Tea Cup Cop Out

Justice Helen Winkelmann,the ultimate fence sitter. Today she declined to rule on whether a conversation between John Banks and John Key in a Newmarket cafe was public or private. She claimed that a ruling might prejudice a police investigation and therefore has almost ensured that the contents of the conversation will not be made public. What a lily livered decision! Judges are supposed to set precedents by their rulings and in this case could have saved further tax payer dollars being spent by police on a pathetic case. On top of that we have a weak set of media editors unwilling to 'publish and be damned'. What are we paying these weak kneed judges to do? Here we have a highly payed professional, justice Helen Winkelmann, supposedly one of the best from the legal profession, unable to make a simple ruling that if you are in a public place be very careful if you want to have a private conversation. It's a bit like the fools you see around the place shouting down their cell phones saying 'don't listen, this is a private conversation'. If that was the case then take it somewhere private. The whole decision is really a none decision. You cannot expect privacy in a cafe dining area. If John Key and John Banks think you can then they are much too misguided to run the country and represent thousands of voters in their electorates. Let's be frank, our supposedly best leaders and minds are woefully inadequate.

John Key, NZ Police and the System

Yes Prime Minister, a comedy series of years ago being replayed today by John Key, John Banks and the NZ Police. Let's set the scene. Stupid Prime Minister decides to have a drink and chat in a cafe, public place, with a member of another political party to help stitch up the Epsom electorate for Act. Conversation gets taped, poor John and John complain. Prime Minister complains to NZ Police, like fools they take him seriously and start an investigation. It makes the NZ Police look stupid and gives John and John more media coverage and lets face it John Key is the media pony, every opportunity over the last 3 years and more he has been there with his face in the camera even if he has nothing of any use to add to whatever situation is being reported. So here is the Prime Minister in essence endorsing another candidate against his own. Paul Goldsmith is in fact doing an excellent job in Epsom and leading the polls. The system needs to be changed so that it would be illegal for political parties to adopt this type of action before and election. It is in essence denying the voters of Epsom with a proper choice. If they are National supporters they now must decide if they should vote for their National Party candidate or go along with the National Party Prime Minister and stitch up Parliament to suit the cosy relationship between National and Act. Every political party should by law be made to stand a candidate in every electorate and failure to do that should mean that they cannot claim to be a political party but just a group of independent candidates. Endorsing a candidate of a political party other than your own should also be illegal. The coalition of like minded parties should only be done after the election. In fact MMP does not reflect the will of the voting public. If it did not only parliament but cabinet also would be made up proportionally to reflect the result of the election. That would force parliamentarians to work together across the political spectrum. In addition candidates should have to decide if they want to run in an electorate or be on the list, not both. The way MP's rig the current system ensures that those at the top of the list end up back in Parliament even if their electorate voted them out. Finally only electorate MP's should be allowed to be in cabinet, no list MP should be allowed to have a cabinet position since they are only in Parliament as a result of the party vote and have not been selected to represent an electorate by the voters. Let's do it right, give both Johns, Key and Banks a Dear John!

New Zealand - The Elephant in the Room

It is general election time. Every political party is saying how they are going to turn the country around, how they will improve the lot of the average New Zealander. They all talk of broken election promises, past performance, what they will do next but all to no avail as we, the voters, can see from the dismal resulting "improvements" to our lot. What improvements? All we have actually experienced is more expense and less income. National promised to "close the gap with Australia", quite frankly it is not possible with current policy. Politicians talk about productivity, gdp per capita etc. We continue to fall behind Australia. Everyone tries to come up with band aid solutions doomed to failure. The answer is rather simple. It will take time but guaranteed it will work. Since the 1960's Australia has gradually pulled ahead of New Zealand in terms of economic growth, average wages and much more. Some short sighted politicians put it down to Australia being prepared to exploit it's natural resources, it's better productivity record and therefore investment in people and assets. It isn't that! What it is is purely population growth. Australia deliberately took the decision to grow the countries population. In 1960 it was about 10.3 million,in 2010 it was estimated to be 20.9 million, a gain of over 100%. In comparison New Zealand in 1960 had a population of 2.4 million and in 2010 was 3.9 million, 65% growth. Looks good but it is really a numbers game. Higher population in itself demands the production of goods and services, it generates its own growth. Just coincidentally we have fallen 35% behind Australia in wage rates, almost drives you to think it is the same lag as population growth, maybe it is. One thing is for sure, with such a tiny population there is not enough internal demand to drive the economy other than providing for the basics. Manufacturers and larger industry that generates job have no incentive to come here or to be developed from scratch here in New Zealand and it is these industries that generate wealth for the majority. It is great to say lets be a niche and knowledge economy and definitely a worthy aim but these industries benefit the few, there is no trickle down effect, never has been. If New Zealand had a population of 20 million, the country would have a large internal demand driving those industries that employ large numbers of people, there would be more money in the economy to improve our infrastructure. With a larger population the regional towns and cities would grow and prosper. Here in New Zealand our food costs according to one internet site, are 25% higher than those in the UK. Why? New Zealand has supposedly some of the most efficient agricultural practices in the world. Look at the UK, higher taxes, VAT at 18% as opposed to GST at 15%, petrol UK is on average 30% higher than in New Zealand, so how come their food prices are lower that ours? Greater demand, with 60 million people plus the producer makes the money in volume and often is closer to market. Even imports are cheaper because the demand allows a better purchasing cost to be negotiated. The people of New Zealand in general are anti population growth and until we change that stance and embrace population growth and immigration we are condemned to a steady decline in living standards compared to those countries that are go ahead and growing in every sense of the word. Some will say look at places like Finland, they are doing well and that is true but the big difference is they are in fact part of a connected land mass with a large population where most of the trade barriers have been removed. Those that are part of the EEC are free to move around and sell their goods and services anywhere inside a huge trade block. Let us in New Zealand aim for 20 million by 2025, watch the growth then in this country of ours, it would be phenominal!

NZ Act Party and Peter Huljich

Peter Huljich pleaded guilty to misleading investors for the Huljich KiwiSaver scheme. Is he the scape goat? I think so. His fellow directors Act leader Don Brash and Act Epsom candidate John Banks, are let off the hook. Don Brash apparently resigned in October 2010 and John Banks was and still is a director of the parent company Huljich (New Zealand) Ltd and Huljich Ltd. It appears these two directors have no knowledge of such dealings. Well that could be true but very unlikely. What does seem more likely is that they have arranged for Peter Huljich to take the rap to ensure they are not compromised in the bid to get John Banks elected and Don Brash into parliament on his shirt tails. It is highly unlikely that Don Brash could win a seat. The people should be very skeptical of the ability of two directors who don't know what is happening in the company they are heavily involved in, being able to assist in running the country. God forbid we have another death in Afghanistan but these two candidates, Don Brash and John Banks would probably state they did not know there was any Kiwi involvement there. A vote for Act is a vote for dishonesty and deceit.

MV Rena

Early on the 5th October 2011 the MV Rena struck the Astrolabe Reef off the coast of Tauranga, New Zealand.

That sums up the incident, bad navigational practice and what appears to be an attempt to take a quicker route into port.

Now we have the NZ response. What a debacle! With oil on the beaches and containers in the water we eventually get oil recovery teams looking at the situation on the 9th October 2011. Why 4 days? Obviously some idiots hoping we might just get a big wave to lift of the MV Rena and send her on her way.

In addition we have hundreds of local volunteers wanting to clean up the beaches but resort to officially restricting access to the beaches on the 13th October 2011, stating the clean up needs to be done professionally and controlled by the authorities. This is hardly a highly skilled or dangerous operation. Scoop up the congealed oil, bag it and throw the bags into skips or place them at collection points.

My advice to home owners is this, if you drop a bottle of oil on the kitchen floor, do not, I repeat, DO NOT inform the authorities or you will be inundated with kitchen closure and official clean up teams that will end up with your kitchen being closed for weeks.

Well let us proceed with matters in hand. The MV Rena official response team are preparing to remove oil, good you might say, but by now it is 10 days after the grounding event.

Fast forward, the 20th October 2011, still no further on, 100 tonnes of fuel removed only 1200 tonnes to go.

This is totally inadequate and once again highlights the ineptitude of NZ response to major accidents.

Pike River, NZ Police in charge, not a mining rescue expert among them, they should only have been conducting traffic.

Earthquake number 1 Christchurh, lucky time of day, no casualties. Local authority goes around puts stickers on buildings after carrying out what it appears is a very cursory inspection. Green sticker good and safe, red sticker, keep out. Local residents feel reassured and get back to business.

Earthquake number 2 Christchurch, buildings collapse and we have in NZ terms a large loss of life. Oh dear, green sticker building kill most of the people with the local authority saying the building owners should have get proper engineers reports. We forgot, you only employ buffoons at the local authority. And yes it is the residents own fault. We should have known better and it is true, after all look at the leaky home situation in NZ, once again the result of local authority inspectors signing off on poor workmanship.

It may be a great place to live, it may have some good scenery but it's definitely not the place to be in a disaster.

From recent experience the teams they put in charge only make matters a bigger disaster as they fumble around in special clothing, flashy jacket and hard hat with clipboard in hand. They are a joke.

Where else in the world do we close a major highway because of a two car traffic accident where there as been a fatality, not just for a few minutes to remove the vehicles and people, but for hours. Every where else I know of the first thing you do is get the people removed to safety then drag away the wrecks and get the traffic moving and I mean in minutes not half a day!

Political Manipulation

What a sad state NZ politics is in!

Not so much that it isn't all that great but more of one where political parties are able to manipulate the system to ensure that their potential allies and friend get voted into parliament.

We have a system where a political party can choose not to contest and electorate seat and thereby giving a preferred ally the chance of being elected. Once elected they can bring in more representatives using the party vote.

We have the Mana Party led by ex Maori Party member Hone Harawira and the Maori Party considering whether or not to run a candidate against him. Hone is keen for them not to as this would give him a certain pathway into parliament and hence a party leaders salary instead of that of a mere MP.

Likewise we have National deciding not to run a candidate in Epsom against John Banks who is leading the charge for the Act Party. This gives John Banks the best chance of being elected and therefore an ally for National after the election.

This means that the electorate do not get a chance to vote for a candidate from the party they support and in effect deprives the electorate of choice.

The system needs to be changed so that if you are a political party then you must stand a candidate in every electorate or you are not allowed to be a political party. This would get rid of those fringe elements who cannot get enough interest throughout the whole country to stand candidates.

The alternative for these small factions is to run as individual MP's, independent's.

The next major problem in NZ is the list MP. MMP has produced a system where the make up of parliament is made up to represent the total vote proportionally. Good you might think and in some ways it is. But once again the system has been set up with huge holes to allow those piggies with their snouts in the trough to remain there.

How you may ask? Well the problem is that those who stand for parliament in an electorate and put their name on the line can also be placed on the party list so that if they fail at the election, ie the people vote against them and they lose they can get into parliament through the back door, sneak in off the party list. The more influential you are in the political party the higher you tend to rank on the party list almost guaranteeing you a seat in parliament.

The system needs to be changed so that you can be a party list MP or an electorate MP but cannot have a foot in both camps. The down side of that is that for the major parties almost all of the cabinet would come from the list, so that makes way for another rule.

This is the one that should be implemented. You can not be on the party list and also run as a candidate in an electorate and that the cabinet and ministerial roles can only be filled by electorate MP's.

That way we would have proportionality and also be represented by those people who had actually won electorate seats.

No getting into ministerial and high ranking positions without the express vote of the people.

I urge NZ voters to either change the system at this years referendum.

Back Stabbing Brash

Don Brash, you wouldn't want him as a friend. Poor, naive Hilary Calvert, one time supporter of Rodney Hyde and famous turncoat for swapping to support the leadership challenge of Don Brash has now got her reward.

Yes! Stabbed in the back by Don, in effect dumped from the party list and to all intents and purposes, Don Brash, as usual has a scape goat to make him look, "the board was keen to....".

But this is normal for Don Brash. He reminds me of Adolf Hitler, always wants to be leader and will go to any end to get there but wants to come up smelling of roses. Let's face it he smells of excrement. There is no one in NZ politics who sinks as low as Don Brash.

He did the same years ago when joining the National Party and stabbing Bill English in the back to take the leadership, then went on to fail at the general election and that was at a time when virtually the whole country was fed up of a Labour government. As usual Don turned defeat into victory stating that he had come so close to getting the required votes to lead. You still LOST!

I'm disappointed in Rodney Hyde, without him there would be no Act representation in NZ Government. He should have fought for his position and on losing should have announced to run as an independent candidate against John Banks, the new whipping boy chosen by Don Brash to win the all important electorate seat.

I implore all Epsom voters to vote for anyone other than John Banks so that we can see the demise of Don Brash. Just watch him decide to leave the Act Party if they do not get into parliament stating other more pressing interests have taken him away.

Brash is a parasite albeit a very successful one. My advice to John Banks, watch your back!