the money hoarders; and we have Luca Pacioli’s Venetian double-entry system of bookkeeping. While the commercial banks can usually create extra money to compensate for monetary sclerosis, in doing so they must create an equal measure of anti-money, which you and I generally call debt. The new money is spent (known as deficit spending), thus countering the depressive effect of the dollops of unspent money. On the causeway we are left with equal piles – one amber (say) and the other red (like the Spanish flag). Money and anti-money.
As time passes, these two dollops – money and debt – progress along the causeway. New pipes open, old pipes close. Mr and Mr Market manage the flow of money through the open pipe. If interest rates are positive, then both dollops get bigger, together. If interest rates are negative, then both piles get smaller together. Negative interest rates stabilise the system by reducing hoarded wealth and accumulated debt. Positive interest rates aggravate the imbalance, creating entitlements to the people who disrupted the equilibrium by treating money as wealth rather than flow.
That’s it. Macroeconomics in a nutshell. Debt – anti-money – is a crucial part of the stabilisation process.
Rebalancing of an unbalanced system can take place either through negative interest rates (as noted), or through holders of hoarded money spending some of it (deficit finance on their part), enabling holders of anti‑money to run surpluses and reduce their debts.
The causeway and the river estuary represent the 2000s’ Eurozone economy to a tee. In that decade, the Euro Area was like a compact version of the global economy; like a ‘closed economy’ as economists say. The private sectors of the north accumulated money (imagine amber resin or plaque). The private sectors of Iberia, Ireland, Cyprus and Greece – and all the Eurozone governments – accumulated anti-money (imagine red resin). As the decade unfolded, both piles – amber and red – grew much bigger. Following austerity in the Euro Area, both piles have continued to grow, but the amber pile has grown faster. The Eurozone no longer acts as a closed economy. It (through its private sector) is now a net exporter of finance to the rest of the world (meaning its money exceeds its anti-money). Thus the rest of the world holds more red than amber. (By definition, for the world as a whole, amber and red – stocks of money and anti-money – add to zero.)
Where does New Zealand sit? Per person, New Zealand is one of the highest (probably the highest) holder of private-sector anti-money in the world. Red to the gunnels. But remember that red balances amber. We (like Greece) can only reduce our outstanding stocks of anti-money if the world reduces (by spending) its stocks of unspent money.
Jane Kelsey has written this year about the FIRE Economy (refer The FIRE Economy: New Zealand’s ReckoningScoop 17 July 2015), with particular reference to neoliberal New Zealand Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. The New Zealand economy, through its finance and real estate sectors, helps to stabilise the world economy by taking on some of the debt that is needed to compensate for the accumulating hoards of money elsewhere, especially in Europe. (Asia holds huge hoards, too, but is not expanding its hoards at anything like the rate that Europe is.)
The problem for trouble-shooters is that, for the immediate present the world economy is comparatively stable, and growing at historical rates (three to four percent a year) by virtue of the growth of anti-money. For the longer-term, however, the growing size of the (amber) monetary stockpile (with its compensating debt pile) is an assuredly destabilising factor. The problem is the ‘elephant in the room’ that remains invisible to the wilfully blind and to the colour blind. The elephant is amber, not red. Red is the consequence, not the cause.
The world economy will always have stockpiles of money and anti-money. For the sake of stability, the size of those stockpiles relative to world GDP should be falling not rising. Unfortunately, the privately-held stocks of unspent money are still rising rapidly. Increased private sector financial surpluses (evermore amber) is what is happening, and too many of us choose to interpret them as a ‘good thing’. We also see the high levels of offsetting government sector deficit (red) finance, but do not make the connection. We also sense the rising levels of offsetting private sector deficit finance in New Zealand and many other mainly non-European non-Asian countries. The dots remain unjoined.
The world economy is imperilled by its glut of unspent money, as it has never been since the late 1920s. There are solutions, including green low-growth solutions. But they are largely beyond the adjacent possible. We cannot properly investigate these solutions if we stubbornly refuse to understand the problem.
AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch): Most audiences are used to seeing Wairere Tame Iti as the Māori activist, who most notably shot the Australian flag at a 2005 Waitangi Tribunal hearing, and recently when he was arrested as part of the 2007 anti-terrorism raids in Te Urewera.
But a new documentary entitled The Price of Peace goes beyond the surface into the world of Tame Iti, and takes a different approach to telling the story of the Tūhoe raids.
Award-winning director and co-producer Kim Webby says she wanted to show all sides of Tame Iti.
“I knew him differently. I knew him as a grandfather and as a father, as a marae committee chairman, you know, a leader in his community.”
The flag-shooting incident in 2005 … but this intimate documentary provides a wider context for race-relations in New Zealand. Image: ConbrioMedia
[caption id="attachment_5782" align="alignleft" width="300"] The flag-shooting incident in 2005 … but this intimate documentary provides a wider context for race-relations in New Zealand. Image: ConbrioMedia[/caption]
The film also addresses the themes of how the media portrayed Tame Iti himself, his court case and the painful impact on the wider Ngāi Tūhoe community.
One of three co-producers on the film, AUT University television lecturer Christina Milligan, says the commercialisation of our media industry is a major issue.
“Our mainstream media is getting whiter and whiter by the day and it’s almost like because we have Māori Television, we can now put all the Māori stories, indigenous stories over in that box and its taken care of and the government’s ticked that one off.”
On a wider scope, the film points towards the importance of reconciliation and the state of race relations in the country.
The film screens once more at the New Zealand International Film Festival in Auckland, then tours around the country before airing on Māori Television on October 13.
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 8 media release snippets and 4 links for the day of Friday 24th July.
Top stories in the current news cycle include more concerns about effects of the Government’s tougher welfare policy and the decision to step in to manage Mt Eden prison following this week’s rolling controversy.
For coverage on NewsRoom_Plus of the launch of the “He Māramatanga Huangō: Asthma Health Literacy for Māori Children in New Zealand” research report please see http://newsroomplus.com/2015/07/24/asthma-1/
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY.
* Politics
Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:
Government: New recycling facility for building waste; Small businesses urged to value and protect IP; Modern buildings open at two Auckland schools; Better spinal injury outcomes goal of new policy; Court of Appeal upholds the Ministry’s product liability claim; Corrections Minister statement on Mt Eden Prison allegations; Youth Service extension bill passes first reading; Minister supports Corrections’ decision; Hawke’s Bay ‘Land Girl’ honoured; Another chance for kids; Minister welcomes Health and Safety Reform Bill report; New NZ On Air appointments announced.
Labour:Minister must cancel Serco’s contract today; Minister must take responsibility for problem gambling debacle; Labour will not support TPP if it undermines NZ sovereignty; Coleman can’t ignore latest warnings; Serco bail-out shows failure of Nats’ privatisation agenda; Charanpreet Dhaliwal death demands genuine health and safety reform; Arbitrary sanctions hit children hardest; Hekia just won’t face the facts; Labour To Oppose Gutted Health And Safety Bill; Court ruling shows law should never have been passed.
Greens: Time to consider cancelling SERCO contract, Questioning Of Lotu-Iiga Reveals More SERCO Failures, Environment at risk as GE advocate chosen to head the EPA, Prisoner voting ban needs to be repealed, SERCO contract could have been cancelled earlier, Compromised charter board should go, New health and safety law worse than what it replaces
New Zealand First: TPPA more important than public concern, Minister of Social Development u-turns on Serco comments, Accident Compensation Ombudsman urgently needed at ACC, Hutt kids receiving their B4 School Checks, Charter school announcement no surprise
NZ National Party: More children than ever benefit from free before school health checks.
UnitedFuture Party: Eliminate Prison Violence Across The System
* Business
Personal Insurance Sales: The Financial Services Council (FSC) has commissioned consulting actuaries Melville Jessup Weaver (MJW) to investigate sales incentives in the personal insurance industry (life and income protection insurance) and to suggest remedies for any misalignment of incentives between salespeople and their clients.
* Primary Industries
HortNZ conference next week: Every meal we eat costs the planet 10 kgs of soil, 800 litres of fresh water and 1.3 litres of diesel fuel.“That’s what it takes to feed the typical person for just one meal – and when you multiply it by 7.3 billion people each eating around a thousand meals a year, our modern food system is devouring a vast amount of resources unsustainably,” science writer Julian Cribb will tell the Horticulture New Zealand Conference next week in Rotorua.
VULNERABILITY OF CHILDREN: Only one in five families whose toddlers were considered most at risk of vulnerability from birth accessed social support services in their first 1000 days of life, according to a new report on early childhood vulnerability, released today by the Growing Up in New Zealand study. These include services such as Child, Youth and Family; Whānau Ora; or well-established programmes such as Family Start; and Parents as First Teachers.Find the full report, titled ‘‘Transitions in exposure to vulnerability in the first 100 days of life’ online at:http://www.growingup.co.nz/en/news-and-events/news/news-2015/vulnerability-report-2.html
HOME LOAN AFFORDABILITY REPORT: Housing became a little more affordable for first home buyers last month thanks to a combination of falling mortgage interest rates and a slight drop in lower quartile house prices.Click here for the report: http://www.interest.co.nz/property/first-home-buyer
INVESTOR MIGRANTS TO NZ: New Zealand is one of the best countries in the world for business, according to Forbes. With New Zealand’s stable democratic political system, strong legal and judicial institutions, a resilient economy and an abundance of natural resources, investing in New Zealand as a migrant can be your smartest business decision ever, and it comes with a lifestyle to boot. Click here for more: http://www.pwc.co.nz/immigration-services/migrate-to-nz-by-investing-or-doing-business-in-nz/
And that’s our sampling of the day that was on Friday 24th July 2015.
NewsroomPlus.com – Contributed by Olexander BarnesWellington is the city where the vampire film “What we do in the Shadows” takes place, but there are more dangers on our streets than just vampires.
Living Streets Aotearoa and the Urban Design Forum are two groups that are keenly aware of potential dangers that plague our city and have been using Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) to identify and find solutions for them.
As a way of shining some light on their work and to raise awareness of the darker side of Wellington, they organised a walk round some of the pathways and streets, just a hairs breath away from the glitz and glamour of Courtenay Place where Taika Waititi and his vampire compatriots stalk.
So on a calm winter Wednesday evening, last night, a well-sized group assembled.
Comprised of various members of the community including a policeman (in uniform), council workers, architects, students and members of Walkwise Wellington.
The walk began at the bottom of Manners and Burke street winding its way up Allenby Terrace steps, past the little known Terrace Park, up on to Percival street, then on to The Terrace, down Burke street steps and down a dimly lit path complete with flickering light and thick bushes, that links MacDonald’s Crescent to Burke street.
This was all a stark reminder that many Wellington backstreets are perfectly suited to less savory creatures of the night. The walk made its way back down Burke Street before finishing back at the same corner where it had started.
Credit: Patrik Nygren
At various times during the route there were stops to point out many of the dangers that fill Wellingtons’ paths and walkways. Some them were very subtle in nature.
A recessed gate on a shadowy part of Allenby Terrace was pointed out as a potential ambush point. Trees blocking overhead streetlights were constantly pointed out as they reduce lighting. The subtlest hazard was some horizontal beams on a fence that could be used as a ladder for someone to climb over and on to a car park where vehicles have been stolen. These were just some of the lurking dangers identified throughout the walk.
The walk provided a very effective illumination of the potential dangers that lurk on Wellington’s streets. Though help is at hand by using CPTED, both the Urban Design Forum and Living Streets Aotearoa along with the Wellington City Council are hoping to provide solutions to many of the dangers.
Actions that can be taken include upgrading streetlights to brighter more energy efficient LED light bulbs, which would also be more directional and better at illuminating the necessary areas. Plans are being made to add more overhead lighting to certain paths, where currently the shadows are too deep and plentiful.
There was discussion in making sure that paths with trees growing beside were maintained to stop them growing too thick, providing hiding spots and making sure that they did not block streetlights.
While we must always remain vigilant while travelling around our city and the many dangers exist, it is good to know that some of these dangers are being recognised and dealt with.
Maybe the shadows that haunt this city will become things of legend!
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NewsroomPlus.com
It may be a fact of the news cycle that Thursday night’s release of research focused on asthma health literacy for Māori children in New Zealand – He Māramatanga Huangō – wasn’t destined to make the 6pm bulletin. That’s a sad fact.
Asthma is a respiratory condition that literally takes your breath away. It can and does kill.
In New Zealand it’s well known as a condition that affects a large proportion of the population – with up to one in nine adults and one in seven children taking asthma medication.
In terms of knowing someone with asthma, that’s a small degree of separation. It seems natural then to think of this as an area of health focus that would be being constantly prioritised, with every effort being made to provide, to use the words of Governor-General Sr Jerry Mateparae as Asthma Foundation patron: “new way(s) forward”.
Large numbers of children are still being hospitalised with asthma: 3,730 in 2013. Many of them with a potentially life threatening attack.
The figures for Māori and Pacific New Zealanders are undeniably adverse, with rates of hospitalisation that are estimated to be 3 to 4 times higher than European New Zealanders.
Bridget Jones and Dr Tristram Ingham
Even a brief korero with lead researcher Bernadette Jones and co-author Dr Tristram Ingham last night made it obvious that this was a highly practical project.
Commissioned from the University of Otago by the Ministry of Health and Asthma Foundation it followed a very targeted and tikanga aligned methodology that is also obviously very timely.
A feature of the launch event was the respect shown to the often unheard voices of the large number of people interviewed for the research, be that the online survey across 800 health professionals with a role in asthma management, or the seventeen in-depth, semi-structured interviews and three focus groups held with Māori whānau who have at least one child with asthma aged 4-18 years.
Honey Brown at the launch of He Māramatanga Huangō. Honey has experienced asthma throughout her childhood.
Māori tamariki experience a greater prevalence of severe asthma
As stated in the report the inequalities apparent in the greater prevalence of severe asthma experienced by Māori tamariki, leading to other consequences such as more days off school for asthma-related illness, are striking.
Or as Mrs Jones put it: “These are statistics we don’t want to have”.
Even more striking is the point made that while the prevalence of asthma has decreased for New Zealand European children over the past few decades, this reduction has not occurred for Māori.
Based on the report’s unequivocal statement that addressing the burden of childhood asthma for Māori is “a critical issue warranting urgent action”, it was tragic to read that many recommendations for strategies to reduce these disparities that have been available since a 1991 ministerial review of Maori asthma, He Mate Huangō, remain unimplemented.
Dr Ingham showed admirable professional restraint in speaking about a health system that has simply not been responding effectively.
On the surface it certainly seems inexplicable that despite a higher prevalence of disease and severity of symptoms, Maori children are dispensed fewer preventive treatments, resulting in poorer overall asthma control.
Focussing on a new model of care
What impresses about this research is that it doesn’t indulge in finger pointing, but rather zeroes in on what a new model of care would look like and how that would work.
Dr Ingham: “We realised early on in this research that context is everything. (Taking into account) what interactions late at night are like, interactions between people who may never have met before”.
Aside from asthma not being located within a chronic disease management approach – as it’s framed by the World Health Organisation – or within a health literacy and cultural competency context, the current root problem can be thought of as an unfortunate series of failures to communicate, combined with a frustrating set of constraints on exchanging information – beginning with too little time and including other factors such as location and cost.
On the health professionals side, this research confirmed that genuine efforts are being made to recognise the information needs of patients and to deliver understandable information. Equally from a whanau point of view significant efforts take place to try to navigate what is frequently an asthmatic rollercoaster, using as much knowledge and skills as available.
What came through loud and clear at this report’s launch is that the very reactive and episodic bias of the acute care model of the health system is what, in reality, works against optimal asthma management.
It’s a system built around sitting back and waiting for children to become unwell before responding to their asthma.
“This research report is a taonga”
In the opinion of Paula Searle, acting Ministry of Health Deputy Director General of Māori Health, having this systemic issue headlined elevates He Māramatanga Huangō (Understanding Asthma) to being “one of the best research reports we’ve ever funded… a real treasure, or taonga”.
In her words of endorsement and support for the report, Searle highlighted not her own words but some of the numerous quotes from the perspective of those most affected by asthma as contained in He Māramatanga Huangō. “I find these very emotional, many of them make me cry … and that shouldn’t be happening,” she added.
From whānau interviews it emerged that there is a widespread belief amongst Māori parents that asthma is a normal part of gowing up in their community.
There was, as recorded in the report, “a normalisation or expectation that their children would be hospitalised with asthma, without realising that many of these hospitalisations could be prevented”.
It was apparent from the interviews that parents and whānau wanted more knowledge about a range of aspects concerning asthma management, but they felt asthma education was largely limited to medications.
Some parents and whānau reported having never been taught what causes asthma or what triggers an asthma attack. As supported by this quote:
“…we didn’t know that she was that severe, we were giving her the reliever but that wasn’t doing anything and we didn’t know, I didn’t know that there were other things we were meant to watch, we had a bad case before we got the education. We always took it seriously but we weren’t educated about what the different stages were.”
As summarised in the report, most whānau were “under-confident in their own abilities”, and expressed frustration at the lack of proactive holistic care, and failure of the health system to respond to their needs.
And again, despite using a range of informal techniques to gauge understanding, many health professionals admitted they found it particularly challenging to find a way to assess whether the parent or child – their patient – had fully grasped key asthma messages.
Mrs Jones: “Whānau can’t be blamed or judged, nor health professionals, for confusing and inconsistent messages. Many sufferers are never actually given the diagnosis of asthma, and who among us is actually trained in understanding, let alone communicating, anatomy or physiology?”
Dr Ingham: “Could you explain all the complexities in five minutes? I doubt it… because it’s a high level order of learning (that takes time)”.
As Dr Ingham says this isn’t being taken seriously enough.
Surely that has to change.
[This is part 1 of a series by the NewsRoom_Plus team of Stephen Olsen, Shereel Patel-Gaunavinaka and Rupeni Vatubuli]
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RECOMMENDATIONS
Excerpt, page 73:
In determining our recommendations we have adopted a systems approach to health literacy, to avoid the deficit notion of poor health literacy whereby it is considered the responsibility of the patient/whānau. All whānau have their own levels of knowledge, skill and internal resources to manage a chronic illness; however, it is our assertion that the health system must accommodate whānau equitably. We conclude that the predominant barriers to optimal health literacy for Māori children with asthma are structural, endemic to the acute care model of health delivery that currently predominates.
Mātauranga (Knowledge)
Delivering Understandable Best-Practice Asthma Advice for Māori Children
Health System (Macro Level)
The health system needs to recognise the burden of asthma facing New Zealand society, and Māori children in particular. It must take action to promote widespread public awareness of asthma, its causes, and the potential seriousness of the condition. It is vital that updated New Zealand-specific guidelines for the management of childhood asthma be developed that cater for our unique population, specific health environment and latest therapeutic options in order to ensure the provision of consistent, up-to-date, evidence-based best-practice information.
Recommendations
Promote enhanced public awareness of asthma, its potential seriousness and preventive measures.
Work in partnership with the education sector to integrate fundamental asthma health knowledge into school curricula.
Update New Zealand-specific best-practice management guidelines for paediatric asthma.
Develop step-wise learning objectives and a curriculum for asthma management.
Fund research that provides evidence for effective asthma interventions that activate and empower whānau to support children with asthma.
Health Organisations (Meso Level)
The maintenance of clinical skills is an on-going task. Health organisations need to assume responsibility for the maintenance of best-practice standards within their organisation and for the provision of in-service training of their staff with respect to asthma management. Asthma is a chronic disease, and asthma education is a longitudinal, step-wise process. Information systems are important to monitor asthma care, alongside the provision of asthma education, to ensure elements are not accidentally omitted and relevant items are reinforced periodically.
Recommendations
Invest in regular in-service training for staff on asthma best practice. • Utilise GP patient management systems to provide longitudinal asthma education monitoring.
Develop asthma training packages for patients, whānau and communities.
Nominate a staff member to the role of ‘asthma champion’ with responsibility for leading uptake of best-practice guidelines, resource implementation and quality assurance monitoring.
Include the populations served in the design, implementation and evaluation of health information and services.
Health Professionals (Micro Level)
Health professionals need to be able to provide up-to-date best-practice asthma care for Māori children which takes account of the: age of the child; level of severity or treatment step; existing knowledge; learning style; and cultural preferences of the whānau. All children with asthma should have clear, individualised, asthma management plans (developed in partnership with the whānau) and be able to effectively implement them. Asthma education needs to focus more broadly than disease-specific knowledge and medication compliance to incorporate holistic objectives, including health promotion, self-management and disease prevention.
Recommendations
Maintain a high level of competency in current best practice for the management of childhood asthma.
Ensure all children have access to individualised, understandable asthma action plans.
Follow a step-wise education plan when providing asthma support to Māori patients.
Provide updated electronic access to asthma plans for whānau, community health workers and schools.
Routinely utilise specialist (medical and/or nursing) respiratory and paediatric expertise to effectively manage those whānau with complex health-care needs.
Whakaakoako (Teaching Strategies)
Using Effective Strategies to Communicate about Asthma with Māori
Children Health System (Macro Level)
The health system needs to recognise and promote the importance of health literacy and chronic disease management competencies for all health professionals and other health-care workers involved in asthma management. Health professional bodies and academic training institutions need to ensure adequate provision of training in these areas and provide monitoring in the attainment of these skills. The health system must also promote the integration of cultural competency, cross-cultural communication and holistic Māori models of health into all levels of the health sector to ensure the health workforce are equipped to engage in meaningful collaborative partnerships with Māori patients.
Recommendations 
Influence medical, nursing and pharmacy schools and other health training programmes to teach health literacy and chronic care management to students.
Establish and monitor competencies for all health professionals in health literacy education and chronic disease management.
Set an expectation within health policies and strategies that all health services will deliver high- quality care that focuses on meeting the health needs and aspirations of Māori children with asthma.
Health Organisations (Meso Level)
Health organisations need to work collaboratively with the populations they serve to identify and develop high-quality resources for children with asthma and to incorporate these into their educational strategies (particularly interactive and audio-visual resources, along with resources designed specifically to address the needs of Māori children). There is a need for education support tools for asthma to monitor the longitudinal provision of asthma care for Māori children and their whānau. Innovative, flexible and community-based asthma educational approaches need to be adopted to better meet the needs of Māori whānau.
Recommendations 
Work collaboratively with children with asthma to develop high-quality asthma resources for a range of ages and levels of asthma knowledge – particularly interactive and/or audio-visual resources, and resources specifically for Māori children.
Develop longitudinal asthma education support and monitoring tools for patients/whānau. •
Develop community-based, health literacy asthma support and education sessions that are culturally appropriate for Māori children and whānau.
Health Professionals (Micro Level)
Teaching strategies employed by health professionals need to engage the patient and their whānau according to the specific needs and learning preferences of the family. They need to empower and activate patients to be able to take an active role in their own health care, and provide them with the tools to do this. This involves a requirement for specific training in health literacy-based education techniques, chronic disease management education strategies and cultural responsiveness. High-quality resources utilising a range of media need to be available which can support health professional-led engagements, and reinforce key messages for all ages and levels of understanding.
Recommendations 
Ensure all consultations are seen as opportunities to build health literacy, promote patient activation and support asthma self-management.
Undertake specific training in the use of health literacy-based education techniques.
Regularly incorporate a variety of learning media (e.g. interactive/tactile/audio-visual asthma resources) to support asthma education.
Continue to develop cultural competency skills for engaging with Māori children and whānau. 
Whakawhanake (Workforce Development)
Building Relationships and Working Together to Support Māori Children with Asthma 
Health System (Macro Level)
In order to meet the on-going needs of Māori children with asthma (and other chronic diseases) the health system must develop a range of health-care personnel equipped to meet the specific challenges of providing chronic disease management. This must include coordinated development of inter-professional and team-care strategies that clarify roles and expand scopes of practice to provide integrated support for chronic disease management. Such inter-professional approaches need to include recognition of the roles that asthma educators, pharmacists, non-professional health-care workers, community organisation staff and trained volunteers can have in supporting the provision of holistic integrated asthma care.
Recommendations
Explore models of integrated care to promote closer working relationships between health professionals, and enhanced inter-professional learning opportunities.
Improve role delineation for health professional groups in the chronic disease management of asthma in support of a multidisciplinary support approach.
Formalise and expand scopes of practice for other health-worker roles (such as asthma educators, pharmacists and community health workers) to support the provision of holistic integrated asthma care.
Health Organisations (Meso Level)
Effective asthma care requires a team approach. Health organisations need to develop and adopt policies and procedures that encourage better interdisciplinary harmonisation. This also involves a need for improved links with other providers within and beyond the health sector to address the dynamic and holistic well-being of Māori children with asthma. Health organisations must also mandate the inclusion of cultural competency across the organisation to ensure all staff understand and practise effective ways of engaging with Māori in clinical settings.
Recommendations
Provide policies and procedures for cross-disciplinary harmonisation of asthma management and education.
Develop collaborations and provider networks (e.g. within and between DHBs, PHOs, Māori providers, NGOs and other community agencies) to support implementation of best practice for asthma and chronic care management approaches.
Mandate the inclusion of cultural competency across the organisation to ensure all staff understand effective ways of engaging with Māori in clinical settings.
Health Professionals (Micro Level)
Effective asthma management requires the establishment of long-term trusted relationships with patients in order to build a shared understanding of values, priorities and management strategies. No individual health professional has sufficient capacity or capability to be the sole provider of asthma management support. Health professionals need to establish collaborative relationships with their professional colleagues and community partner organisations to develop a shared understanding of the responsibilities for asthma education in order to ensure the education is consistent, timely and comprehensive.
Recommendations
• Maintain continuous high-quality relationships to build long-term trust relationships with patients.
• Routinely explore the manageability of asthma management plans and utilise relevant support services to address identified barriers.
• Develop collaborative partnerships with Māori health providers, Whānau Ora providers and other community-based organisations in support of asthma care for Māori children.
Te Anga (Model of Care)
Health Care Services That Meet the Health Needs of Māori
Health System (Macro Level)
Critically, the health system must recognise that the current system based around reactive, episodic care is failing Māori children with asthma, and is being manifested in significant inequalities in asthma health outcomes. The health system urgently needs to implement a chronic care management model to provide proactive, longitudinal, patient/whānau-centred, culturally responsive care to Māori children with asthma within a multidisciplinary team environment. The health system must also ensure services for asthma are integrated to provide shared information across settings, providers and time – minimising fragmentation, service delivery gaps and patient frustration. Integration must also include extending policies that support patient-centred health care, prioritise health promotion, engender patient activation and encourage self- management.
Recommendations
Implement a systematic chronic care management model for asthma care to provide long-term, proactive, whānau-centred multidisciplinary support.
Develop and support shared information platforms allowing integration of asthma support and monitoring between providers.
Align provider incentives so that proactive chronic disease management efforts are rewarded.
Allow flexibility within Care Plus eligibility criteria to include asthma as a single qualifying condition.
Fund a free annual asthma review in primary care.
Health Organisations (Meso Level)
Health Organisations need to adopt a proactive chronic care management approach to all aspects of asthma support within organisational policies and procedures. Health literacy policies and procedures also need to be integrated into the organisational culture so that every asthma interaction aligns with effective learning outcomes. These organisations need to contribute to generating evidence that informs community initiatives that activate whānau and build asthma self-management capabilities, and incorporate mechanisms to support holistic well-being for Māori children with asthma.
Recommendations
Develop and implement health literacy policies and procedures for staff.
Adopt a proactive chronic care management approach to all aspects of asthma support within organisational policies and procedures.
Incorporate a philosophy of culturally competent holistic care into organisational policies and individual consultations with Māori.
Contribute to the generation of evidence-informing initiatives to activate whānau and build asthma self-management capabilities.
Health Professionals (Micro Level)
Māori children with asthma face significant barriers to effective asthma management. Although many of these barriers have their origins in inequalities of the determinants of health, it is imperative that health professionals recognise the contribution of barriers within health care that contribute to sub-optimal outcomes. Health professionals need to ensure that all their patients are receiving eligible supports or benefits, and that accessibility or affordability are not preventing optimal health outcomes.
Recommendations
Routinely incorporate chronic care management approaches into asthma consultations, including using proactive strategies to provide preventive advice when patients are well.
Ensure follow-up visits are provided after acute presentations/hospitalisation.
Provide access to asthma self-management support after-hours via the internet or telephone.
Ensure all children with asthma are offered support packages when eligible (e.g. Care Plus, Disability Allowance, Whānau Ora services).
NewsroomPlus.com – Contributed by Amanda CarringtonNew research from a Victoria University professor shows a longer parole period will decrease the risk of prisoners reoffending.
Psychology professor Devon Polaschek’s work Surviving the first year explores how prisoners who are let out on parole are less likely to reoffend than if they served their full sentence.
The study shows how intensive psychological treatment may also help to make a difference in the first year out of prison.
A programme that provides treatment for serious violence offenders is the Special Treatment Unit Rehabilitation Programme (STURP).
STURP is a ten-month long programme that works with prisoners to reduce reoffending by motivating them to adopt pro-social values.
The programme focusses on relationship difficulties, the relationship between alcohol and drugs and how they can get involved in community meetings and volunteer groups.
Offenders who completed the STURP programme were 37 per cent less likely to re-offend after their release.
The STURP programme is only available to prisoners who have a 70 per cent risk of reoffending and have served more than two years of their sentence. It is offered at four prisons nationwide.
New Zealand’s prison population has gone up 300 per cent since the 1980s, locking up more people than countries like Australia or Britain.
This new research came to light before reports of “fight clubs” in Mt Eden prison, and reportage of prisoners being caught using contraband cellphones.
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Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup – The Housing apartheid problem
[caption id="attachment_4808" align="alignleft" width="150"] Dr Bryce Edwards.[/caption]
There’s a social divide opening up in New Zealand cities, especially Auckland, over home ownership. But is the division about race or wealth? And what can be done to fix it?
New Zealand’s worsening housing affordability problem is causing serious social problems. There’s now a consensus on that that issue, illustrated by a media report on Wednesday quoting politicians from all sides acknowledging the social fallout from rising house prices – see Radio New Zealand’s House price rise increases inequality – English.
Increasingly it’s acknowledged that this gap between those who can afford to buy houses and those who can’t has widened to an extreme situation. Economist Shamubeel Eaqub has recently labelled it a form of “housing apartheid”. His book Generation Rent is about this growing divide and what it means for the country. He explained on TV3’s The Nation why this is essentially a social-economic class divide, rather than one primarily based on ethnicity. His 11-minute interview, Shamubeel Eaqub on Generation Rent is well worth watching.
TV3’s interview transcript also records Eaqub’s forthright explanations of this economic “segregation” and “ghettoisation” occurring. He says that although there’s also a generational and ethnic dimension to the housing problem, he describes “this massive divide opening up in New Zealand between the landed gentry and the rest”. So it’s the “haves” versus the “have nots” – an economic rather than race divide.
Of course, Eaqub was one of the economists who spoke out strongly against Phil Twyford’s “Chinese-sounding name” campaign on housing. And his own campaign on housing affordability shows how an examination of the housing affordability problem – and the potential solutions – don’t need to concentrate on race or populism. In fact in terms of the “foreign investor” issue, Eaqub has done his own research – based on more credible data than Labour’s – and estimated that such purchases account for only about eight per cent of housing.
And in a blog post published last week, Generation Rent, Shamubeel and Selena Equab argue that we should ignore the distractions about foreigners and immigrants, and look for real solutions, and they propose a few. These are “structural policy changes” around tax, banking, and housing supply – not quick-fix populist ones.
Predictions of growing economic segregation are an “alarming thought” according to Generation Rent book reviewer Morgan Godfery – see: Generation Rent: What’s really the solution? He proposes that “A wage catch up is one way to make housing more affordable without secretly wishing for the bubble to burst”.
Also on the left, blogger No Right Turn refers to the book’s prognosis and says that the way forward is to look to the past: “in the late C19th New Zealand was developing an unwelcome landed gentry of high-country farmers with vast estates. The Liberal Government strangled that would-be-aristocracy at birth with land taxes, which forced the breakup of those estates. We need to do the same again – not just capital gains taxes on property speculators, but estate taxes and restrictions on the use of trusts to counteract those disparities of wealth and prevent them from accumulating” – see: A landed gentry.
But it’s not just those on the political left who are up in the arms about the concept of the growing unfair housing divide. Act Party MP David Seymour has been making some similar points to the Eaqubs, and in May complained that “home ownership has become the privilege of the wealthy” – see Rob Stock’s Home ownership now for privileged few – ACT. Seymour is quoted as saying that “For the first time we have a situation in New Zealand where property ownership is heritable”, and “I look at most of my friends, lawyers, doctors or engineers. All of them went to Auckland Grammar, or St Cuthberts. All of them have done it with parental help”.
The growing housing divide is making some furious – see Peter Calder’s House rage – we’re right to be angry. This is the core of his rage: “We have betrayed a generation and generations to come and I’m angry as hell about that. In just 15 years of this century, we have destroyed one of the great achievements of the last one: making New Zealand a place where anyone who wanted to could have their own place to call home”.
Solutions to the problem
The search for housing affordability solutions has become the main political battleground for 2015. But it’s not just politicians offering recommendations. One of the more interesting recent proposals comes from Metro magazine’s Simon Wilson – see: The property challenge. He also complains of the “potentially bitter social divide” resulting from what is currently occurring, and puts forward a checklist of solutions that need to be implemented.
In Generation Rent, the Eaqubs see the regulation of banking as being a big part of the problem. Bryan Gould seems to agree, saying that the Australian-owned banks “are responsible for our housing crisis” – see: Banks fuel housing market by ‘creating’ money.
A much more in depth examination of the role of banking regulation, and the Reserve Bank in particular, in driving the “credit tsunami for housing” can be found in Graham Adams’ North and South feature, Auckland House Price Insanity. Adams also asks whether the Auckland housing market is a bubble (ready to be burst). This theme is also taken up by Brian Easton in Bubble, Bubble, Boil and Auckland Housing Trouble. See also, Arthur Grimes’ Understanding Housing Affordability.
A different type of banking problem is pointed at by Gareth Morgan, who says that property developers are sitting on large chunks of land for future use – see How do we stop land banking? (with video).
Outgoing Herald financial journalist Brian Fallow ponders New Zealand’s “deeply embedded cultural preference for owning a patch of land” – see: Is it goodbye to the back yard? He wonders if renting is really so bad, and says being in debt to foreign banks is potentially much more of a problem.
Another solution is to simply encourage the population and economy away from Auckland – see Jacqueline Rowarth’s Generation Rent may yet lead the way.
Finally, although there are plenty of solutions now being discussed that don’t necessarily involve blaming one particular group of people, it’s still sometimes useful to point the finger at the politicians, which is what Caleb Morgan does well in his blog post: Breaking news: Occupations extremely likely to be property speculating.
[caption id="attachment_3755" align="alignleft" width="300"] FiveAA Australia’s breakfast show hosts Dave Penberthy, Mark Aiston, and Jane Reilly.[/caption]Selwyn Manning delivers his New Zealand Report Australian radio FiveAA’s breakfast team, Jane Reilly, Dave Penberthy and Mark Aiston. This week: Auckland House Median Prices Set To Reach Magic Million + All Blacks Try Out New Blood in South Africa – Recorded live on 24/07/15.
ITEM ONE:The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand has warned that house prices in Auckland are fast approaching a median sale price of $1million.
The Institute made the announcement within hours of reports that the median sale price of Sydney homes had broken the so-called Magic million.
And yesterday morning, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut the official cash rate by 2.5 base points, that’s five points down in the last two months, setting it at three percent. Banks and lenders followed suit dropping home mortgage floating interest rates to below five percent.
Lower interest rates are expected to give some relief to cash-strapped farmers, but the availability of cheaper finance is expected to apply a blowtorch to an already hot Auckland residential housing market.
Foreign investment in the market is also, in part, creating a house price bubble that the Reserve Bank has warned may burst. If it does, it will drag the wider domestic economy down with it.
Despite the warning, the National-led Government is focused almost entirely on increasing the supply of housing stock, to little effect. It has refused to curb or regulate the flow of foreign investment.
Even last week the Housing Minister and the Prime Minister said increasing supply will assist a correction, in time.
But according to real estate sales figures, Auckland houses are currently rising in value by $3000 per week, that’s $150,000 a year.
At this rate Auckland median house values will hit the magic million in about 18 months from now.
Clearly the current economic environment makes it near impossible for Kiwi first home buyers to buy in Auckland.
ITEM TWO:Preparations for this year’s Rugby World Cup are well underway, and yesterday the All Blacks announced some surprising selections to play against arch-rivals, South Africa’s Spring Boks, this Sunday.
Yesterday,mAll Blacks head coach Steve Hansen announced veteran number 10 Dan Carter will stay home, replaced by 24-year-old Lima Sopoaga, who will make his test debut against the Springboks at Ellis Park in Johannesburg.
Lock forward, James Broadhurst, will also make his test debut this weekend.
The head coach wants to see how the new players cope with pressure and added… The Johannesburg fortress is as good a place as any to do it.
Lima Sopoaga says he’s nervous. Mentor Dan Carter says, that’s good, it proves you are still alive!
NOTES:
All Blacks play South Africa at Ellis Park Jo-burg on Sunday, kick-off 12:30am SA Time.
The 2015 Rugby World Cup will be hosted by England from 18 September to 31 October 2015. Twickenham Stadium in London will host the final.
Containing the impacts in NZ: Acne and isotretinoin III
Investigation by Carolyn Skelton.In my previous pieces I addressed problems with acne and a last resort anti-acne drug (isotretinoin); a drug which has tended towards being overused and under-regulated. Many of the problems arose from the impatient pursuit of profit by Big Pharma. Pharmaceutical corporations have researched and developed some very valuable medicines. However, there need to be checks to ensure the seeking of profits doesn’t result in some powerful drugs doing harm. For instance, in the US, there was a rush to market isotretinoin to combat “severe [nodulo]cystic acne and conglobate acne resistant to other treatments”.
Subsequent brand names have included Accutane, Oratane and Isotane.
[caption id="attachment_5712" align="alignleft" width="300"] Image of brochure from Docstoc website[/caption]
New Zealand medical authorities have tended to follow the UK, Europe and the US in the use of isotretinoin. This is because there are limits to the amount a small country can do in developing and researching a wide range of medicines.
Regulation and guidelines in NZAnnette Fea is a clinical psychologist in Queenstown who has written about the negative effects of isotretinoin (Scroll down the document for Fea mention)
In my phone conversation with her in April, she stressed the importance of restricting and monitoring the use of such powerful drugs. Fea acknowledges that there are some people for whom it is the only effective way to combat severe nodulo cystic acne: a debilitating condition, physically, and emotionally. Nevertheless, the evidence of negative side effects, and the inadequate regulation can result in the lack of trust of health professionals, potentially limiting the benefits of the drug.
Pharmac, Medsafe (New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority) and NZ area health boards have taken notice of evidence pointing to the need to warn potential users of the possible side effects, of isotretinoin.
The Orotane data sheet (2012) prepared by Douglas Pharmaceuticals, and the Isotane data sheet prepared by Mylan New Zealand Ltd (May 2015), are available on the Medsafe website. These data sheets state that isotretinoin is to be prescribed by physicians, preferably dermatologists
They also stress the importance of prescribers having some knowledge of the use and potential impacts of the drug. See also, the Waitemata Area Health Board’s January 2015 guidelines for safe prescribing of isotretinoin.
‘Containment’
However, Fea considers this is not enough. In my conversation with her, she talked about “containment”. That is, restricting the number of people who can prescribe isotretinoin. That would make it easier to monitor the usage and effects, and provide easier oversight of how it is used. At the moment, nurses, dermatologists and GPs can prescribe it.
Isotretinoin should only be used for the most severe cases of nodulo cystic acne, for which all other approaches have failed. However, there is evidence here and overseas of the drug being prescribed for moderate acne. In New Plymouth NZ in 2011, a Dermatologist reported prescribing isotretinoin about 14 times a week. He said it was possible they were being pressured to ask for it by their peers, because teenage girls with “perfect skin” or just a few pimples, were requesting it..
Fea would prefer that prescribing is restricted to area health board dermatologists, who provide a free service, but whose limited availability would ensure only the severe cases are prescribed isotretinoin, as per the recommendations. Dermnet NZ reports:
Since March 2009, subsidy has been available [for isotretinoin] on Special Authority application by dermatologists and vocationally registered general practitioners.
Training and education
Fea also argued for more training for prescribers of such a powerful drug, and more education of users. The online application forms (August 2015) through which health professionals submit requests to application for subsidy by special authority to prescribe isotretinoin, relies on the applicant ticking the boxes to say they have adequate knowledge/training.
Pharmac has actually loosened guidance for prescribing the drug recently. In 2014 the following recommendation was removed from the Pharmac Schedule, and is no longer to be included in an initial application for subsidy:
Patient has had an adequate trial on other available treatments and has received an inadequate response from these treatments or these are contraindiated
2 Applicant is a vocationally registered dermatologist, vocationally registered general practitioner, or nurse practitioner working in a relevant scope of practice; and
3 Applicant has an up to date knowledge of the treatment options for acne and is aware of the safety issues around isotretinoin and is competent to prescribe isotretinoin; …
Fea is keen for there to be more education of both prescribers and user. In her experience, strict regulation is not being followed. Furthermore, she stated that many dermatologists don’t know enough about the psychiatric side effects, early indicators of these, or how to access mental health professionals with a good understanding of the potential brain-related consequences of isotretion use. In fact many mental health professional are not well enough educated on this either, which is what prompted Fea to publish her original article.
Further research needed
Fea is also concerned that there is not enough research into the way powerful medicines can interact with an individual’s genetic make-up. Genetic mix differs for individuals. With many strong drugs, most users don’t seem to experience negative side effects. However, for a significant number, the impacts can be debilitating or deadly, as a result of the drug’s effect on an individual’s brain. The lack of comprehensive monitoring means that many who experience negative side effects may go under the radar.
Most of the research is done by drug companies, and, as I stated in my earlier piece, the focus has been on demographic mapping of reactions. Fea is concerned that there is little funding for genetic/neurological related isotretinoin research. US professor Doug Bremner’s research, funded by a parent whose child suffered negative side effects, is a cautionary tale. After he published his research findings, major drug companies tried to discredit him. He wrote about his experiences in a book, Before You Take that Pill.
Monitoring adverse reactions
In NZ there is no mandatory monitoring or recording of the use and impacts of such powerful drugs. CARM (The Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring) invites medical practitioners to submit data about adverse drug reactions they have seen. But the process is very subjective, and, according to CARM’s supporting caveat, can be affected by such things as relevant news coverage.
Fea says that it is up to practitioner’s discretion about reporting to CARM. This involves various subjective choices. Many practitioners don’t report adverse reactions. Sometimes, this is because the user and/or health professional don’t make a connection between the taking of the drug and the adverse reaction. Fea has taken isotreinoin. She subsequently experienced joint pain but at the time she was advised by her GP that it was probably early onset arthritis. It was only later when she learned more about possible isotertinoin effects, that she went back and checked dates and reconsidered. The joint pain has subsided over time, so was most likely associated with the isotretioin us at that time.
Medsafe produces reports generated from the CARM statistics.
I accessed some statistics for Suspected Medicine Adverse reactions (SMARS) for isotretinoin on the Medsafe website, by clicking on “I want to … search for adverse reactions to medicines”.
It showed a range of adverse reactions were reported. However, these include a small number for most reactions. One criteria with the highest number of reported reactions was for “depression”. However, these statistics alone are inadequate for drawing any conclusions, the number averaging to about one report per year of a depression reaction. There is no indication of how this relates to the rate of isotretinoin use.
This would seem to reinforce Fea’s desire for more “containment” by restricting the numbers of people who can prescribe the drug.
I submitted this article to CARM and Medsafe as requested in the disclaimer below. The Medsafe correspondent asked that this also be included with reference to the adverse reactions reports:
An assessment of the safety of a medicine cannot be made using only the information contained in SMARS. Medsafe advises patients not to make any changes to their medicine treatment based on information contained in SMARS. Changes to treatment should only be made following consultation with a healthcare professional.As you are aware the data from SMARS does not summarise the complete known safety profile of a medicine. The data available comes from spontaneous adverse reaction reports and only represent suspected adverse reactions. This does not necessarily mean that the medicine did cause the reaction. Not all reports submitted to CARM are included in SMARS due to the reasons stated in the disclaimer.
See below for the disclaimer indicating the limitations and nature of these statistics.
Any publication, in whole or in part, of the obtained information must have published with it a statement: (i) of the source of the information (ii) that the information is not homogenous at least with respect to origin or likelihood that the pharmaceutical product/vaccine caused the adverse reaction (iii) that the information does not represent the opinion of the NZPhvC or CARM.
Essential information about the Suspected Medicine Adverse Reaction Search (SMARS)
An assessment of the safety of a medicine cannot be made using only the information contained in SMARS.
Medsafe advises patients not to make any changes to their medicine treatment based on information contained in SMARS. Changes to treatment should only be made following consultation with a healthcare professional.
When using SMARS you should remember that:
The likelihood of experiencing an adverse reaction to a medicine cannot be estimated from this database as there is no information on how many people have taken the medicine and the extent of underreporting is not known.
For these reasons, it is also not possible to directly compare the risks of different medicines using SMARS.
Reports are sent to the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM) if the reporter suspects that a medicine caused a reaction. This does not necessarily mean that the medicine did cause the reaction.
CARM and Medsafe staff consider many factors when assessing whether a medicine has caused an adverse reaction.
The number of reports for a medicine can be influenced by how many patients are taking the medicine, media attention, the nature of the reactions and other factors which vary over time.
The quality of the information in SMARS is limited by the quality of the original report.
The information contained in SMARS may change over time due to quality control procedures and/or receipt of further information.
Reactions may also be caused by other ingredients in the medicine (excipients).
SMARS contains anonymised information from reports of suspected adverse reactions to medicines but does not include the following:
Reports not causally related to the medicine (assessed by CARM).
Any report where it is considered that the patient may be identifiable (e.g. due to the rareness of the reaction).
Reports from the last three months.
Please note that some non-causally related suspected adverse reactions may be included in SMARS if the report also contained a causally related suspected adverse reaction.
About the release of this information
This information is released in keeping with the purpose of the Official Information Act 1982 to progressively increase the availability of official information to the people of New Zealand. The data contained in SMARS does not include any personal information within the meaning of the Privacy Act 1993.
Use of SMARS data
If you wish to copy or circulate information from SMARS please ensure that a copy of these guidelines is provided. Prior to any publication of this data you must contact CARM and Medsafe and include in the publication:
the source of the information
the limitations of the information
that the information does not represent the opinion of CARM or Medsafe.
A magical world premiere from the RNZB – The Vodafone Season of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
In an unprecedented artistic coup the Royal New Zealand Ballet has commissioned one of the world’s most sought after choreographers working today – Liam Scarlett – to create a brand new ballet for the company.
The Vodafone Season of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, will have itsworld premiere on 20 August in Wellington ahead of a five centre New Zealand tour.
“We are incredibly excited to showcase this sensational new ballet created for the RNZB by the talented Liam Scarlett. This magical tale will cast its spell on audiences of all ages. And as with all the best stories, true love and friendship triumph in the end.” says RNZB Artistic Director Francesco Ventriglia.
Liam Scarlett is renowned for his witty and sophisticated choreography and this spectacular new ballet will be no exception.
“Shakespeare’s tale of wit, love, petty quarrels and mistaken identities has captured the hearts of audiences young and old for centuries and has secured its place in history as one of the greatest stories ever told. It is with great pleasure and responsibility that I have the opportunity to transform this magical piece of work into a ballet. Being able to create this for the RNZB is a joy, and the end result will be a testament to their talent and enthusiasm and all that this wonderful company has to offer.” says choreographer Liam Scarlett.
“In a smart business move we are partnering with Queensland Ballet to bring this tremendous production to the stage. It is a great opportunity to collaborate on a significant new dance work that will certainly form part a central part of our repertoire.” says RNZB Managing Director Amanda Skoog.
“We’re thrilled to continue our support of the RNZB with this year’s Vodafone Season of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Vodafone customers and staff up and down the country can look forward to the production in their town as the show makes its way around New Zealand. 2 for 1 tickets are available as part of our Fantastic Fridays offer,” says Matt Williams, Vodafone Consumer Director.
Liam Scarlett, has been lauded as the future of UK ballet and called “Dance’s hottest property” by the UK press. At only 29 years of age he regularly choreographs for leading international companies and was awarded UK Dance Critics Circle National Dance Award for his Asphodel Meadows. He was appointed first Artist in Residence at The Royal Ballet Covent Garden in 2012, a position created especially for him when he retired from dancing with the company. He continues to attract acclaim from audiences and critics alike with his work. Recent collaborations include New York City Ballet, English National Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be his third full length ballet.
Distinguished costume and set designer Tracy Grant Lord has been behind many of the company’s successful productions, most notably Cinderella. Her designs for A Midsummer Night’s Dream will create a glorious new vision of thousands of lights, glitter and butterflies. She is working closely with M.A.C. cosmetics to create a unique and compelling look for each of the main characters. Tracy is a Winston Churchill Fellow, has a Bachelor of Spatial Design from Auckland University of Technology and her work is frequently chosen to represent performance design in New Zealand, at the Prague Quadrennial (Czech Republic).
The set for this production is the biggest the RNZB has ever created. It will also feature over 4000 LED lights and over 2,000 metres of fibre optics cable and be illuminated by Kendall Smith (Giselle).
Mendelssohn’s wonderful and highly recognisable music will be performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Wellington, the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra in Wellington and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in Auckland, conducted by RNZB Music Director Nigel Gaynor.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a Co-Production between the Royal New Zealand Ballet and Queensland Ballet.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: 20 August – 20 September
Wellington St James Theatre: Thur 20 August 7.30pm, Fri 21 August 7.30pm (Pre-performance Music talk 6.30pm), Sat 22 August 1.30pm & 7.30pm (Post-matinee Q&A; Warm Up, Curtain Up 6.20pm), Sunday 23 August 6.30pm
Christchurch Isaac Theatre Royal: Thur 27 August 7.30pm, Fri 28 August 7.30pm (Pre-performance Music talk 6.30pm), Sat 29 August 1.30pm & 7.30pm (Post-matinee Q&A; Warm Up, Curtain Up 6.20pm)
Auckland ASB Theatre: Wed 2 – Fri 4 Sept 7.30pm (Warm Up, Curtain Up 6.20pm; Thur 3 Sep Pre-performance Music talk 6.30pm), Sat 5 Sept 1.30pm & 7.30pm (Post-matinee Q&A), Sun 6 Sept 6.30pm
Palmerston North Regent on Broadway: Wed 16 Sept 7.30pm(Warm Up, Curtain Up 6.20pm)
Napier Napier Municipal Theatre: Sat 19 Sept 7.30pm (Warm Up, Curtain Up 6.20pm), Sun 20 Sept 1.30pm
Next season:
Visit our website to read about our forthcoming International Tour visiting UK and Italy from Oct 2015. The programme will feature our recent world premieres Passchendaele and Dear Horizon together with the RNZB’s acclaimed production of Giselle.
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 8 media release snippets and 5 links for the day of Thursday 23rd July.
Top stories in the current news cycle include a report from ACClaim Otago, a support group for injured people that has concluded it is futile for ordinary people to fight ACC decisions through the courts, concerns about the Government’s plan to have sole parents re-apply for their benefits after a year, coverage of new rules from the Civil Aviation Authority for flying for umanned aerial vehicles (drones) – and the Mt Eden/ Serco saga.
This afternoon the Asthma Foundation New Zealand in collaboration with University of Otago and the Ministry of Health launched the “He Māramatanga Huangō: Asthma Health Literacy for Māori Children in New Zealand.” A report that looks into the main barriers to optimal health literacy, and therefore optimal care for Maori children with asthma.
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
Media releases issued from Parliament by political parties today included:
Government: Early successes for new Screen Production Grant; Minister demands assurances from Serco; New Māori aquaculture agreements signed; New world-class framework for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs); SmartGates to more than double; Tool to help GPs diagnose & manage TIA/Strokes
Labour: ACC must remove barriers to appeals; OCR rate cut a result of flagging economy; Six months’ paid parental leave back on the agenda; Sole parents at risk of having no income
Greens: Green Party Questioning Of Lotu-Iiga Reveals More SERCO Failures; Government must act to fix ACC rot
New Zealand First: English concedes NZ farms better off in NZ ownership; Minister of Corrections’ report card reads fail; Official cash rate belies National’s soothing words
ACT Party: Drone laws a step towards future of transport
* Business
Official Cash Rate Reduced To 3.0% : The Reserve Bank today reduced the Official Cash Rate (OCR) by 25 basis points to 3.0 percent. New Zealand’s economy is currently growing at an annual rate of around 2.5 percent, supported by low interest rates, construction activity, and high net immigration.
* Primary Industries
Seafood research hub: Plant & Food Research has signed an agreement for Port Nelson to develop a purpose-built facility for its seafood research as part of a new collaborative industry hub.
Support For Farmers: Industry body DairyNZ is offering one-on-one support to help dairy farmers grow and harvest an extra tonne of pasture. If this is achieved the average operator could make an extra $30,000 of milk income in the lead up to Christmas.
LINKS OF THE DAY
EXCITING PROGRESS FOR EDUCATIONAL: Education Minister Hekia Parata says a regional breakdown showing the proportion of 18-year-olds with NCEA Level 2 rising in each of the country’s 16 local body regions is exciting. For more information visit: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/home
TRADE ME INDEX: The latest Trade Me Property Index was released today. The median Auckland rent rose by another $5 a week in June to $495 per week, while the rest of the country held steady at $360 per week. This represents a premium of $7,020 per annum for tenants in New Zealand’s largest city. For details see:http://www.trademe.co.nz/property/price-index/for-rent/june-2015/
NEW FRAMEWORK FOR UAVs: New rules on the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will enable innovation and put New Zealand at the forefront of regulating a rapidly evolving industry, Transport Minister Simon Bridges and Associate Transport Minister Craig Foss says. For more information, visit http://www.caa.govt.nz/rpas andhttp://www.airshare.co.nz
NewsroomPlus.com – Contributed by Olexander Barnes
Debates on issues like euthanasia deserve the widest possible audience.
It was fitting then that the lecture hall in the Otago campus next to Wellington hospital was packed full of people, all eager to hear a debate between the University of Otago Medical School and the Victoria University debating team. The subject, if Euthanasia should be legal in New Zealand.
The euthanasia debate was recently revived in New Zealand with Lawyer Lecretia Seales’ High Court bid to allow her doctor to assist her to die in the course of her battle with terminal brain cancer.
Otago Medical School hosted the debate, in which they faced off against the debating team from Victoria University.
Otago’s debating team was comprised of a 4th year medical student, a master’s student in perinatal science, and a post-doctorate who specialises in neuroscience.
They faced Victoria University’s debating team comprised of a philosophy student, a law/politics student and a maths/economics student.
The audience was told at the beginning that because the teams had been assigned their sides at random, the debaters may be presenting views that were contrary to their own beliefs.
If this was the case the Otago side did not show it. They delivered their individual arguments with clear and concise passion in making a very strong case. They argued that euthanasia was a personal freedom that would allow people to escape from unnecessary suffering and for the right of a person to choose their own treatment.
The Victoria team put their debating skills on show. The first of their arguments was the standard argument, of sanctity of life, but instead of taking a religious tack justifying this argument they took a mathematical/scientific stance stating the incredibly improbable odds of an individual existing at all. They also raised the issue that people may be coerced by family members or their own feelings of being a burden in making their choice.
They were tactical and showed that they had put careful thought into their arguments but there was a general vibe that their delivery lacked the conviction of the Otago team.
As well as the debating teams there was also a panel. It was comprised of Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway who has in the past supported euthanasia initiatives in Parliament, Dr. Sinéad Donnelly, a Palliative Medicine Specialist doctor of over 25 years and senior lecturer from the University of Otago, and Dr Angela Ballantyne, a Bioethicist and senior lecturer at Otago.
Several times during the debate members of the panel were given the opportunity to express their own views and to comment on the debate.
Given the seriousness of the topic Iain Lees-Galloway brought a relatively light-hearted approach to comments. At the same time, he stressed that in any legislation there would be safeguards to ensure ethical practice.
Dr Sinéad Donnelly remained staunchly against euthanasia arguing that legalising it would be detrimental to the doctor-patient relationship, saying “Doctors are not meant to kill their patients”
Dr Angela Ballantyne took a neutral stance and critiqued both sides. She challenged several ideas that had been touched on including highlighting the dangers of using “slippery slope” as an argument.
The debate closed without there being a determined winner, though it was acknowledged that the debate was of the highest quality and the suggestion of more debates in the future was welcomed.
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MIL OSI Analysis – Source: Tony Alexander – Bank of New Zealand Economist – Economic Analysis:
July 23 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 easing of monetary policy this morning,
• how dairying is suffering but the woe is good for many other sectors and this means NZ growth is likely to continue,
• review some of the recent data releases,
• look at why legislation banning foreign house buying could be useful,
• look at why Chinese are buying property off their mainland,
• and reproduce part of the official 2002 NZ government apology to Chinese for discriminatory policies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This morning the Reserve Bank met market expectations by cutting the official cash rate another 0.25% to 3%. We expect that by the end of the year the rate will be all the way back to the 2.5% it was at before the 1% tightening happened last year.
Whether it goes lower than 2.5% depends upon factors which clearly we cannot predict and neither can the RB. After all, if they had expected the economy and inflation to be this weak currently they would not have raised rates last year.
This serves to remind us that predictability of your operating environment post-GFC remains very, very low and you should not develop plans highly vulnerable to things turning out different from the assumptions which you have adopted about what the future will bring. Go ask a dairy farmer. Or a gold miner. Or an iron ore producer. Or an oil explorer. But taking that warning into account, do recent events warrant you being more or less optimistic about the coming year? Well that depends substantially upon what sector you are in. If you will benefit from Auckland house prices rising or you export pipfruit, wine, Kiwifruit or tourism services things are better for you. If you have a job and a mortgage rate review coming up the future is bright. If you have been struggling to find staff things are looking up.
I say this because the currency has moved lower and interest rates keep falling as dairy prices decline further, but world growth prospects haven’t really changed. So when we talk of some economic pain we are really talking about the dairy sector and its offshoots undergoing a massive correction in expectations rather than the whole economy suffering as happened over 2008 under the combined effects of high interest rates and a high exchange rate – then global recession. This situation is quite different. Specifically…
Dairy
Exports of dairy products from New Zealand brought in about $14bn of revenue in the past year but with that total already well down from around $17bn a year ago a further substantial decline looks likely in the coming year as a result of the continuing falls in dairy prices. The most recent Global Dairy Trade auction on July 15 saw an average price fall of 10.7%. This followed a 5.9% fall in the previous auction, was the ninth fall in a row, and means prices are now down 41% since the start of March and 64% from the multiyear peak of about two years ago.
The continuing fall in dairy receipts and therefore incomes for dairy farmers means we should anticipate extra weakness in dairying regions and the companies which service dairy farmers. Some highly indebted farmers will find themselves in trouble but we have all been here before and all parties know the key thing is to maximise communication and early on start ways of addressing cash flows and debt servicing.
Inflation Low
The cost of living for the average NZ family (Consumers Price Index) rose by 0.4% during the June quarter and by 0.3% in the past year. So if you got a wage rise above 0.3% this past year you are ahead of the game. If however you have had no pay rise for, lets say, eight years, then you’ll need a 17.5% pay boost to catch up.
Excluding petrol price rises inflation was actually 0% in the quarter and core inflation using the method commonly used offshore of stripping out food and energy was just 0.9% for the past year from 1.4% one year ago, 1% two years ago, and 1.2% three years ago. Core inflation is very low in New Zealand though some items such as local authority rates keep rising at a high rate. The Reserve Bank is well away from doing its job of keeping inflation between 1% and 3% over the business cycle. The consistent pattern of under-shooting means thinking at the RB is highly likely to be turning more and more toward keeping interest rates low for a long time when the new base is reached, and when they think rates need raising not doing so until a lot more inflation is obvious than was the case for the rate rise periods in 2010 and 2014.
Can we see any signs suggesting that underlying inflationary pressures are building? Hardly, not with dairy prices tumbling. In fact in the QSBO from NZIER the net proportion of businesses expecting to raise their selling prices was only 7% in the June quarter from 33% a year earlier and a ten year average of 27%.
REINZ
The REINZ’s monthly data dump told us that sales nationwide in June were a strong 29% ahead of a year earlier, taking the annual sales total to 81,564 which is the highest since early-2008 and 8% up from a year ago. Sales growth has recently been quite strong in Northland and Waikato with Canterbury sales almost flat. Average sales prices rose 1.3% in the month and have gained 4.6% for the June quarter with Auckland ahead 7.6% and rises elsewhere much less. The data suggest housing market strength is starting to move out of Auckland to other places – as has happened in previous cycles. But price gains in Auckland have yet to decidedly slow.
Consumer Confidence
It is falling. Various measures have shown this recently and one we track is the ANZ Roy Morgan NZ Consumer Confidence Index which fell to 113.9 in July from 119.9 in June and 128.8 in April. The average reading the past decade has been 117 so sentiment is below average but not by much and still above the 100 level where optimists match pessimists. This suggests to us that retailers outside of dairying locations should not be too fearful of consumers closing their wallets to a great degree in the near future. But an early-year surge in retail spending may well be over according to the Statistics NZ data on transactions using debit and credit cards.
Migration Boom Continues
Data released on Tuesday tell us that in the year to June there was a net gain to our population from migration flows of 58,259 people. This is a record number well ahead of 38,338 a year ago, a loss of 3,191 three years ago, and an average gain for the past 20 years of over 13,000 people. There are some signs that the boom is peaking however with June only 437 stronger than June 2014 whereas May was ahead 1,009. More accurately, in seasonally adjusted terms the net gain at an annualised pace in the past three months was 58,600 which is down from 61,280 three months ago.
The question then becomes how quickly will the annual total turn? Well I may have picked late in 2012 that the turning of our migration cycle with Australia would see the losses over 2012 turn into big gains, but I anticipated maybe 30,000 and definitely not twice that. So don’t get optimistic thinking that we have models which allow us to pick magnitudes of ups and downs. But the cycle is looking due to start easing off, especially with Australia.
Click here for the full document: Downloadpdf 581kb
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New Civil Aviation Rules for unmanned aircraft coming into force next week will improve aviation safety for operators, other airspace users and people and property.
Civil Aviation Rule Part 102 – Unmanned Aircraft Operator Certification will come into force on August 1. It will enable those who want to operate outside the existing rules for unmanned aircraft to do so if they have in place a plan to manage the safety risks.
“This new rule part gives operators greater freedom while maintaining the highest standards of aviation safety,” says CAA GM of General Aviation, Steve Moore.
Changes to the existing rules for unmanned aircraft also come into force at this time.
“These changes address the safety risks that modern unmanned aircraft pose to other airspace users as well as people and property on the ground,” he says.
A key update to Rule Part 101, which was designed to regulate traditional model aircraft, is the requirement for operators who want to fly over people or property to gain consent from the affected individuals or property owners before they fly.
“Having a conversation with a property owner beforehand is an effective means of risk management because they are likely to have the best knowledge of the risks.”
Operators who intend to fly over public spaces will also need to get permission from the land owner. For example, if an operator wants to fly over a park, they will need to get permission from the local council.
“We are encouraging public land owners to be proactive. This could involve erecting signs indicating if unmanned aircraft flights are allowed or not at the park entrance.”
Those who cannot get consent from a landowner or individuals can still operate if they get an operating certificate from the CAA under Rule Part 102.
“These changes strike a balance between safety and enabling operations,” he says.
The changes are part of the CAA’s interim approach to regulating unmanned aircraft.
The CAA encourages all unmanned aircraft operators to become familiar with Civil Aviation Rules. Visit www.airshare.co.nz or https://www.caa.govt.nz/rpas/index.html
Notes for editors
· The exact number of unmanned aircraft operations in New Zealand is unknown but small compared to conventional aircraft operations.
· The Civil Aviation Authority receives up to 50 enquiries a week relating to unmanned aircraft. This compares to around 20-30 enquiries weekly at the beginning of 2014, and the CAA says this number is likely to increase with the growing popularity of unmanned aircraft operations.
· The number of aviation incidents involving unmanned aircraft has grown significantly since 2011.
· The current rules for operating unmanned aircraft can be found on the CAA web site, www.caa.govt.nz/rpas.
· Operation in breach of the Civil Aviation Rules could lead to a fine, a written warning, or prosecution by the CAA.
· The CAA has collaborated with Airways New Zealand, Callaghan Innovation and UAVNZ on www.airshare.co.nz, an online hub to help UAV operators learn how to operate safely.
Year
Total unmanned aircraft incidents
2007
2
2008
1
2010
1
2011
1
2012
3
2013
9
2014
27
2015 (to end June)
53
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – Frequently asked questions
1. How will the new rules better manage the safety risks of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)?
The new rules mean anyone wanting to operate a higher-risk UAV will need to engage with and be certificated by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
The CAA will only certificate someone to operate a UAV if it is satisfied the operator is aware of associated safety risks and has a plan in place to mitigate those risks.
2. How long will it take to obtain certification for the use of UAVs? How much will certification cost?
This depends on the complexity of the proposed UAV operation. For example, a farmer wanting to fly a UAV at night (on their own property in a remote area) is likely to gain certification faster (and for less cost) than a business wanting to use one in a congested urban centre.
3. Who will enforce the new rules?
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is primarily responsible for enforcing the rules.
If members of the public have concerns about UAVs, they should contact the CAA on
info@caa.govt.nz or ph (04) 560 9480.
If members of the public are concerned a UAV is posing an immediate threat to
people or property, they should contact the Police.
4. How do I know which rules apply to me?
All UAV operations, regardless of size, weight or performance of the aircraft, are required to operate in compliance with the Civil Aviation Rules.
For information on which rules will apply in particular circumstances, visit: www.caa.govt.nz/rpas. Also see www.airshare.co.nz – a portal for all things RPAS, including flight planning with Airways.
Those wanting to operate within Civil Aviation Rules, Part 101 do not need to be certificated by the CAA.
5. What do I need to do to comply with Rule Part 101?
· Do not operate an aircraft that is 25 kg or heavier (or one that is 15 – 25 kg unless you’re a member of a CAA-approved organisation) and always ensure the aircraft is safe to operate.
· Take all practical steps to minimise hazards to people, property and other aircraft.
· Fly only in daylight.
· Give way to all crewed aircraft.
· You must be able to see the aircraft with you own eyes (eg, not through binoculars, a monitor, or smartphone) to ensure separation from other aircraft (or use an observer to do this in certain cases).
· Do not fly your aircraft higher than 120 metres (400 feet) above ground level, unless you have approval from air traffic control.
· Ensure you have knowledge of airspace and restrictions that apply in the area you want to operate.
· Do not fly closer than four kilometres from any aerodrome that is listed in the Aeronautical Information Publication.
· Obtain air traffic control clearance from Airways Corporation NZ before flying in controlled airspace.
· Do not fly in special use airspace without the permission of the controlling authority of the area (eg, military operating areas, low flying zones or restricted areas).
· Have consent from anyone you want to fly over.
· Have consent of the property owner or person in charge of the area you wantto fly above.
Some exceptions may apply, but generally if you cannot meet any of these requirements, your operation needs to be certificated under Part 102. You can read all relevant rules on the CAA web site.
6. What are the new aspects of Civil Aviation Rules, Part 101?
· The requirement to have knowledge of airspace and restrictions.
· Shielded operations (flying within 100 metres of and below the top of a natural or man-made object such as a tree or building) are now allowed in controlled airspace.
· First Person View Systems are now allowed, but a trained and competent observer must maintain visual line of sight of the aircraft and be in direct communication with the operator.
· The requirement to gain consent from people/property an operator wishes to fly above.7. Why do I need to know the class of airspace in which I want to operate?
New Zealand airspace is divided up into different classifications to help maintain appropriate levels of safety in particular areas. The different airspaces have their own risks and subsequent safety requirements, specifically airspaces near aerodromes, or used by the military.
By becoming familiar with the class of airspace you want to fly in, you are more likely to be aware of hazards that could affect the safety of your operation. Find out more about airspace classifications on the CAA web site.
8. How do I find out if the airspace I want to operate in is designated special use (eg, a Military Operating Area) or has special restrictions?
You can find out by referring to the Aeronautical Information Publication.
Visual Navigation Charts can also help. These are maps overlaid with airspace, navigational and hazard information and can help you understand where and under what circumstances you can fly. The charts are available from Airways’ AIP shop online.
9. How can I get authorisation to operate under Civil Aviation Rules, Part 102?
By making an application to the CAA. Application forms are available on the CAA’s website.
You might find it useful to first discuss with CAA staff your idea or proposed operation. CAA staff can provide guidance on the best option for you.
10. Will these rules address the privacy risks associated with UAVs?
The rules require UAV operators to obtain consent before flying over people or property. UAV operators are also required to comply with their obligations under the Privacy Act (and other relevant laws).
If you are concerned a drone may be operating in breach of the Privacy Act, contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
11. Can I fly a UAV in a public area?
Yes, as long as you have the consent of the property owner and all people in the public area. For public spaces, the property owner is likely to be a local council or the Department of Conservation.
UAV operators should make enquiries with their local authority or the Department of Conservation to clarify requirements for flying UAVs over public spaces. Checking the relevant web site is a good place to start.
Operators should also look out for any signage in public areas related to flying of UAVs.
12. What do I need to do if I want to film a large group of people at a public event with my UAV?
If you want to fly your drone over people or property, you will need consent from them to do so under Rule Part 101. Flying over a large group of people at a public event is likely to be regarded as a hazardous operation, which is outside the bounds of Rule Part 101.
You can still do this sort of thing, as long as your operation is approved under Part 102, which involves getting the Civil Aviation Authority to certificate your operation.
In doing this, the CAA would assess the need to get consent based on the operation and airworthiness of your aircraft and the experience of the person behind the controls. The CAA may satisfy the requirement for consent, by requiring you to erect signs at the entrance to the event to let people know. In some cases, the CAA may waive the requirement to gain consent, if it determines your operation is capable of managing the risks effectively.
13. Can I fly a UAV over private property?
Yes, but you are required under Civil Aviation Rules, Part 101 to seek consent first from the property owner. This requirement reflects the operator’s obligation to take all practical steps to minimise hazards associated with operating UAVs.
The property owner is best placed to advise you of potential hazards and people who may be affected by the flight. The process of obtaining consent will also enable you to discuss what is and what isn’t appropriate with the property owner.
If you cannot obtain consent, or obtaining consent is impractical, you can apply to the CAA to be certificated under Civil Aviation Rules, Part 102. This allows the Director of Civil Aviation to work though different options with an operator and/or to relax or remove one or both of the consent requirements altogether.
14. How can I get consent to fly over people or property?
Either verbal or written consent is sufficient. A written record is likely to be most useful, so that you can confirm the property owner (and anyone the UAV will fly over) has given you their consent for your proposed operation should you need to after the flight.
Before the new rules come into effect, the CAA will publish further guidance (in an Advisory Circular) on www.caa.govt.nz/rpas in relation to when consent is required and how to obtain it. You can subscribe to get an email notification when updates are published (use link above).
15. Can I fly my UAV out of my line of sight?
Beyond visual line of sight operations are not permitted under Civil Aviation Rules, Part 101.
Operators wishing to fly a drone beyond the line of sight need to be certificated to do so by the CAA. Operators need to satisfy the CAA they have a plan in place to effectively manage the safety risks of having their UAV go beyond their line of sight.
16. How do New Zealand’s rules for unmanned aircraft compare to those in other countries?
New Zealand’s UAV rules are flexible and take a risk-based approach. Unlike some countries, such as the United States, our rules do not distinguish between commercial and recreational operations. In Australia and the US, commercial UAV operations are not allowed unless permission is granted from the aviation regulator.
New Zealand’s rules focus on likely risks of UAV operations. Many commercial operations will be possible without an application to the CAA for certification (under Rule Part 101).
However, when the risks are deemed too high, Part 102 allows operators to demonstrate to the CAA they have an effective risk management plan in place. If the CAA is satisfied an operator’s plan manages the risks effectively, the CAA will allow operations outside the bounds of the applicable rules.
—
Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler announced this morning that the Reserve Bank has reduced the Official Cash Rate (OCR) by 25 basis points to 3.0 percent.
Graeme Wheeler said the global economic growth remains moderate, with only a gradual pickup in activity forecast. Recent developments in China and Europe led to heightened uncertainty and increased financial market volatility. Particular uncertainty remains around the impact of the expected tightening in US monetary policy.
“New Zealand’s economy is currently growing at an annual rate of around 2.5 percent, supported by low interest rates, construction activity, and high net immigration. However, the growth outlook is now softer than at the time of the June Statement. Rebuild activity in Canterbury appears to have peaked, and the world price for New Zealand’s dairy exports has fallen sharply.
“Headline inflation is currently below the Bank’s 1 to 3 percent target range, due largely to previous strength in the New Zealand dollar and a large decline in world oil prices. Annual CPI inflation is expected to be close to the midpoint of the range in early 2016, due to recent exchange rate depreciation and as the decline in oil prices drops out of the annual figure. A key uncertainty is how quickly the exchange rate pass-through will occur.
“House prices in Auckland continue to increase rapidly, but, outside Auckland, house price inflation generally remains low. Increased building activity is underway in the Auckland region, but it will take some time for the imbalances in the housing market to be corrected.
“The New Zealand dollar has declined significantly since April and, along with lower interest rates, has led to an easing in monetary conditions. While the currency depreciation will provide support to the export and import competing sectors, further depreciation is necessary given the weakness in export commodity prices,” Graeme Wheeler said.
He added that a reduction in the OCR is warranted by the softening in the economic outlook and low inflation. At this point, some further easing seems likely.
[caption id="attachment_1205" align="alignleft" width="300"] Peter Godfrey and Selwyn Manning.[/caption]Selwyn Manning and Australian radio station FiveAA’s Peter Godfrey deliver their weekly bulletin, Across The Ditch. This week New Zealand’s Corrections Minister Sam Lotu-Inga under pressure to resign after scandalous and tragic revelations emerging from Mt Eden Prison. Also discussed, ANZAC painting Simpson and His Donkey will remain in New Zealand.
New Zealand’s Minister of Corrections is under pressure to resign after revelations have emerged of scandals and tragedy relating to inmates of Auckland’s notorious Mt Eden Prison, which is managed by Serco a multinational private service company.
Since the weekend serious problems have been revealed where images and video have been uploaded to social media showing inmates partying, smoking cannabis, drinking home brew alcohol,.
But more sinister and serious among the revelations are how inmates have organised fight clubs inside the prison, and have filmed themselves competing in bare knuckled cage fighting styled violent bouts.
And on Wednesday, information was made public where an inmate died from illness after he was dropped from a balcony inside the prison, his injuries included a punctured lung.
The Labour Party has accused the Minister of Corrections Sam Lotu-Iiga of sitting on information and doing nothing.
Labour’s Kelvin Davis presented evidence (a transcript) to Parliament on Wednesday showing Lotu-Inga was warned a month ago in a select committee meeting that prisoners were being dropped from a balcony at Mt Eden Prison.
The minister earlier said he heard about the “dropping” this week.
Under pressure to resign, Lotu-Inga said on Wednesday night he was aware of the case of a prisoner transferred to Ngawha Prison, who had died.
In a statement, Lotu-Inga said, initially, he did not want to speculate on the death, because it was being investigated by the coroner.
He added: “If Kelvin Davis was alluding to a practice known as ‘dropping’ he did not make it clear that it was widespread, that it was a practice that was ongoing, nor did he refer to it as ‘dropping’.
Lotu-Inga said: “If he had, I would have pursued it with my officials.”
But Labour’s Kelvin Davis, insists there is a serious lack of accountability, especially as the prison is run by a private business. He has called for the Minister’s resignation.
Kelvin Davis added: “It was National who made the decision to outsource our prison system to a private company, and now they are stopping Parliament from asking questions about the mess they have created.”
Davis said: “The Government is being soft on Serco, allowing them to investigate themselves. This is further evidence we need a fully independent investigation to get to the bottom of what is happening in our prisons.
“Serco needs to be held to account, and answer questions to give Kiwis confidence in what is going on. Today, the Government has said no to accountability,” Kelvin Davis said.
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 8 media release snippets and 4 links for the day of Tuesday 22nd July.
Top stories in the current news cycle include Parliament unanimously passing legislation to fix a legal loophole that would have made speed limits set by around 25 local councils and authorities invalid, ongoing escalation in concerns related to prison management and Serco, and New Zealand Customs has hauled in nearly $250 million worth of methamphetamine in drug seizures just in the last six months.
In news from select committee business at Parliament, the Office of the Auditor General has defended its report into Whanau Ora to MPs and the Disability Rights Commissioner, Paul Gibson, has called for for a Health Select Committee inquiry into a law governing payments to family carers.
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
KiwiSaver Membership Grows: The number of KiwiSaver enrolments continues to rise in the over-18 year old target population, with an additional 11,656 members in the month of June, Finance Minister Bill English and Revenue Minister Todd McClay say.
Flag Referendum: John Key must ditch the flag referendum before any more taxpayer money is wasted, Opposition Leader Andrew Little says.“Millions of dollars could be saved if the Prime Minister called a halt to this hugely expensive, and highly unpopular, vanity project.
Treaty Negotiations: New Zealand First says the government is making a habit of engaging in Treaty of Waitangi negotiations with Māori Authorities that do not have the full support of their Iwi. “The Minister for Treaty of Waitangi negotiations Chris Finlayson is cutting corners and rushing the settlement process,” says Spokesperson for Māori Affairs Pita Paraone.
Kiwis Miss Out:The National government’s wholesale immigration policy is seriously limiting New Zealanders chances of finding a job and rental housing, says New Zealand First Leader and Member of Parliament for Northland Rt Hon Winston Peters. “Every one of the 58,300 – or 1,121 coming to New Zealand each week, the net migration in the past year, require a place to live. That’s pressure on the rental and housing market, in addition to extra work and student visas forcing Kiwis to compete with newcomers for jobs,” says Mr Peter.
Charter school experiment turns into shambles : The National Government’s charter school experiment has descended into chaos and it’s time for Hekia Parata to stop trying to cover up the full extent of the problems, Labour’s Education spokesperson Chris Hipkins says.
* Business
New Exchanged Traded Funds: NZX plans to launch nine new exchange traded funds to offer investors exposure to a raft of international stock markets. The Wellington-based company’s Smartshares unit has registered a prospectus to launch the new ETFs, which will invest in underlying funds offered by Vanguard, the world’s biggest mutual fund company with about US$3 trillion under management, NZX said in a statement.
* Primary Industries
Bill To Protect Farmland: The Government’s rubber-stamping of every one of the nearly 400 applications from overseas investors to buy New Zealand farm land over the last three years proves tougher laws are needed, Labour MP Phil Goff says.
Farmers Urged To Enter Awards: Entries for the 2016 Ballance Farm Environment Awards open on August 1, 2015. Facilitated by the New Zealand Farm Environment (NZFE) Trust, the awards promote best-practice land management by showcasing the work of people farming in a way that is environmentally, economically and socially sustainable.
HI-TECH START-UPS: Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce today welcomed a successful first year for innovative start-ups receiving repayable grants from the new technology incubators funded through Callaghan Innovation. View the funded projects here: https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/successful-first-year-hi-tech-start-ups
NZ INITIATIVE RELEASES AGENDA: Social policy, local government funding and education are key areas for public policy think tank The New Zealand Initiative over the next two years. The Initiative released its research programme today which covers the period leading up to the 2017 election. Download the report here:http://nzinitiative.org.nz/site/nzinitiative/files/work_programme__final.pdf
And that’s our sampling of the day that was on Wednesday 22nd July 2015.
From The Virtual Desk of Ant Timpson.
It all started with a synopsis and a poster submitted to a film competition. From 500 submissions, one winner emerged victorious. The filmmaker’s name was Jason Lei Howden and his winning idea was lovingly titled : DEATHGASM
DEATHGASM is now a full length feature that has been tearing it up at festivals the world over ever since it’s successful World Premiere at SXSW.
Recently it was voted 3rd most favourite film by audiences at the Sydney Film Festival and all of us who worked on the film couldn’t be prouder of how audiences have embraced the film everywhere its played. From the US to Brazil to Korea to Montreal – audiences have cheered and applauded all of its sweet-natured carnage.
But now the time has come for DEATHGASM to finally screen on its home turf. So get your mates, head to the pub for a round or three and then come along to see DEATHGASM unleash all it’s gooey goodness across New Zealand’s best cinema screens.
Growing up can be hell, especially for a teenage metal fan in conservative, small-town New Zealand. Brodie (Milo Hawthorne) is shipped off to live with his Christian aunt and uncle in the middle of nowhere. They aren’t impressed with his love for the likes of Trivium and Cannibal Corpse. Things look up when he meets a like mind in bad boy Zakk (James Blake) and together they form a heavy metal band with a couple of D&D geeks. All hell, literally, breaks loose when the pair get their hands on an unrecorded song from their death metal idol. It soon becomes apparent why the song was never recorded, as everyone within earshot of their garage jam session is turned into demonic zombies. So it’s up to our head-banging heroes to, reluctantly, save the world from a satanic apocalypse. (NZIFF)
But don’t just take our word for it….
“The Best Kiwi Comedy Horror since Braindead”
SOUND ON SIGHT
“Funny, vulgar, wildly gory, and actually kinda sweet.”
Chief of Army, Major General (MAJGEN) Dave Gawn has been appointed Head of Mission/ Chief of Staff to the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO).
Chief of Defence Lieutenant General Tim Keating says this is a significant achievement for MAJGEN Gawn, and for NZ Defence Force.
“We are known as a force which trains and equips its personnel to succeed. Around the world, NZ Defence Force has a great reputation for its professionalism, leadership and skills.
“Major-General Gawn’s appointment to this role is testament to his strong leadership. His ability to undertake a significant role on the international stage is an achievement he can be extremely proud of.”
MAJGEN Gawn will take over from current Head of Mission/Chief of Staff, Major General Michael Finn, of Ireland.
UNTSO was the first peacekeeping operation established by the United Nations, with the first military observers arriving in the Middle East in June 1948. UNTSO’s activities are spread over five host countries – Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syrian Arab Republic.
UNTSO military observers in the Middle East monitor ceasefires, supervise armistice agreements, prevent isolated incidents from escalating and assist other peacekeeping operations in the region to fulfil their respective mandates.
Twenty-six countries contribute military personnel to the mission, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland and the United States.
Currently eight NZ Defence Force personnel are serving with UNTSO in the Middle East.
While appointed as Head of Mission/ Chief of Staff UNTSO, United Nations’ protocols mean MAJGEN Gawn will wear a New Zealand Uniform but will not be a member of the NZ Defence Force.
It is likely MAJGEN Gawn will take up his new role on 1 August 2015.
NewsroomPlus.com – Contributed by Common LedgerAccountants are under pressure to change the way they work as their industry undergoes rapid and dramatic shifts according to new research from leading global research company Ipsos and New Zealand-based growth software business Common Ledger.
The Ipsos survey commissioned by Common Ledger has highlighted the impact of new technology and changing demand in what clients want and expect from their accountants.The survey focused on selected small to medium sized accounting firms in Australia. Ipsos conducted telephone interviews with both compliance and advisory specialists at 50 accounting firms in Sydney and Melbourne.
The findings show that accountants live in a rapidly-evolving environment with a raft of new software and technology available to them to improve efficiency. At the same time, their clients are increasingly looking to accountants for guidance and advice as they navigate a fast-changing world.
“The research we carried out with Common Ledger delivers some very valuable insights for the Australasian accounting industry,” says Ipsos Account Manager, Janet Cheng. “For example, it shows that the bulk of accountant’s time—around 60 percent—is spent on compliance while only 40 percent is spent on giving advice.
“However it’s the advice that really adds value to clients, whether it is helping them achieve tax efficiencies or information about running their business.
“Many accountants know they risk losing clients or becoming a compliance service only unless they adapt. There is a wealth of software out there to help them streamline their businesses and free up time for advisory work but many accountants don’t know what to choose, are risk averse and reluctant to change.”
Common Ledger CEO Carlos Chambers says the research was commissioned to assist the accounting industry understand the drivers of change and better grasp what clients are looking for.
“The reality is that advisory services are not well understood by many accounting firms. It’s a complex area—they are being asked to become trusted advisors across the business spectrum.”
“Of course accountants know that—in fact they get bombarded with that message on a regular basis. But just hearing the message doesn’t really help. ‘Advisory’ means different things to different people, accountants and clients. One goal of the research was to help understand this more deeply and share the insights with industry.”
Leading Australian online accounting firm Nudge Accounting is an early adopter and a company which is leading the way in reinventing accountants’ relationships with clients. Nudge Advisory Partner Trevor Schmitt says features of its new approach include regular interaction and contact with clients, monthly reporting and support for a range of cloud-based software.
“Continuously assessing and improving our strategic advice services is a high priority for us. We realised early on that this is what clients are demanding. We are focused on understanding our clients and their businesses,” says Schmitt.
Other findings from the research include confirmation that clients want strategic advice on the regulatory environment from their accountants and that while many accountants recognise the value of technology in increasing efficiency, they are also wary of extra costs and reliability issues.
Chambers says the research sheds light on the opportunities the accounting industry can harness and the challenges it has to address.
“We call it the Accountant’s Dilemma. It’s a very exciting time for the accounting industry with plenty of scope for firms to grow, but it’s a challenging time too. Clients want their accountants to be advisor, analyst and business partner. The ones who step up to this are the ones who are succeeding in the new environment and will continue to into the future.”
You can read more Common Ledger stories here: story.commonledger.com
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This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 6 media release snippets and 4 links for the day of Tuesday 22nd July.
Top stories in the current news cycle include the country’s second biggest dairy processor Open Country slashing its forecast farmgate milk price to below $4, a continue upswing in migration figures with official statistics showing a seasonally adjusted net gain of 4800 people in June and a story about police surveillance of Facebook pages to detect drug dealing activity.
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
Government Urged To Raise Targets: The National Government ought to listen to the public and raise the ambition of its climate change target, the Green Party said today. “The Government is out of touch with the public’s desire for a cleaner, low-carbon New Zealand,” said Mr Shaw.
Free B4 School Checks: Health Minister Jonathan Coleman says a record 92% of eligible four-year-olds are receiving a free B4 School Check. “The B4 School Checks help to give children the best start at school by identifying and addressing any potential health or developmental problems at an early stage,” says Dr Coleman.
Serco Boss Should Front Select Committee: Serco’s director of operations should appear before Parliament’s Law and Order select committee to answer questions about how fight clubs were allowed to run uninterrupted at his prisons, says Labour’s Corrections Spokesperson Kelvin Davis.
Rates And Income Should Be Fixed: Local Government New Zealand’s 10 Point Plan is a chance to stop the widening chasm between the rates some households are charged and their ability to pay, Labour’s Local Government spokesperson Su’a William Sio says.
* Business
Bank Of The Year: This year, CANSTAR is pleased to announce BNZ as winner of Bank of the Year – Everyday Banking Award. “BNZ’s strong product offering topped the score this year, with some highlights including its YouMoney functionality,” Canstar NZ General Manager, Jose George.
* Primary Industries
Dairy Expected To Generate Millions: Short gestation dairy genetics is expected to generate more than $11 million in extra milk production for New Zealand farmers this spring. LIC experienced unprecedented demand for its extended range of short gestation genetics last mating season (Sept-Dec 2014), for its ability to naturally deliver offspring up to 10 days early, bringing late calving cows forward and increasing days in milk.
LINKS OF THE DAY
LGNZ’S LOCAL GOVERNMENT FUNDING REVIEW 10-POINT PLAN: incentivising economic growth and strong local communities was launched today at the 2015 LGNZ conference in Rotorua. Read more here:
SOUTH ISLAND COMPANIES VALUED A RECORD HIGH: The total value of listed South Island companies crept higher to a record $14.58 billion total capitalisation in the three months to June 30, 2015, as measured by the Deloitte South Island index. Click here for more: http://www2.deloitte.com/nz/southislandindex
GOOD NEWS FOR KIDS: NZEI Te Riu Roa and the Ministry of Education have agreed to boost children’s educational success through development of a new model of learning communities. Click here for more:http://www.nzei.org.nz/joint-initiative
The plaintiffs in the Hager V Attorney General case argue that journalists and their sources should be able to rely on the privilege of confidentiality particularly when investigating issues of public interest. But irrespective of the outcome of this case, New Zealand’s legislators need to address vague definitions within an inadequate law and establish a professional register of public interest journalists.
On Maori Television’s Media Take programme on Tuesday night, I joined Russell Brown and Toi Iti to discuss why journalism, journalists, and sources of information must be tightly defined in law so as to assure the privilege of confidentiality when pursuing public interest investigations. I argue that the time has come for a register of professional journalists to be established.The following is the background to this argument.
—
OPINION: The Hager V Attorney General case exposes inadequacies in the Evidence Act 2006 and its 2011 amendment (ref. Legislation.govt.nz).
Irrespective of the outcome of the Hager case, the current law places media organisations, journalists, their sources, and the expression of public interest journalism, in jeopardy.
Put simply, the legal definitions of what is journalism, who is a journalist, and whether the identity of sources can be kept confidential, are vague. In June 2014, the High Court defined blogger Cameron Slater as a journalist.
The finding outraged some journalists who considered the title ought to be applied only to those who subscribe to the journalistic code of ethics and not bloggers who exhibit work contrary to elements within the code (ref. NZHerald).
Also in June 2014, a High Court judge ruled that a book written by David Fisher (a well-renowned and awarded New Zealand Herald journalist) about internet tycoon Kim Dotcom was not “news activity” and was not eligible for special legal protections (ref. NZHerald).
While the privilege of confidentiality is addressed in law the question of what is journalism, who can claim to be a journalist, and who can assume this privilege, is too vague. The current Act, and case law, presents as loose and ambiguous.
The absence of tight legal definitions causes an effect where the determinations of journalists to assert privilege are rendered unsound. As such, sources are left vulnerable, and serving the public interest through fourth estate endeavours is corroded.
In the High Court at Wellington last week, we heard submissionsthat allege abuses, that if accepted, would compel us to consider whether operational authorities of government (the Police) have operated contrary to the spirit of the Evidence Act, the Bill of Rights and the Search and Surveillance Act.
With respect to the Evidence Act, the judiciary is charged to consider ad-hoc arguments put to it through expensive legal submissions. In the meantime, the practice of public interest journalism in New Zealand is placed in limbo. For the record, the Evidence Act 2006 and its 2011 amendment define sources (informants), journalists, and news medium as:
informant means a person who gives information to a journalist in the normal course of the journalist’s work in the expectation that the information may be published in a news mediumjournalist means a person who in the normal course of that person’s work may be given information by an informant in the expectation that the information may be published in a news medium news medium means a medium for the dissemination to the public or a section of the public of news and observations on news.
Furthermore, the Act defines the conditions upon which anonymity may be, but not necessarily, relied upon:
(1)If a journalist has promised an informant not to disclose the informant’s identity, neither the journalist nor his or her employer is compellable in a civil or criminal proceeding to answer any question or produce any document that would disclose the identity of the informant or enable that identity to be discovered. (2)A Judge of the High Court may order that subsection (1) is not to apply if satisfied by a party to a civil or criminal proceeding that, having regard to the issues to be determined in that proceeding, the public interest in the disclosure of evidence of the identity of the informant outweighs—
(a)any likely adverse effect of the disclosure on the informant or any other person; and
(b)the public interest in the communication of facts and opinion to the public by the news media and, accordingly also, in the ability of the news media to access sources of facts.
(3)The Judge may make the order subject to any terms and conditions that the Judge thinks appropriate. (4)This section does not affect the power or authority of the House of Representatives. An order under subsection(2) may be made subject to the conditions (if any) the court thinks fit.
As you can see, the Act does not specify or define a difference between a person who may work as a journalist for a media company, a freelancer, or an independent investigative journalist. And, it blurs the lines between professional journalists and bloggers, those who occupy a space outside of the journalist code of ethics.
In fact, the code is not referred to at all even though it is the foundation upon which journalists work. Indeed, the law remains vague on defining what a journalist is. Most concerning, it is unclear on whether a journalist and her or his source should confidently assume the privilege of confidentiality.
Irrespective of the outcome of the Hager V Attorney General case, this enduring situation will certainly cause sources to disengage from public interest disclosures through fears of being identified and exposed to retribution, victimisation, and ridicule. In the absence of reliable definitions a vacuum exists. The situation is far from satisfactory, and in my view, it is time legislation was amended to:
define what exactly is journalism
define what exactly is a journalist
establish a criteria upon which journalists may apply to the New Zealand Press Council, Broadcast Standards Authority, or a News Media Standards Authority, to be accepted as members
assume that on acceptance such members be recognised in law as able to assert the privilege of confidentiality as it applies to journalists and sources (informants) where the exchange of information is defined within law to be in the public interest.
The criteria, I argue, ought to be inclusive rather than exclusive and would consider a journalist applicant’s qualifications and/or experience of public interest journalism, and require adherence to the journalistic code of ethics, and, professional standards.
As journalists, media organisations, politicians and sources will testify, the privilege of confidentiality is vital when journalists are investigating issues of public interest, when engaging with sources and contacts who require confidentiality – especially where journalists are receiving information from sources who have exhausted official avenues (or where this is impossible) in their endeavours to hold the powerful to account, and especially where sources and journalists are motivated by a will to stamp out incompetence and/or corruption.
This issue isn’t just about journalists and their sources, it is about the health and function of New Zealand’s democracy, an issue that impacts on us all. I urge those who have an interest in investigative public interest journalism, fourth estate liberties, and our democracy to check out Jon Stephenson’s and Emily Menkes’ robust reportage of the Hager V Attorney General, Police, Manukau District Court case on EveningReport.nz. And also, please do digest another example of essential reading: Giovanni Tiso’s piece titled The Life and Death of the Political Author on The Pantograph Punch website. —
Disclaimer:Selwyn Manning is an investigative political journalist with 22 years media experience. He specialises in reportage and analysis of socioeconomics, politics, foreign affairs, and security/intelligence issues. He holds a Master of Communications Studies MCS (Hons.) and a Batchelor of Communications Studies BCS (Hons.) degrees.
Analysis by Keith Rankin. This article was also published on Scoop.co.nz.
What would economic historians 50 years’ hence think of the Auckland housing market in the 2010s? Possibly not much; there may be bigger issues to investigate. But how would they deal with the lack of official data about property ownership? They would do what they always do, look for proxy data, and useful markers in the information that is available, and try to make inferences from that data.
For example, as proxies, the heights of prisoners and soldiers in the 18th century have been used to estimate countries’ GDP. The theory is that nutrition is a major determinant of height and of living standards in general, and that GDP per capita is highly correlated with other measures of living standards.
Examples of markers include particular genes, especially mutations, which can be used to trace a population’s history. Other important markers are languages, through words like “waka”, traced back through words such as “vaka” and “va’a”.
Another marker is surnames. I have traced my paternal family history to Banffshire in the northeastern lowlands of Scotland, as far back as the late 18th century. To get a sense of family history further back, I entered the name ‘Rankin’ in the birth records for 1855, contained in the Scotland’s People website. (1855 was the first year of official records.) Most of the entries were not from the northeast; they were from the Highlands or from Glasgow, which is much more closely associated with the Highlands than, say, Edinburgh.
In the absence of official information about who is buying real estate in Auckland, the use of markers such as surnames is an entirely appropriate way of using statistical information; data which may support or contradict the anecdotal sources. Indeed, through the use of scientific reasoning, this information can be used to reject or support hypotheses.
The Labour Party has a ‘research hypothesis’ that non-resident buyers of residential land in Auckland are, through foreign-sourced finance, contributing substantially and significantly to house price inflation in Auckland. This is the ‘foreign speculation’ hypothesis. Theirs is an interesting research question, though not in my view the most important question about the Auckland housing market. The hypothesis recognises the likely fact that, if it is valid, then a substantial proportion of this fuelling of house prices originates in China. This reasoning has nothing to do with race, but may have something to do with culture. Most of all it has to do with China’s rapid economic growth since the 1990s, China’s position in this time as possibly the world’s largest creditor nation, and the strengthening economic relationship that exists between China and New Zealand. New Zealand is on China’s radar in a way that it is not on, say, Russia’s investment radar.
It is only right that, if a representative data source that can throw light on Chinese ‘investment’ as a proxy for ‘foreign investment’ is publicly available, then that data source should be made use of to address this research question. The leaked sales data from Barfoot and Thomson has become such a data source.
Before further investigating Labour’s hypothesis, we might also note that the National Party has its own ‘supply’ hypothesis, which is that too much land within the Auckland super-city does not have a house sitting on it. A shortage of actual houses is, they say, the sole significant cause of accelerating real estate inflation in Auckland. We might also note that the concerns are most about rising prices of family houses. The National Party story supposes that Auckland’s rising population of around 2% per year this decade represents a substantial and accelerating increase in the numbers of families coming to Auckland. Yet the increase in the numbers of children (to June 2014) is only around 0.7% per year and the rate of increase in 40-65 year-olds in Auckland is dropping. Auckland’s recent influx is due to 15-39 year-olds, who are the prime demanders of rental accommodation. Yet Auckland rents are rising much less quickly than the prices of all dwellings, let alone family homes. The National hypothesis looks very weak.
The analysis of the Barfoot and Thomson data shows, from February to April, that 39.5% of residential real estate purchases were made by people with Chinese family names. This is accurate information that suggests that more than 40% of purchasers were of some Chinese ethnicity. The name ‘Yang’ is as Chinese as the name Rankin is Scottish. (Due to marriage and anglicisation – eg ‘Young’ – there will be many more people of some Chinese ethnicity without Chinese names, than there will be people with Chinese names and no trace of Chinese ethnicity. While many Maori have Scottish names, few Scots have Maori names.)
So, what can we conclude from this data? First, it does lend weight to Labour’s ‘foreign speculator’ argument, but it my no means proves that hypothesis. (Actually, in the scientific method of reasoning, hypotheses cannot be proven, only ruled out.) We must reiterate here that Labour’s hypothesis is about ‘foreign’ speculation, not Chinese speculation. Chinese are a useful proxy, given that if foreign speculation is a problem then, for reasons already given, some of those speculators will be Chinese.
Before continuing, we should note that information about the ethnicity of our population is widely seen, today, as very important. It is important in the Household Labour Force Survey, for example, and is an important variable in the statistics of educational achievement. We understand that we collect information about ethnicity today for quite different reasons from those that motivated our curiosity about ‘race’ 100 years ago. Though knowledge is unambiguously good, it can be used in intentionally deceptive ways.
My sense is that we have to divide the Chinese house-buying population into three sub-groups. The first is those who are unambiguously New Zealand residents. The second is those who have interests in both New Zealand and China (and maybe other countries as well). The third is those who are unambiguously Chinese residents. Most of the commentators are conflating the first and second-mentioned groups. If anything, the second group has more in common with the third.
As someone who’s lived in at least my share of rented properties in Auckland, my experience of ethnic Chinese landlords has been more than favourable. Indeed it is widely understood that property ownership is an important part of Chinese culture, and this cultural propensity is certainly and unsurprisingly present in Auckland’s Chinese community. Indeed this is shown by the overrepresentation of local Chinese in the real estate profession. I would not be at all surprised if half (or more) of the 40% house sales to people with Chinese names were to professional or semi-professional landlords in the local community; people who supply the rental properties that Auckland needs, and who, for the most part, are good landlords and who neither evade nor avoid their taxes.
In the end, it’s what use the properties are put to that matters. Through hiring reputable property managers, many foreign-resident ‘investors’ may be better landlords than home-grown land-bankers.
We need every house to become somebody’s home. Family houses should be family homes. Whether they are owner-occupied or tenanted homes is secondary. The principal harm that most likely exists – and for which data remains hopelessly inadequate – is the extent of withdrawal of houses from their prime function as homes. Politicians know that this happens, because they say things like “if we have warrants of fitness for rental housing then such properties may be withdrawn from the market”, presumably to sit empty. (It would hardly be a problem if rental houses were sold to family owner occupiers.)
What seems likely is that perhaps 15% of the Barfoot and Thomson sales were to people of Chinese ethnicity who are either principally foreign-resident, some who may be using purchases of real estate in New Zealand (‘as if’ it was investment; refer Gordon Campbell) as a means of supporting their applications for permanent residence. This may suggest that maybe 25% of all sales in Auckland are to people of many ethnicities (including Asian and European) whose principal residence is not New Zealand.
When raised, the issue of increasing numbers of empty houses in Auckland is rarely refuted. The tactic of the National politicians and the spokespeople for the real estate industry is to divert the discussion. On TVNZ’s Q+A (19 July) Josie Pagani twice tried to raise the topic of speculators buying properties and leaving them empty. But the interviewer and other panellists would not (or at least did not) pick up that issue.
The least costly way of increasing the supply of homes may be to find policies that restore empty and underoccupied properties into family homes and apartments where residents of all shades may live, rented or owner-occupied. We should work with our Chinese-resident community – a number of whom are professional landlords or real estate agents who will tell us stuff if we ask the right questions – to find solutions to this problem.
NewsroomPlus.com – Contributed by Pukeko ResearchPūkeko Research has been pursuing an independent (unsponsored) study of inequality, education and society for two years.
“Among other things, we wanted to know how 25 years of ‘school choice’ had changed the schooling system in New Zealand”, said Liz Gordon, project sponsor.
Some findings from the study have been publicised over the past month, other were embargoed against publication in the New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies.
The first finding is that there is a large socio-economic effect that has led to high decile schools becoming larger, and low decile schools declining in size, over at least twenty years.
This effect is shown in the following graph, which shows the changes in the number of students in each decile between 1996 and 2014. Because the number of schools in each decile is roughly constant, changes in student numbers indicate average school size within the decile.
This finding is consistent with every previous piece of research that has been done on school choice in New Zealand, which finds that parents make social/ economic rather than educational choices for their children. In short, the evidence is that parents choose ‘up’ for their children, to the extent that they can. This process of choosing ‘up’ over time has significantly unbalanced school size in New Zealand.
In 1998, the average school roll in decile 1 schools was just over half the size of decile 10 schools. By 2014, the average decile 10 school was over 2.5 times the size of decile 1. By 2020 the size difference will be approximately 3 times.
This has effects at both ends of the spectrum. For low decile schools, the constant loss of school numbers means that the per capita running costs of the school increase, as a school designed for higher numbers has to fund itself on less income.
As schools get smaller, there is a loss of teachers, which on the ground means real teachers with specific, needed skills and expertise lose their jobs. Also, low decile schools often look old and dilapidated, as new capital funding is inevitably directed at the areas of growth – high decile schools.
For high decile schools, the effect described here means they are often bursting at the seams, with too few classrooms, too few facilities, reduced outdoor areas and new staff coming in all the time. These schools may be relatively cash rich because of economies of scale, but face a wide range of demands from the public for places.
One of the interesting research questions is whether the move to school choice has improved our overall school outcomes: are we a better educated country as a result? While New Zealand students are becoming increasingly credentialled, with rates of senior school passes rising each year, our overall performance on international measures such as the OECD’s PISA has been declining slowly since the 1990s, as have the results in other ‘school choice’ countries.
The other interesting question is whether the effort that parents go to in choosing schools, transporting their children and supporting them often at quite distant schools leads to better outcomes for the children. There is currently no research evidence in New Zealand on the effects of choice on individuals.
The second finding is that school choice has led to a massive loss of pākehā children from low-decile schools: a process often known as white flight.
In 1996, pākehā students made up 39% of decile 1-5 students, but by 2013 this had declined to 25%. Only half a percent of pākehā students attend decile 1 schools. This process, from a pākehā perspective, is outlined in the figure below.
Between 1996 and 2013, the process of social choice of schooling has progressively seen pākehā students attending higher decile schools. Three quarters of pākehā students now attend decile 6-10 schools. This large shift is the primary reason that low decile schools are becoming smaller.Apart from the points made above about the effects on size of schools and worsening outcomes, this large shift in pākehā attendance has significant implications for racial segmentation. New Zealand is a bicultural and increasingly multicultural society, but our high decile schools are almost bastions of whiteness.
Decile one schools, which serve populations living below the poverty line (as do decile, 2, 3 and 4 schools), are 90% Māori and Pasifika in make-up. The worry is that the high level of educational segmentation will lead to social conflict over time. Could the Emanuel Church shooting occur at a Pasifika church in New Zealand? It is unlikely, but not out of the question where social segmentation is embedded.
NOTE ON THE PROJECT:
This is an ongoing project. It is based primarily on understanding the government’s own figures as published on the Education Counts website, and examining the implications. When some of the figures were released last month, the reporter was told that the figures were wrong. Pūkeko Research produced the workings to show that the only figures used were their own, and was eventually conceded that the figures were correct. However, the time taken to argue the correctness of the figures meant that the Ministry and Minister never got around to commenting on the implications of the findings, and they have not done so to this date.
Published this month:
Gordon, Liz (2015) ‘Rich’ and ‘poor’ schools revisited. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 50, 1.
This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 7 media release snippets and 3 links for the day of Monday 20th July.
Top stories in the current news cycle include private prison operator Serco being in the eye of a storm over illegal inmate activities at Mt Eden prison, the advent of all-electric commuter trains in Auckland today and Prime Minister John Key appearing to have ruled out stopping foreigners buying residential property even if new statistics show they’re driving up house prices.
Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Most questions put to the Prime Minister today, and the content of his own preamble, focused on the health of the economy with references to the Reserve Bank’s call on the OCR later this week, and the backdrop of the ongoing drop in global dairy prices. Mr Key argued against “needlessly talk(ing) ourselves into a gloomy mindset”. On the matter of management of prisons he said that how high a report on issues like organised fighting had gone would be a “serious issue”. And on the issue of the New Zealand housing market and foreign buyers he stuck to the line that moves to restrict foreign purchases in the likes of Australia had failed spectacularly. A snapshot of the press conference will be published at Newsroom.co.nz tomorrow.
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
National Failing To build Strong Economy: Growing economic pessimism is justified and will be reinforced further by National’s failure to grow the internationally competitive part of our economy, comprising of exports and import competing industries, the Green Party said today.
System Costs $3 Million : New figures obtained by Labour show the Government’s shambolic ACC car registration levy system has cost more than $3 million to implement and the costs are set to escalate, Labour’s ACC spokesperson Sue Moroney says. “That’s $3 million that could have been passed on in levy reductions if ACC Minister Nikki Kaye had not brought in this flawed, confused and unfair new system.
Govt Contract In Question : A botched Government contract has allowed an Auckland charter school to double dip by getting funding for students it has accommodated for free, Labour’s Education spokesperson Chris Hipkins says. “Information received by Labour through written Parliamentary questions show the Ministry of Education failed to check whether the Villa Education Trust had enough room to house the 160 students it is being funded for at the new Middle School West Auckland.
* Business
ServiceNow Guru To Visit NZ: A US expert on enterprise Cloud services will be visiting New Zealand later this month to share his knowledge with local businesses. Boston-based Rick Wright, who is KPMG’s Global Technology Enablement Lead, will provide insights into the growing global success of ServiceNow.
* Primary Industries
Promising Look On Orange Roughy: Scientific surveys of orange roughy stocks off the West Coast of the South Island and south of Fiordland have obtained live video footage of the fish from as deep as one kilometre below the surface.“Live footage enables us to see individual fish behaviours in real time and to focus our attention on areas where the most fish are gathered.”says Deepwater Group Chief Executive, George Clement.
Partnership To Help NZ Beef : A partnership between Beef + Lamb New Zealand and a restaurant chain in Taiwan is helping to open consumers’ eyes to the nutritional benefits of grass-fed New Zealand beef.
NZ Wool Services International : The Commerce Commission is to seek final submissions on Cavalier Wool Holding Limited’s application for authorisation to acquire New Zealand Wool Services International’s wool scouring business.
LINKS OF THE DAY
LOCAL GOVT WANTS MORE INVESTMENT: A report based on the findings of a recent survey, identifies what Mayors and Chairs of local authorities think are the major issues facing their communities. The report is available on the Simpson Grierson website: http://www.simpsongrierson.com/taking-the-pulse-of-local-government-in-new-1/
SPIDERS ARE OUR FRIENDS: Two University of Canterbury (UC) researchers’ insights about two species of spider that feed preferentially on mosquitoes have been published in the Journal of Arachnology in America. View the article on vampire spiders here:http://www.americanarachnology.org/about_AAS/newsletters/AmerArachnol78.pdf
And that’s our sampling of the day that was on Monday 20th July 2015.
NewsroomPlus.com
Contributed by Rupeni Vatubuli With road congestion and car use as heavy as they are, it’s reasonable to ask what the difference between aggressive driving and road rage are? Canstar Blue reckon Australians are worse than New Zealanders – how do comparisons between countries stack up?
So are aggressive driving and road rage the same thing?
Aggressive driving is a traffic offense or combination of offences such as following too closely, speeding, unsafe lane changes, failing to signal intent to change lanes, and other forms of negligent or inconsiderate driving.
Road rage, on the other hand, is a criminal offence. This occurs when a traffic incident escalates into a far more serious situation. For example, a person may become so angry over an aggressive driving incident that he or she overreacts and retaliates with some type of violence.
Source: driverstorymagazine.comNew Zealand
A recent survey by consumer research company Canstar Blue revealed Kiwis don’t always mind their manners on the road, with over a third having experienced a road rage incident.
While 39% of New Zealanders overall had been caught up in driver anger, It was more likely to be men (42%) compared with women at just 33%.
Australia
Road rage is even more commonplace over the ditch, where 42% have experienced a road rage incident and 65% of Australians frequently get frustrated by other road users.
Back in 2011, insurance provider GIO surveyed 3740 Australian motorists with 85% claiming drivers were more aggressive than ever before.
In a survey of 3000 drivers from 20 countries, conducted by LeasePlan UK in 2014, of which 52% of Australian drivers said they’d received aggressive gestures, 34% had been verbally abused and 40% had been blocked in the road.
Also last year’s survey of 1700 Australian motorists by law firm Slater & Gordon, revealed that 16% of Australians have a dash cam to record incidents of road rage, with a further 41% of drivers saying they wanted one.
USA
Statista inc (an online statistics portal) recorded the following for road rage behavior among drivers in the united states as of April 2015
According to the survey 53 percent of the respondents said they had been on the receiving end of a rude gesture from another driver. 26% yelled at and used profanity at another driver, 17% made a rude gesture, 13% felt threatened by another driver and 4% exited their vehicle to engage angrily with another motorist
China
With continued rapid economic growth, government statistics show a 20% jump in private car ownership in 2014 — to 105 million cars nationwide.
The World Health Organization has estimated that more than 200,000 people die on the roads of China every year.
From the beginning of 2012 to the end of April this year, police in China linked 104 million traffic violations to some form of road rage, ranging from forcibly changing lanes or overtaking other vehicles, to failing to yield.
United Kingdom
Carwow’s 2014 road rage survey has revealed that the vast majority of UK road users have been victims of road rage.
1,000 UK drivers at the end of 2014 were asked whether they’ve been on the giving or receiving end of road rage, what forms of road rage they’ve experienced/given as well as how often.
The results show that an astonishing 81% of people have been victims of road rage. Of these, 54% have been shouted at and 42% have been verbally abused, whereas 48% have had people drive aggressively at them as a result of road rage.
Source: 2014 LeasePlan Research Survey
7 ways to avoid road rage
Move over if someone is tailgating you
Use an ‘I’m Sorry” gesture (e.g. wave) to attempt to defuse the situation
Plan ahead; allow time for delays during your journey
Consider whether you have done something to annoy the driver and adjust your driving accordingly
Listen to music you enjoy
Use your horn sparingly
Avoid eye contact with angry drivers and give them plenty of room.
It also always pays to be mindful who’s sitting behind the wheel:
Sources:
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NewsroomPlus.com
Contributed by WE ARE PROTECT
A 24/7 real-time monitoring device for animals threatened by poaching, including rhino, tiger and elephant, has been invented by a British scientist. Welcomed by experts as a ground-breaking new technology and potential lifeline for poached species, a new conservation organisation, Protect, is taking forward development with support from Humane Society International.
Amidst figures from Africa and Asia showing dramatic crashes in populations of rhino and elephant due to poaching, a British scientist has developed a new anti-poaching device, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, that could dramatically reduce poaching over the next decade.
Rhino poaching has increased some 9,300 percent since 2007 in South Africa alone, where the vast landscapes mean that even highly capable anti-poaching forces are unaware of poaching events until it is far too late, meaning that arrest and conviction rates are low, and there is little deterrent to poachers.
The Protect RAPID (Real-time Anti Poaching Intelligence Device) aims to solve the problem by combining a GPS satellite collar with a heart rate monitor and video camera. Broadcasting 24/7 real time information to a control centre, anti-poaching teams can be alerted and dispatched to poaching events within seconds of them taking place.
British researcher Dr Paul O’Donoghue, who has worked with endangered black rhino populations for more than 15 years and developed the Protect RAPID explains: “Currently a rhino is butchered every six hours in Africa, the issues are many, but there’s far too much money at stake to believe that legislation alone can make the difference, we had to find a way to protect these animals effectively in the field; the killing has to be stopped.
Paul O Donoghue with rhino video proof of concept trial
“With this device, the heart rate monitor triggers the alarm the instant a poaching event occurs, pinpointing the location within a few metres so that rangers can be on the scene via helicopter or truck within minutes, leaving poachers no time to harvest the valuable parts of an animal or make good an escape. You can’t outrun a helicopter, the Protect RAPID renders poaching a pointless exercise.”
The device already has the backing of leading rhino veterinarians and conservationists in South Africa, including Dean Peinke, Specialist Mammal Ecologist for the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency, who said: “We simply don’t know where or when poachers might strike, to effectively patrol these vast landscapes requires an army and still poachers could find a way through; they are well organised and equipped, and they will find gaps in almost any defence because the rewards are so great.
“These devices tip the balance strongly in our favour, if we can identify poaching events as they happen we can respond quickly and effectively to apprehend the poachers; it’s very exciting to be able to work with Dr O’Donoghue and Protect on the first field trials of the Protect RAPID with our own Southern black rhino population.”
Humane Society International, which is working with the government of Viet Nam on an effective education and outreach programme to reduce demand for rhino horn, has been fast to support development of the device. Claire Bass, executive director of HSI UK, comments; “Reducing market demand is critical to safeguard wildlife long term, but it needs to be coupled with urgent, effective action to stop the current poaching crisis. The Protect RAPID could be a game changer in the increasingly desperate fight against poaching, and the technology has the potential to be applied to other critically endangered species including tigers and elephants. We are excited to have this opportunity to fund the project and hope other backers will join us to get the technology into the field as quickly as possible.”
Steve Piper, a director of Protect, elaborates; “Proof of concept research has already been completed and we’re ready to take the device into the field, we expect to have the first rhino prototypes out within months and are just beginning development on versions for tigers and elephants. We hope to have a fully functional control centre established early next year. The figures make it painfully clear; there is no time to waste, the tide has to be turned and the Protect RAPID can do it; the only thing heading for extinction over the next decade is poaching itself.”
Comedian and actor Ricky Gervais, an outspoken opponent of poaching, also expressed his excitement and support, “I am thrilled to support the work of Dr O’Donoghue and Protect. Poachers know full well they can kill rhinos and other animals with almost no chance of being caught, sometimes they even cut off the animals horn and half its face whilst it is still alive, it’s barbaric. The killing won’t stop unless we increase those chances and the Protect RAPID does just that. We finally have the technology to catch these people red handed, and if they know that then they’ll think twice before killing another beautiful rhino. Finally we might have a fighting chance of saving this astonishing species from extinction, I strongly urge everyone to support this project.”
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This edition of NewsRoom_Digest contains 5 media release snippets and 3 links for the day of Friday 17th July.
Top stories in the current news cycle includes a Northland farming organisation alleging that banks have quietly started to force debt-ridden farmers to quit by refusing to re-finance their loans, the latest job advertising data which suggests employers are thinking twice about hiring new staff and an assertion from private prison operator Serco is confident it is fulfilling its contract despite videos of organised fights in Mt Eden prison surfaced online.
SNIPPETS OF THE DAY
* Politics
Failure Of Prison Privatisation: Footage of prison fight clubs is yet another example of major flaws in National’s prison privatisation plan, said the Green Party today. Footage on social media of prisoners engaging in one-on-one fights at the privately-run prison, Mt Eden Corrections Facility, emerged yesterday. The video was taken on cell phones, which are contraband, and then uploaded to social media.
Benefit Numbers No Reason To Celebrate : The latest figures from the Government about getting people off benefits don’t translate into more jobs for New Zealanders, the Green Party says. Benefit numbers from the Government show that although fewer people are receiving welfare, the number of cancelled benefits as a result of “Obtained Work” has also dropped.
$100m-Plus Deal Signed: A contract has been signed with the consortium Interlink which will provide over $100 million worth of modern, multi-purpose, transportable classrooms over ten years, says Associate Education Minister Nikki Kaye. “This contract will deliver at least 50 transportable classrooms each year to schools around New Zealand, but is designed to deliver more if required,” says Ms Kaye.
* Business
Simplifying Tax For Small Business supported: Now that the four biggest parties in Parliament agree on the way forward, it’s time for the Government to get on with simplifying provisional tax for small businesses, the Green Party said today. “The Green Party has been talking about simplifying provisional tax for small businesses, like Labour suggested today, since before the 2011 election,” Green Party Co-leader James Shaw said.
* Primary Industries
New Zealand Agriculture : “New Zealand’s capacity to increase production is constrained by pasture-based production and dependent on climatic conditions – the long run average increase in production only around 2% per annum,” said Minister of Trade Tim Groser while in Ireland . “In today’s agricultural trade environment, an EU-New Zealand FTA is about opportunities for partnership and collaboration in meeting these increased global demands for high quality foodstuffs”.
LINKS OF THE DAY
GENDER IDENTITY STANDARD WORLD-FIRST IN NZ: ‘Gender diverse’ will join ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories in a new gender-identity classification released today by Statistics New Zealand. This new classification records the identity of all people, including those who see themselves as different from male or female, and forms an integral part of the Statistical Standard for Gender Identity. Read more here: http://www.stats.govt.nz/methods/classifications-and-standards/classification-related-stats-standards/gender-identity.aspx
[caption id="attachment_1450" align="alignleft" width="150"] Keith Rankin.[/caption]
Last week I wrote about the modern technology of money, and how it depends on three practices that seem rather dubious: double-entry bookkeeping, fractional banking, and enlarged public debt. We are as coy about the conception of money (maybe more so) as we are about the conception of human life. So we look to simpler more superficial stories about the meanings of money and wealth.
Three weeks ago, I noted that we think of money as if it was a kind of magic resin that we make through the process of ‘work’. Further, we believe that such money, once made, accumulates as if it was infused with yeast. Once we have money, we may allow this yeast (which we call ‘compound interest’) to do its work. Such magic commodity money, which we can store indefinitely, is the imaginary economic equivalent of stem cells in biology. Freshly made resin-money is no different to resin made (and compounded) in the distant past. Either way, we can spend it at any time of our choosing (or never spend it if we prefer); whatever good or service we want becomes ours at the click of a mouse or the wave of a bank card.
We think of this process of spending, however, as a process of making us poorer. We think of our individual holdings of resin-money as our wealth, and we think of our collective holdings of resin-money as our national wealth. Therefore, we too easily believe, depletion of our money stocks is tantamount to impoverishment.
In the crudest version of this conceptualisation of economic life, economic success (indeed economic patriotism) depends crucially on two protestant virtues: work and thrift. If we don’t have money it’s because either we lacked a work ethic (we are lazy) or because we spent it rather than saving it (we are improvident). Thus, if we are poor it must be our own fault. And we are not contributing to the nation’s money mountain.
In this crude conception of economic life, all forms of thrift (non-spending) are wealth-enhancing. We conceive of the concept of saving as accumulation (of resin-like-money) rather than as lending (which is what saving actually is).
[caption id="attachment_5596" align="alignleft" width="300"] Sloth, gluttony and Mr Creosote.[/caption]
Under this preferred conception, saving has nothing to do with debt. In reality saving is one side of a part of a surplus-deficit relationship. In addition, under this resinous conception of economic life, economic growth (accumulation of resin-money) can only ever be good, the only real constraint to growth being the supply of labour. ‘Sloth’ becomes the one deadly sin to rule them all. Indolence begets indigence. (Sloth’s closest partner in sin is ‘gluttony’, understood here as improvidence or profligacy.)
We are so mean towards the poor because this cruel but wonderfully simple interpretation of money and wealth has at root just one explanation for poverty; an unwillingness to work. Further, those of us who are not poor can use this simple conception to claim that our growing stocks of unspent money reflect our virtue, not our complicity.
There is a less unsophisticated version of this predominant paradigm of money and wealth. This version accepts the role of the market, though only in a strictly microeconomic sense. (It does not acknowledge that there can be a general glut of unsold goods and services.) Thus, in order to make resin-money we must first make something else, and then sell that good or service. (Or, as putative wage workers, we must sell our labour to employers who sell to the market goods and services as a means to acquire their monetary profit, supposedly the raison d’être of commerce.)
Here, the necessary virtue is called ‘competitiveness’. Thus, you can be poor either because you are lazy, because you are improvident, or because you are uncompetitive. The moral of the story here is that anyone can be competitive, if only they try hard enough. Aspiration.
One important problem with this ‘competitiveness’ story is that it is impossible for everyone to be competitive. ‘Competitiveness’ is a relativist concept; to be competitive only has meaning if somebody else is uncompetitive. When I try harder and become competitive, then I make that sale to Mr Market (who then issues me with money). To avoid being poor, I must be competitive and remain competitive; that’s a moral imperative. However, when I who was uncompetitive successfully sell my wares, somebody else who otherwise would have made those sales is rendered uncompetitive, and can no longer sell his or her wares. I can always console myself with the thought that that person did not try hard enough; their uncompetitiveness must have been their fault. Their resulting poverty is not my concern.
Competitiveness becomes intertwined with the marketing industry. The culture of resinomics is ‘hard-sell’. You make money by successfully marketing yourself and your wares.
As economics, this is all nonsense. But it’s how most people understand commerce; the accumulation of money-wealth though work, thrift, competitiveness and compound interest.
In economics, resources, not buyers, are scarce. Wealth is the goods and services that we enjoy, not the money that we make. Money is a circulating medium that only serves as societal wealth when it’s passed on to someone else through spending. Saving (non-spending) is good only to the extent that it allows others to borrow (including investing businesses and governments) or to redeem past saving.
What is applied, as resinomic policy, to individuals or households who have become poor is also applied to countries and governments. The European Commission treats the Greek government much as Work and Income treats its desperate customers. (Indeed these agencies do see their austere treatments as some kind of ‘wrap around’ tough love; what victims otherwise know as punitive micro-management and loss of autonomy. Unwillingness to take their prescribed Lanes Emulsion is interpreted as an absence of ‘trust’.)
The people and government of Greece have been labelled by others as lazy, corrupt, spendthrift, and uncompetitive. Believing in the veracity of these vices as explanation, the European technocrats (mostly from the dour north) assert, with a shocking degree of certainty, that Greek poverty is a simple consequence of these acquired national vices. Redemption and atonement can be achieved, they assure us, through a purgative process that we conveniently label ‘austerity’.
The reality is completely different. The problem is systemic. Were the principal victim of the Euro-rort not Greece then it would be some other country. For the word ‘competitive’ to be a meaningful national descriptor, some country has to be ‘uncompetitive’. In 2015 it just happens to be Greece.
The actual solution to Greece’s problems is for the mainly northern creditors to diminish their money-hoards by buying Greek-made goods and services, enabling Greeks to acquire the money they need to pay their taxes so that their government can service its debts by recycling that money back to those creditors. In this way the Greek economy can grow, thereby reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio of the government of Greece. Instead, these non-Greek creditors are looking to a solution that will allow them to extend rather than spend their hoards of unspent money, through foreign privatisation of Greek government assets.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, the full apparatus of government is used to humiliate the poor, much as the Eurocrats and resinous Euro politicians seek to humiliate the Greeks (all for the Greeks’ own good of course; yeah right). The problem of the entrapped poor is a universal one. Those who would lecture those in need of help should reflect on the uncomfortable systemic realities, and disavow their simplistic and mean platitudes and assumptions.
At the end of June, 
Eyes of Fire (fifth edition) launched Friday July 10, 2015.[/caption]
