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Sideswipe

2006-05-09T20:13:00.000+09:30

While house prices in the rest of Auckland are flat-lining, Papakura is booming. (Listed with John McDonald Realty Ltd.)

By Ana Samways

Going over the Newmarket flyover bridge heading north, a reader noticed a new Shell sign ... "Shell, designed to take" which says it all, really, but it's not until you get half way across the bridge and look back that you see the rest of the sign which adds "you further".

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A victim of Auckland City Council's towing service, Louise Mark, writes: "I'd dropped my car off at a city garage on Friday to get a WoF. When it was finished they parked it, with permission, in the carpark of the panelbeater's shop next door. When I went to pick it up after work it was gone. I rang the tow company that had the sign up in the carpark, but they hadn't towed it. I rang the police to check if it had been towed, and again on Saturday, to report it as stolen. It's now Monday and I've just had a call from the police to inform me the Auckland City Council had it towed from my authorised parking space by a different company from that which was displayed, and didn't feel it was necessary to tell anyone (including the police) they had done it. While relieved to have my car, I'm fuming at what I've had to go through and I still have to pay the $150 to get it from the tow company!"

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Harry Potter titles fans would rather not read:

1. Harry Potter and the Uneventful Year When No One Tried to Kill Him.
2. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Kidney Stone.
3. Harry Potter and the shameless Tom Clancy Crossover.
4. Harry Potter and the Uncomfortable Oversexualisation of Minors.
5. Harry Potter and the Hendersons.
6. Harry Potter and the Things You Have to do to Get By in Prison.
7. Harry Potter and the Chamber Pot of Secrets.
8. Harry Potter and the Prisoner Detainees of Azerbaijan.
9. Harry Potter and the Wand of Franchise Extension.
10. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pizza.
(Source: www.capnwacky.com)

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Patrick Whiteman of Papatoetoe would like to relay a message to the person who broke the back window of his car, parked in Papatoetoe, and stole 32 Bibles. Would you please open a Bible and turn to Ephesians, Chapter 4, verse 28. "Perhaps you may then decide to kindly return them," he says optimistically.

Editorial: Sour notes in sound of local music

2006-05-09T20:12:00.000+09:30

The Government's support of local musicians has achieved startling results. Almost 21 per cent of all music on commercial radio last year was by New Zealand artists. A decade earlier, locally-made content garnered just 2 per cent of airtime. Government backing, through the likes of New Zealand On Air and the Music Industry Commission, has pressed the right buttons, and local music is in such good heart that the current New Zealand Music Month seems somewhat superfluous.

A key factor in this development has been the good sense of the Government. When necessary, it has been prepared to check its zeal. Labour's 1999 manifesto pledged the introduction of "format-specific quotas for local content on radio". But better counsel prevailed and in 2002 the Government agreed on a voluntary target, under which broadcasters agreed to aim for 20 per cent of local music by the end of this year. The attainment of that target 12 months early attests to the wisdom of that course.

Now, however, the Government's ardour is getting the better of it. The Broadcasting Minister, Steve Maharey, is talking, quite unrealistically, of matching the likes of Ireland by increasing the voluntary target to 50 per cent. Worse still, he has approved an aberrant rescue plan for Kiwi FM, a station playing only New Zealand music that was about to be closed by its owner, CanWest. The scheme sees the Government grant the company access to three new FM frequencies while Kiwi FM works towards becoming a not-for-profit organisation.

The package shares much in common with the quota plan. Both offer a form of protection for those who cannot stand on their own feet. Kiwi FM, in little over a year of existence, was a ratings calamity. In its first couple of months, it attracted just a 0.6 per cent share of the Auckland market. The latest six-monthly survey, from February to March, gave it 0.7 per cent of that audience.

The rating proved one thing: New Zealanders are keen on local music but they do not want to listen to it exclusively, just as, presumably, few would want to listen to a station devoted entirely to American popular music. Quantity is never likely to trump quality.

CanWest had recognised as much, and taken a hard-nosed commercial decision. It did so knowing that it would attract some bad publicity. It must, therefore, have been delighted when the Government decided to see Kiwi FM's failure as some sort of personal affront.

The rescue package defies the norm on several counts. It was not the subject of a competitive process of any description. And, in entrusting CanWest with a vague one-year trial, the Government has ceded frequencies that, themselves, would usually have been the subject of a tendering process which would have realised between $10 million and $20 million. Additionally, New Zealand On Air will fund the specialist programmes that Mr Maharey views as the remedy to Kiwi FM's rating woes.

Quite justifiably, CanWest's competitors are angry. The three frequencies provide their rival with obvious flexibility and potential. The Government must have expected outrage from that quarter. But it cannot have anticipated the response of a figure of the stature of Neil Finn, who has been quick to compare this largesse to a commercial broadcaster with his own thwarted campaign for public youth radio. In the normal course of events, there would surely have been no stronger advocate of local music.

The strength and breadth of the opposition must surely signal the folly of the decision. By over-reaching itself, the Government has managed to alienate a large slab of the music industry. And all for a radio station that almost no one wants to listen to.

Chris de Freitas: Evidence must prevail

2006-05-09T20:11:00.000+09:30

Greenpeace spokesperson Cindy Baker claims scepticism about global warming is a bad thing.

Her fixation with a majority view and "consensus science" suggests she believes that advancement of scientific understanding is a matter of voting.

Scientific authority is achieved over time, not granted by official declaration or voting.

In a lecture in 2004, author and scientist Michael Crichton said: "The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."

She goes on to attack those scientists who promote scepticism as agents funded by the fossil fuel industry. Using this logic, one must conclude that all funding contaminates all results.

No doubt Greenpeace has good intentions, but its message appears to be driven more by dogma and propaganda than science. The facts speak differently. Although no one yet has the full story on climate change, there are a few key issues which ultimately drive public opinion and on which alarmist dogma relies. There is evidence of global warming. The climate has warmed about 0.6C in the past 100 years, but most of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the post World War II industrialisation that led to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions.

But warming does not confirm that carbon dioxide is causing it. Climate is always warming or cooling. There are natural variability theories of warming.

To support the argument that carbon dioxide is causing it, the evidence would have to distinguish between human-caused and natural warming. This has not been done.

Whatever the cause of the changes in the climate, none of it is unprecedented. During the Medieval Warm Period, from 900 to 1200 AD, the Vikings sailed in Arctic waters that are now permanent sea ice, and farmed in Greenland soil that is now frozen solid. This was followed by the Little Ice Age which ended around 1850.

"Predictions" of future climate come from mathematical climate models.

But these models have not been verified, so their output is merely conjecture and not capable of being the mainstay of policy.

It is an uncontroversial fact that the scientists who construct global climate models accept that they do not adequately handle key aspects of the climate system, such as the role of clouds and aspects of heat transfer in ocean circulation.

Water vapour dominates the greenhouse effect, and global-warming predictions are based heavily on how water vapour is likely to respond to increased carbon dioxide. But climate science is not yet capable of predicting this response.

Predictions from climate models are of little value until they are reliable. A climate model is just a hypothesis until there is empirical evidence that proves it is correct.

In a good deal of the literature on global warming, claims about the future state of climate are based solely on model results. These are often treated as factual and quoted as justification for the Kyoto Protocol.

Model predictions reflect only the belief of the modellers. But when models are presented to the public as predictive tools and a basis for public policy, the issue of social responsibility arises.

Adherence to the Kyoto Protocol will mean far-reaching industrial changes and billion-dollar decisions. Given that the financial stakes are extremely high, surely the validity of these models should be more carefully assessed. Compare this to businesses which must thoroughly audit their financial statements and forecasts.

The issue of carbon dioxide and the perceived risk of dangerous climate change has taken on life of its own because it suits so many agendas: air quality, consumption of finite resources, energy efficiency, reduced dependence on costly foreign oil, opposition to industrial growth, zeal of environmentalism, international economic competition, revenue generation from environmental taxes, ongoing supply of research funds.

The key question is: Which way forward?

Many global warming sceptics contend that liberal environmental agendas are behind alarming global-warming headlines; on the other hand, sceptics often bring policy agendas of their own.

Enlightened government leaders should not identify with either of these groups.

Sane and reasonable advice will come from climate scientists who do not indulge in doom-laden conjecture, but calmly continue their search for evidence that proves or disproves theories or hypotheses about possible human impacts on global climate.

These scientists are ever-willing to modify their views as new facts emerge. They know that, given a choice between alarmism and honesty, science must always choose honesty.

Perhaps this could be used as a platform to arrange a review of New Zealand's strategy on climate science research, the basis of claims government scientists make and current national climate policy.

Perhaps one constructive way forward is joining the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP). Countries already APP members - United States, Australia, Japan, China, India and South Korea - account for most of the world's population and a large part of its industry.

The pact looks at how to develop technologies to reduce emissions rather than having specific reduction targets confined to small group of developed nations as is the case with Kyoto.

* Chris de Freitas is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Auckland.

Carolyn Moynihan: Pope's blessing not a magic wand for Aids

2006-05-09T20:09:00.000+09:30

Was there a more sensational headline in the Herald last week than the one announcing, "Pope may allow the use of condoms"?

Its sheer novelty eclipsed the combined antics of British politicians, the Iranian president and al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

Pope Benedict has agreed that the morality of condom use in the case of a married couple where one is infected with Aids should be studied in depth, taking into account the scientific and technical facts. The outcome is far from certain, and even if the answer is affirmative, it will not be the magic wand bringing hope to millions that the story from the Independent makes it out to be.

Underlying the paper's spin is the assumption that the Church's opposition to condoms has exposed millions of its members in developing countries to Aids. Now the heartless Church -that is, the Pope -is being "forced" to change its tune.

To drive home this point the article includes a couple of fact files. One, leads off with the number of Catholics in the world - a scary 1.3 billion - and then gives HIV/Aids numbers for the world and its main regions. "Gosh," we are meant to think, "most of these must be Catholics. After all, there's a heck of a lot of them and they are the ones who are not allowed to use condoms."

The other list is more precise. It tells us: "42 per cent of the world's Catholics live in Latin America; 60 per cent of the world's HIV population lives in Africa, which is home to 137 million Catholics; African Catholic numbers are expected to double by 2025; Lesotho is 70 per cent Catholic and 33 per cent HIV positive; Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country, has 1.3 million Aids sufferers."

Pretty damning, isn't it, until you take a second look at this grab-bag of statistics and see how little it really tells us.

Let's start with Africa, the region which suffers most from Aids. The sub-continent may be home to 137 million Catholics, but they are still less than 20 per cent of the population. For their numbers to be significant in this context they would have to have a much higher rate of Aids than other groups. Lesotho is therefore chosen to illustrate.

Lesotho is a tiny country of 1.8 million people surrounded by South Africa and, as such, in the southern Aids belt described by a senior Aids analyst for the World Bank as "the absolute epicentre" of the global epidemic. It is true that Lesotho has one of the worst epidemics with around 29 per cent of the population infected, according to UNAIDS' 2004 medium estimate (the standard I use in this article). It is also true that most people in that country are Catholic.

This is tragic and a particular cause of concern for the wider Church, but one small country does not prove anything. Swaziland, about the same size as Lesotho and also enveloped by South Africa, has a rate of 38 per cent and only 5 per cent of its population is Catholic. In Botswana, another small country, the figures are similar to Swaziland's. South Africa, with an Aids rate of 21.5 has a Catholic population of only 6 per cent. But further north, in Uganda, where 43 per cent of the population is Catholic, the rate of infection is 4 per cent.

Given this broader pattern, if the number of Catholics in Africa "doubles" by 2025 and the number of other Africans does not, the result might be lower rather than higher Aids prevalence.

What about Brazil? According to the Independent, the country has 1.3 million Aids sufferers. The UNAIDS figure, however, is 660,000. It is still an alarming number and a special challenge for the Church given that 80 per cent of Brazil's 184 million people are Catholic. Even so, the Aids infection rate is 0.7 per cent. Remember, it's a big country still struggling with problems of development.

But the litmus test of the proposition "Catholic population = Aids" has to be the Philippines. There, Catholicism is lived to a degree hardly seen elsewhere in the world and people really do listen to the Pope. But it is precisely in this struggling but gutsy country of 86 million people that the equation falls down: 0.1 per cent of the population is infected.

So what difference could the present exercise at the Vatican make? As the liberal press never tires of telling us, large numbers of Catholics around the world do not listen to the Pope on matters of sexual morality.

This raises a pertinent question. If Catholics do not listen to the Pope when he says not to use contraception, will they suddenly obey him if he says they are morally obliged to use a condom if there is a risk of infecting their spouse with Aids?

The Pope's critics want us to believe that those benighted dark-skinned Catholics in Africa are so devout that if they have sex outside of marriage, dally with prostitutes or take a third wife, they will piously refrain from using condoms because the Great White Father told them not to. But if he tells them the opposite they will trudge 20 miles for a packet of condoms before they do any of those things.

Patronising, isn't it? And silly. The people suffering from Aids need better thinkers and advocates than those who are hung up about the Pope and Catholic sexual morality.

* Carolyn Moynihan is an Auckland writer.

Mathew Ingram: NZ should follow US example by spending on ICT

2006-05-09T20:08:00.000+09:30

How important is productivity? Economist Paul Krugman said: "Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country's ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker." Therefore, the key to future growth and prosperity is increasing the productivity of the nation's workforce. But how?

In the corporate world, "increasing productivity" is often seen as a euphemism for layoffs, since one of the fastest ways for a company to boost productivity is by reducing the number of employees while maintaining the same output.

When it comes to countries, one of the easiest ways to increase productivity is by opening the borders to immigrants willing to work harder than the existing workforce.

Both measures can increase productivity, but most economists see them as short-term solutions.

Companies that expect the same output from fewer employees often wind up suffering from a reduction in the quality of their product, or labour disruptions, or both.

And countries that rely on hard-working immigrants to make up for the lack of productivity growth from the existing workforce often see their standard of living gradually decline, or various kinds of social unrest, or both.

That lesson is not lost on Phil O'Reilly, chief executive of Business New Zealand. In a speech this year, he said New Zealand had to find other ways of improving its productivity.

While there is no doubt the country has demonstrated good growth, he said, "three-quarters of our recent growth has resulted from increased labour utilisation," and the drawback to that is "constantly having to find new people to work is not a sustainable way to run a modern economy".

According to O'Reilly, "real incomes in New Zealand are continuing to fall behind Australia and other countries to which New Zealanders can easily move. In 1999, the average after-tax income in Australia was 20 per cent ahead of that in New Zealand. It is now 33 per cent ahead, an income gap equivalent to $200 a week. That is why we lose over 600 New Zealanders across the Tasman every week - often our best and brightest."

Until the late 1990s, the United States had spent the better part of three decades effectively stagnating in terms of productivity growth. During the 1970s and 1980s, growth was in the mid 1 per cent range. In the latter half of the 1990s, however, productivity grew by an average of about 3 per cent per year.

The key difference: increasing use of information and communications technology, which reduced costs and labour associated with a lot of US production, particularly in "knowledge-based" industries.

Some observers said this increase was in part a result of the technology-stock bubble, and that increased investment as a result of the dot-com frenzy and the Year 2000 hysteria boosted productivity rates higher than they might have been.

But the reality is that even after the bubble burst and the US slid into recession, its productivity continued to climb - between 2001 and 2004, the average annual growth in productivity was 4 per cent, more than three times what it was in the 1980s.

According to a research report by the Bank of Japan, investment in information technology "is estimated to have accounted for more than half of the acceleration in US productivity growth during the late 1990s."

The report also says: "in a number of other countries such as Australia, Canada, and Norway, robust economic growth in the late 1990s led by IT was also observed."

Former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has said information technology "leads to less wastage from extra production, more efficient distribution processes, and lower search and transactions costs" for businesses, all of which increase productivity.

New Zealand has a ways to go before its productivity growth can match that of its nearest neighbour.

The country's projected average annual productivity growth rate over the period from 1998 to 2006 is 1.6 per cent, compared with 1.9 per cent for Australia, 2.1 per cent for Britain, 2.6 per cent for the US, 3.4 per cent for South Korea and 3.6 per cent for Ireland.

Wages in Australia are substantially higher than they are in New Zealand, and one of the major reasons is the higher rates of productivity growth. According to one recent estimate, Australian per capita GDP is 30 per cent higher than New Zealand's.

Can New Zealand make up some of that ground through better investment in information and communication technology? The example set by the US, and to a lesser extent Canada, would seem to indicate that it could.

Paran Balakrishnan: Blackouts add to Indian summer heat

2006-05-09T20:06:00.000+09:30

The dog days are upon us. The mercury has already soared to 44.5C in New Delhi and it isn't about to cool down in the near future. To make matters worse, Delhi's power supply is beginning to collapse, leading to power cuts of between two and seven hours daily.

Did someone describe India is an emerging superpower? They might have second thoughts after spending a few days in Delhi at the height of summer. Last week the lights went off in half the city and didn't return for hours because of an overload on a power station that supplies the capital.

Every day half-a-dozen north Indian states are battling one another and overdrawing from the northern grid, the electricity pool that's supposed to help distribute electricity efficiently between the states.

An optimist could point out that power shortages are a by-product of growth. Every year the demand for electricity is shooting upwards. That means more factories are guzzling electricity and more people are installing air-conditioners in their homes - a sure sign of prosperity.

But if you aren't quite the bubbling optimist, then the power sector could plunge you into despair about India.

That's because it highlights the blackest spot in India's weak infrastructure. And this is the one sector that hasn't seen any serious progress in the past decade as Indian growth began to speed up.

The Dabhol power station, on India's west coast, is a symbol of everything that has gone wrong with the country's power sector. The power plant was built during the heyday of the infamous Enron Corporation and it was a flawed deal from the start.

Dabhol shut down a few years ago when its sole customer, the Maharashtra State Electricity Board, refused to buy its expensive power.

Dabhol has been taken over by a consortium of state-run Indian companies. (Enron's former chief Ken Lay, who was in the witness-box a few days ago, once wrote an article in the Financial Times threatening that aid to India would be stopped if it defaulted on the Dabhol project).

Dabhol was intended as the showpiece of the Government's ambitious plan to bring private sector players and foreign companies into the power sector, till then dominated by bankrupt public sector boards that had all run up colossal losses.

The dilemma was that these boards were the only buyers of power in India and it was pretty tough to wrest money from them. So, the central Government stepped in and offered sovereign guarantees to a few select players such as Dabhol - otherwise lenders were reluctant to put up money. But that policy lost its way in a maze of complex issues and foreign companies like Cogentrix gave up on India and the policy was dustbinned.

As the Millennium dawned there was new thinking on India's electricity shortages. The problem, said the electricity czars, was actually distribution. Indian power companies are unique because electricity theft and transmission losses are somewhere between 30 and 40 per cent. By comparison T&D losses, as they are called, are only about 10 per cent in China and much less in other industrialised countries.

So, the new wisdom involved separating the supply of power into three parts - generation, transmission and distribution. A new experiment took place in Delhi and two other states. Delhi's creaking Delhi Vidyut Board (electricity board) was split into three. Generation and transmission stayed with Government companies and distribution was handed over to two private firms, Reliance Energy and Tata Power.

The idea was that the two would upgrade equipment and plug electricity theft. Now almost four years later this experiment hasn't been as successful as hoped. In the two other states, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, too, reforms are bogged down.

Stop for a second and compare India's electricity woes with China, the country it's always matched against. Soon after India got its independence both countries were roughly in the same league.

In 1950 China generated about 1850MW of power and India 1713MW. By 1995, China had begun its great economic leap forward and was turning out 215,000MW annually leaving India in the dust at 81,171MW. By 2005 the figures were an astonishing 508,000MW for China compared to India's 123,668MW.

From the figures it's evident that India hasn't been standing still. But power generation needs to be slightly ahead of economic growth and should be rising by a minimum of 10 per cent a year if the shortages are to be wiped out. That's not happening yet. India adds about 4000MW each year compared to China's 28,000.

But, there is light (pun intended) at the end of the tunnel - even if it's not very clear how long the tunnel is. The 2003 Electricity Act (if implemented fully) could change the industry. It allows power trading so that energy-surplus states - mostly in the east - could sell power to those in north and western India where shortages are endemic and growing. The act has tried to create competition by making way eventually for multiple power suppliers in every state, which the electricity boards are trying to stall.

Politics is still working against the sector. In the past farmers got electricity at subsidised rates. Now, many states such as Punjab have made vote-winning promises and are offering free power to the rural sector.

Anyone who grumbles about power shortages should consider the case of Calcutta. Back in the '70s the city had worse electricity blackouts than any other part of India. By the late '80s all that was in the past.

How did Calcutta solve its problems? Simple. During that era, scores of large corporations fled the city because of its labour troubles and no new industries opened up there. Demand stagnated and the city's blackouts became a thing of the past.

So, it's important to think positively and remember that the endless blackouts are a sign of economic progress.

And as for the hapless residents of Delhi, everyone who can afford to is trying to cope in different ways. One option is to buy an inverter, a contraption that uses a battery to store power for limited periods and comes on during power outages. The other is expensive, noisy, diesel-powered generators that spew pollution. And so the lights aren't all going off - even at the darkest moments.

* Paran Balakrishnan is an associate editor of the Telegraph, Kolkata.

Sideswipe

2006-05-08T06:50:00.000+09:30

An Epsom reader was startled to see this three-legged model in the Ezibuy online catalogue

By Ana Samways

Beware, smugglers of bootleg movies - two black Labradors have been trained as the world's first DVD-sniffing dogs. Canine sleuths Lucky and Flo got their first major live test at London's Stansted Airport and immediately identified packages and parcels containing DVDs for destinations in Britain. The Federation Against Copyright Theft organised the dogs' training to crack down on DVD piracy. The dogs have been taught to identify DVDs in boxes, envelopes and other packaging, and discs that might be hidden in other goods for illegal sale in Britain. "This is the first time dogs have been used anywhere in the world to search for counterfeit DVDs and the results were amazing," federation director-general Raymond Leinster said. More than two million bootleg DVDs were seized in Britain last year. (AP)

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Paul Clark, professor of Chinese at Auckland University, writes: "The latest Mastercard ad, featuring an intrepid couple touring in China, is a hoot. In what the voiceover calls "Guy-lin" (he means Guilin, which rhymes with Grey Lynn) our adventurers clutch a folding map, "cost: 47 yuan" . Priceless indeed, as our couple have paid at least 10 times what they should have for the map."

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A Trade Me humorist tries to flog a telco with an auction description that reads: "One over-priced somewhat defunct CDMA network due to our big cousins in Australia, Telstra, giving us the boot. So in the near future should you wish to roam on a 027 phone, good luck! And now that they have told us that we have to share our pot of gold we are a little worried. (We thought, since the Government has so many shares in us, and they're reliant on us for their super funds, they would look after us.)"

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An unfortunate turn of phrase emerged during the tsunami-that-wasn't coverage on Morning Report last Thursday. People around the Gisborne area had "self-evacuated", they kept saying, which was meant to mean they had left all by themselves. But its repeated use made it sound like the poor evacuees' bowels bore the brunt of the tidal wave scare.

Editorial: National offers little inspiration

2006-05-08T06:47:00.000+09:30

Indecisiveness continues to bedevil the National Party. Six months into its third consecutive term on the Opposition benches, it remains close to Labour in opinion polls but shows no sign of going ahead of a Government which until its decision on Telecom last week was becalmed - maintaining itself rather than advancing the country. National is an unconfident opposition against a tentative government. The resulting politics are stagnant.

National's stance on the future of the Maori seats in Parliament is an example of its dilemma. It campaigned last year to abolish the seats. After the election, that created difficulties with one of its possible allies in an unlikely bid to form a government, the Maori Party.

Last week, the deputy leader, Gerry Brownlee, seemed to suggest that the hardline commitment to abolish the seats ought to be reconsidered, given the long-term probability of a bigger Maori Party being a key player in coalition building. His leader, Don Brash, was publicly unmoved and reiterated the standing policy. No Maori seats. This, despite the absence of any popular mood for the seats' removal and the potential recognised by the public for a severe rupture with Maori which New Zealand just does not need.

In the same vein, Mr Brownlee wondered about the party's position on reducing the number of MPs from 120 to 100. Dr Brash came out later to restate National's support for the smaller number, despite Mr Brownlee's logic that his party's chances might be enhanced with the bigger House of Representatives. Again, if the case for 100 seats had traction, it seems to have faded in the public mind.

The disconnects are indicative of a broader problem for National: whether to stay wedded to so-called bottom lines in policy or to eliminate policies that may cause more harm than good in the long-term. The policies may be points of differentiation but, like that on nuclear ship visits which called for a vague referendum on the issue and opened National to attack politics from the left, they must go if the negatives are too high.

National's early performance this term suggests it has yet to work out how to markedly improve its appeal in areas in which it is weak: women, the young, those on modest incomes in urban areas. Looking after its own vote and that of the wider centre-right will not be enough. Even with big tax cuts and the resonance of its one-law-for-all race relations policy at the last election it came up short. Too often the party seems to be making small points well rather than developing something big to put before the public. MPs intent on felling Labour with a death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy of mini controversies echo the failed thinking of the past six years.

When Labour finally did something telling this term and announced the unbundling of Telecom's local loop, National's response was a blast from the past in more ways than one. First, the man formerly known as Minister for Telecom, Maurice Williamson, showed no feeling at all for the public mood on Telecom's broadband failings and instead resorted to 1990s slogans. Second, while Dr Brash remained out of sight, the former leader Bill English took the fight to the Government on the weakest point of its Telecom bombshell, the leaking of what was a Budget secret. Television images of Mr English speaking on the steps of Parliament with the deputy leader at his shoulder were odd to say the least in the absence of Dr Brash.

In a contest of limited equals, in a climate increasingly unfavourable for an incumbent, National has little momentum. And it offers less inspiration than might have been anticipated with a greatly expanded caucus and Labour's ragtag coalition.

Brian Rudman: Let taxis use Grafton Bridge to ferry the sick to hospital

2006-05-08T06:46:00.000+09:30

From the "Only in Auckland" file. First we concentrate all our public hospital services astride a notorious traffic bottleneck. Then, in an attempt to cure the transport problem, we restrict the times the halt and the lame can travel by car across Grafton Bridge, which just happens to be the most direct route to the hospital for much of Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and parts further west.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favour of the planned central transit corridor, the new busway linking the CBD and Newmarket via Grafton. If it's going to cut 14 minutes off the bus travel time of 65,000 people a day, that's wonderful. But surely it shouldn't be done at the expense of those heading off to have their cancers zapped or their prostates tickled.

The plan is to ban cars (including taxis) and trucks, from Grafton Bridge from 7am to 7pm, Monday to Friday, to make it easier for buses and bicycles and emergency vehicles to get through. This means patients from the Western Bays will have to cross through the central city to access Grafton Rd from the bottom of the gully, or take the polar route down Khyber Pass Rd to approach the hospital from the south.

Even to a public transport advocate like myself, this seems a tad purist. Surely the sick could be forgiven for leaving their bikes or bus passes at home in such circumstances and succumbing to a little pampering.

Admittedly, sorting the sick from the cheats driving across Grafton Bridge would be an impossible task. So private cars remain a no-no. But why not let taxis ferry the ill across?

A few stakeouts to catch and punish any taxis abusing the system would soon hammer the message home. Alert Taxis part-owner Paul Cafferkey said last week that having to avoid Grafton Bridge would almost double the fare from the city to the hospital. Being ill is costly and dispiriting enough without this.

The need to have to funnel 2600 buses a day across Grafton Bridge at the expense of other road users is the unsatisfactory compromise you end up with in a city where public transport has lingered bottom of the funding queue for the past 50 years.

This latest incarnation of the CTC, involving busways along Anzac Ave, Symonds St and across Grafton Bridge to Newmarket, is but a pale imitation of a scheme dreamed up during the Christine Fletcher mayoralty.

The original plan involved a light rail-bus corridor from Britomart station up Queen St, along Wellesley St, then across the Grafton Gully motorway on its own bridge, continuing in a tunnel under the hospital - with an underground station there - and on to the western rail line at Boston Rd.

The John Banks council canned this. The Queen St route was abandoned for fear of asphyxiating shoppers with diesel fumes, and the buses directed along Anzac Ave to spew fumes at university students instead.

At the time, Transit New Zealand was in the final design stages of its Wellesley St-Grafton Gully motorway interchange.

The sensible solution would have been to incorporate a passenger transport corridor across the motorway into this design. But such was the dysfunction between local and national transport providers and between road and public transport proponents, that Transit blundered ahead with a roads-only solution.

This left Auckland City and its fading CTC project facing the cost of a new bridge, or the less-than-ideal alternative of retrofitting and hi-jacking historic Grafton Bridge.

As a way of siphoning busloads of commuters rapidly back and forth from the CBD to Newmarket and on to the East and South, it's no doubt a perfectly workable and cheap solution. But nothing's free, and in this case the takeover of two-lane Grafton Bridge by buses is the price.

With the anti-suicide barriers poised to trap the belching bus fumes, pedestrians and cyclists will need free oxygen bowsers at frequent intervals to stand a chance.

As for the sick, the least they deserve is the chance to take a taxi by the most direct route. Not via Hamilton.

Lincoln Tan: How a trip to the zoo sealed a deal to stay in New Zealand

2006-05-08T06:45:00.001+09:30

Just as we were contemplating a move to Auckland from Christchurch last summer, I got a job offer in Singapore.

"Take it!" my wife Bee said immediately, tempted at the thought of finally getting some stability back into our lives.

Since our move from Singapore to New Zealand in the late 90s, we had been unable to find work in our respective trades - me a journalist, she a teacher - for our lack of "Kiwi experience" and "Kiwi qualifications". So we ran a cafe in Ponsonby, managed a hotel in Mt Hutt and set up a food court in Christchurch.

While the various businesses kept us afloat financially, they were a far cry from what we could have earned in Singapore.

After Bee bowed out of business following the birth of our second child, she supported my dream of starting my own newspaper so I could continue doing what I enjoy doing in New Zealand, and hopefully make a buck.

Just as she was getting settled in Christchurch with new friends, and with our two kids, Ryan, 6, and Megan, 4, at Cathedral Grammar School, I came up with the idea we should move back to Auckland so my Asian-focused newspaper iBall could stand a better chance of making it big.

"Are you crazy?" Bee said when I first suggested it. But after much convincing, it reached a stage where she was ready to entertain the idea.

Then came the job offer. Stability or no stability, I was not prepared to give up what I had started. We made a deal.

We would make a three-day trip to Auckland and, in that time, if I could convince her that a move north could be better for us, she'd agree - otherwise I'd accept the job offer and head back to the land of our birth.

This was my toughest challenge. If you knew Bee, you might say it was mission impossible.

I've always believed that if you put your heart and soul into doing something you strongly believe in, it will succeed. I was determined to show her that New Zealand was where dreams could be turned into reality - and Auckland was the place.

From the moment our plane landed at Auckland, I started my game plan.

Day 1: The way to an Asian woman's heart is through her stomach. Since we'd left Auckland six years ago, there'd been a boom of Asian restaurants and supermarkets. Food is an Asian obsession, so much so that a usual greeting is, "Have you eaten?"

We went on a food tour - the Asian food courts, restaurants, supermarkets, culminating with dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Parnell.

"So?" I asked , hoping I had won her over. She replied there would be more restaurants, and they'd be cheaper, in Singapore.

I looked to my son Ryan for support: "I prefer McDonald's."

Day 2: Home is where the heart is. I knew she liked the beach, and we had lived at Browns Bay before our move south. I took her for a drive to see coastal homes, but being a pragmatist Bee knew we would not be able to afford these houses, so why bother?

We sold our Browns Bay house in the mid-$300,000s before moving to Christchurch, and to buy it back would cost more than half a million dollars.
Day 3: This is one battle I was clearly not winning. Today the plan was a trip to Auckland Zoo for the kids before we headed to the airport.

I was already dreading the fact that the next time I went to the airport would be to quit New Zealand.

We stood looking at the parrot enclosure, watching the parrots feed while sparrows were flying in and out pinching nibbles.

I sighed and told Bee, "We will be just like the parrots if we went back to Singapore. With all the security, food and shelter, we will be caged in with all the restrictions and controls. Here, we are free like the sparrows."

We moved to the chimpanzee enclosure and I commented that this "could very well be me" back in Singapore, having broken some of Singapore's draconian laws during my time in New Zealand. Organising an anti-racism march in Christchurch, facing up to the mayor for calling me naive and extreme for organising that march and even launching a newspaper could have easily landed me behind bars, or at least facing major lawsuits.

Singapore is run like a great five-star hotel - but sometimes I find it hard to call it home because home is also about emotional ownership, which comes only when one is allowed to speak out - something I have been able to do here.

I was speaking for myself, but as we looked at the cages Bee was seeing it from a mother's perspective. Did she want to deprive our two made-in-New Zealand children, citizens by virtue of birth, of everything that is New Zealand?

On the drive to the airport, we were having a singing competition with the kids. They were singing God Defend New Zealand and we Majullah Singapura (Singapore's national anthem).

As we were parking Bee said: "It's funny how it took animals to help us see the treasures that are New Zealand, treasures that go beyond financial stability. It would be wrong to take the kids out of New Zealand, or New Zealand out of the kids. This is where we belong. You win."

Now is the beginning of a new chapter of my life, and I have my children - and the animals at Auckland Zoo - to thank.

I didn't choose to be born a Singaporean but I did choose to put my roots down here. Sink or swim, our fate is now tied to New Zealand's.

Kevin Woods, James Lacey and Williamson Murray: Why Saddam thought he could win

2006-05-08T06:45:00.000+09:30

Throughout the years of relative external peace for Iraq after Operation Desert Storm, in 1991, Saddam Hussein received optimistic assessments of his regime's prospects from his top military officers.

Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz described Saddam as having been "very confident" that the United States would not dare to attack Iraq, and that if it did, it would be defeated.

What was the source of Saddam's confidence? Judging from his private statements, the single most important element in Saddam's strategic calculus was his faith that France and Russia would prevent an invasion by the United States, believing in a nexus between their economic interests and his own strategic goals.

According to his personal interpreter, Saddam also thought his "superior" forces would put up "a heroic resistance and ... inflict such enormous losses on the Americans that they would stop their advance".
When the coalition assault did come, Saddam clung to the belief that the Americans would be satisfied with an outcome short of regime change.

An internal revolt remained Saddam's biggest fear. On this basis, Saddam planned his moves.

For example, according to the commander of Iraq's Air Force, Hamid Raja Shalah, Saddam reasoned that the Iraqi Air Force's equipment was useless against coalition Air Forces. Consequently he decided to save the Air Force for future needs and ordered his commanders to hide their aircraft.

When it came to weapons of mass destruction, Saddam attempted to convince one audience that they were gone while simultaneously convincing another that Iraq still had them.

According to Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali", Saddam was asked about the weapons during a meeting with members of the Revolutionary Command Council.

He replied that Iraq did not have WMD but flatly rejected a suggestion that the regime remove all doubts to the contrary, going on to explain that such a declaration might encourage the Israelis to attack.

By late 2002, Saddam had tilted towards trying to persuade the international community that Iraq was co-operating with the inspectors of the UN Special Commission and that it no longer had WMD programmes.

But after years of obfuscation, it was difficult to convince anyone that Iraq was not once again being economical with the truth. And when UN inspectors went to some locations, they discovered lingering evidence of WMD-related programmes.

In 2002, therefore, when the United States intercepted a message between two Iraqi Republican Guard Corps commanders discussing the removal of the words "nerve agents" from "the wireless instructions", US analysts viewed this information through the prism of a decade of prior deceit.

They had no way of knowing that this time the information reflected the regime's attempt to ensure it was in compliance with UN resolutions. This tidbit was cited as an example of Iraqi bad faith by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his February 5, 2003, statement to the United Nations.

Another factor reduced Iraq's military effectiveness: sanctions. For more than a dozen years, UN sanctions had made it difficult for Baghdad to buy new equipment or fund adequate training for the military.

Saddam created the Military Industrial Commission as a means to sustain the military. The commission and a series of subordinate organisations promised new capabilities to offset the effects of poor training, poor morale and neglected equipment.

One senior Iraqi official has alleged that the commission's leaders were so fearful of Saddam that when he ordered them to initiate weapons programmes that they knew Iraq could not develop, they told him they could accomplish the projects with ease.

Later, when Saddam asked for updates on the projects, they faked plans and designs to show progress.

This constant stream of false reporting undoubtedly accounts for why many of Saddam's calculations on operational and political issues made perfect sense to him.

Bending the truth was particularly common among the most trusted members of Saddam's inner circle. A 1982 incident vividly illustrated the danger of telling Saddam what he did not want to hear.

At one low point during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam asked his ministers for candid advice. The Minister of Health, Riyadh Ibrahim, suggested that Saddam temporarily step down and resume the presidency after peace was established. The next day, pieces of the minister's chopped-up body were delivered to his wife.

According to Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaysh, the head of the Military Industrial Commission and a relative of the murdered minister, "This powerfully concentrated the attention of the other ministers, who were unanimous in their insistence that Saddam remain in power."

After the war, several military commanders commonly noted four other factors that affected military readiness:

1. Irrelevant guidance: A close associate once described Saddam as a deep thinker who lay awake at night pondering problems at length before inspiration came to him in dreams. These dreams became dictates the next morning, and invariably all those around Saddam would praise his great intuition.

All of the evidence demonstrates that he made his most fateful decisions in isolation. He decided to invade Iran, for example, without any consultation with his advisers and while he was visiting a vacation resort.

2. The rise of paramilitary forces: After the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings of 1991, the threat of another uprising consistently remained Saddam's top security concern. One of the precautions he took was to create private armies made up of politically reliable troops: the Saddam Fedayeen, the al-Quds Army and the Baath Party militia.

These organisations actually worsened national security by making Army recruitment more difficult and by stripping the military of needed equipment. And when they eventually went to battle against the coalition forces, they were obliterated.

3. Relatives and sycophants: Saddam truly trusted only one person: himself. As a result, he concentrated more and more power in his own hands. No single man could do everything, however; forced to enlist the help of others, Saddam used a remarkable set of hiring criteria.

As one senior Iraqi leader noted, Saddam selected the "uneducated, untalented and those who posed no threat to his leadership for key roles".

Always wary of a potential coup, Saddam remained reluctant to entrust military authority to anyone too far removed from his family or tribe. As a result, in 2001 he placed Qusay Hussein as head of the Republican Guard, making his youngest son the commander of Iraq's most elite combat units - even though Qusay's military experience was limited to a short stint at the Iranian front in 1984, where he had experienced little if any real combat.

4. Security and command limitations: The commander of the Baghdad Division of the Republican Guard provided an example of how hard it was to function: "In the Republican Guard, division and corps commanders could not make decisions without the approval of the staff command.

"Division commanders could only move small elements within their command. Major movements such as brigade-sized elements and higher had to be requested through the corps commander to the staff command.

"This process did not change during the war and in fact became more centralised."

Military commanders also had to contend with at least five security organisations, including the Special Security Office, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the General Military Intelligence Directorate and various security service offices in the Republican Guard bureaucracy.

Moreover, the number of security personnel in each of these organisations increased dramatically after 1991. In many cases, new spies were sent to units to report on the spies already there.

The Second Republican Guard Corps commander described the influence of the internal security environment on a typical corps-level staff meeting: "First a meeting would be announced and all the corps-level staff, the subordinate division commanders and selected staff, as well as supporting or attached organisations and their staffs, would assemble at the corps headquarters.

"The corps commander had to ensure then that all the spies were in the room before the meeting began so that there would not be any suspicions in Baghdad as to my purpose.

"I spent considerable time finding clever ways to invite even the spies I was not supposed to know about."

* Kevin Woods is a defence analyst in Washington. James Lacey is a military analyst for the US Joint Forces Command. Williamson Murray is a distinguished visiting professor of history at the US Naval Academy.
A full copy of the report is available at the Foreign Affairs website.

Gwynne Dyer: Burning the bridges to Iran

2006-05-08T06:44:00.001+09:30

The draft resolution on Iran's nuclear activities that the United States, Britain and France presented to the United Nations Security Council last Wednesday is designed to fail.

By making it a Chapter Seven resolution (one that is mandatory under international law and can be enforced by sanctions or even by military action), the authors have guaranteed that it will ultimately face a veto by Russia and China, neither of which is convinced that such extreme measures are necessary.

They are not necessary, but this resolution burns the bridges on further negotiations (not that the US was willing to talk directly to Iran anyway), and there have been heavy hints in Washington of military action against Iran.

If President Bush follows the same path that he took into Iraq, a "failure to act" by the Security Council is the necessary preliminary to an attack on Iran.

Such an attack would make no military sense, but American foreign policy is still in the hands of neo-conservatives whose mantra used to be that "the boys go to Baghdad, the men go to Tehran".

Even if Iran intends to build nuclear weapons eventually, there is no urgency. As Robert Joseph, US Undersecretary of State for arms control, said in March, the US intelligence community believes that Iran is "five to 10 years away from a nuclear weapons capability".

Attacking Iran is also a military nightmare for American strategic planners.

Former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke pointed out last month that the Clinton Administration also contemplated a bombing campaign in the late 1990s, but "after a long debate, the highest levels of the military could not forecast a way in which things would end favourably for the United States".

Even US air strikes that killed Iranian nuclear specialists (plus many hundreds of civilians) would only set Iran's programme back a couple of years.

And a land invasion is out of the question: the US Army is already stretched too thin by Iraq.

Iran may be able to close the Gulf to oil traffic - its sea-skimming and underwater anti-ship missiles are good enough to give the US Navy a run for its money.

It could tip the world's oil markets into turmoil just by withholding its own oil exports. And it could set southern Iraq on fire by mobilising its Shiite allies there.

So Iran is unfazed by US threats. Indeed, it chose last week to launch its new Oil Stock Exchange, an upstart rival to the London and New York exchanges where almost all the world's exported oil is currently traded.

This will involve the establishment of a new Iranian "marker" crude, and probably the denomination of its price in euros, not in US dollars. There seems to be no fear of the US reaction.

The prediction that this new oil bourse would attract an avalanche of customers eager to get out of US dollars and lead to the downfall of that currency was always vastly exaggerated.

Contracts made under Iranian law are unattractive to the world's big traders, and the market will struggle to find its feet at first.

But Tehran is aware of the conspiracy theorists who say the US invaded Iraq to punish Saddam Hussein for demanding that his oil be paid for in euros, and warn that Iran may face a similar fate. It doesn't give their warnings a second thought.

Iran will not back down, and neither will the United States. The crash is probably still many months away, but these two countries are on a collision course.

So it may be a good time to reconsider the question of what capabilities Iran is really seeking with its nuclear programmes.

Iran's nuclear weapons programme was started by the Shah, but cancelled by Ayatollah Khomeini after the 1979 revolution because weapons of mass destruction were "un-Islamic".

It is not known when it started up again, but it certainly didn't go into high gear until the late 1990s, probably in response to the Pakistani nuclear weapons tests of 1998.

For although Pakistan is a safe neighbour under its current regime, Shiite Iranians worry about what might happen if the Sunni extremists who are also present in considerable numbers, even in the Army, ever gained power in Pakistan.

Iran's activities nevertheless remained legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, since all the early steps towards a nuclear weapons capability - essentially, developing the ability to enrich uranium or to reprocess plutonium - are identical to those you would take if you just wanted to have the full fuel cycle for civilian nuclear power generation under your own national control.

And if Iran's major goal is the ability to deter attack if Pakistani nuclear weapons fall into the wrong hands, it is probably only seeking a "threshold" nuclear weapons capability for now: that is, to get to the point where it could build the actual weapons in six months or so, if the local strategic situation suddenly went bad.

There are many other counties with this kind of "threshold"capacity, from Japan and Brazil to Sweden and South Africa.

It's a perfectly legal position to occupy, and given that Iran lives under the shadow of Israeli, American, Russian and Indian nuclear weapons as well as Pakistani ones, it's not unreasonable for Tehran to want to get there.

There is obviously a diplomatic deal to be made here, if anybody's interested.

* Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

David Skilling: Domestic capital key to prosperity

2006-05-08T06:44:00.000+09:30

Over the past 15 years New Zealand has pursued a hands-off policy approach to personal savings.

This is based on the twin beliefs that people make systematically rational savings decisions and that the Government has no interest in the aggregate outcomes that are generated such as the current account deficit or the strength of capital markets.

New Zealand has been more or less alone among developed countries in holding to these beliefs. And it has become increasingly clear that this pursuit of purity has come at a very real cost.

New Zealand's household savings rates are the lowest in the OECD at minus 7 per cent of household income, and as a consequence the country is heavily reliant on importing capital from foreign savers.

This reliance on foreign capital is reflected in New Zealand's current account deficit of 9 per cent of GDP, one of the largest in the OECD, and in one of the largest net external liabilities in the developed world.

The current account deficit is driven largely by the investment income deficit in New Zealand, currently 7 per cent of GDP, reflecting the lack of domestic New Zealand savings.

New Zealand is in uncharted territory in running a current account deficit of this size.

The rule of thumb has been to treat a current account deficit of more than 5 per cent of GDP as dangerous.

There are many costs and risks associated with such a large deficit, such as a high cost of capital and vulnerability to changes in investor sentiment. There has been much recent comment in the Economist and the Financial Times about the risks associated with the high current account deficits in small countries like Iceland and New Zealand.

Currencies like our dollar have been supported by "carry trades" in which capital is attracted by the high interest rates that are offered. When this process unwinds, there is the potential for a substantial depreciation in the currency and slower rates of economic growth.

Mitigating these risks is sufficient motivation in itself to take action to raise household savings. Concern about Australia's current account deficit, captured in Paul Keating's famous "banana republic" comment, was a key driver in the establishment of Australia's compulsory savings scheme. But the case for action does not rest simply on demonstrating that serious risks exist.

The more important reason for taking meaningful action to raise savings is to strengthen the economy. Even if a crisis is not thought likely, configuring policy to increase household savings should be a key economic policy priority because of the economic upside this will generate.

First, an increased pool of domestic capital means that New Zealanders will have a larger ownership stake and will obtain a greater portion of the returns generated in the economy.

Since New Zealand has been heavily dependent on foreign capital to finance spending and investment, the economy has a high level of foreign ownership and as a consequence, we exported about $13 billion, or 8 per cent of GDP, to foreign investors in 2005.

For this country to benefit from the success of New Zealand companies as they grow and expand into international markets, a greater ownership stake is vital. It may be that many New Zealand companies are able to obtain capital on global capital markets, but the returns flow offshore to reward the investors who have put up the capital.

Ultimately, it is ownership that drives wealth. New Zealand cannot spend its way to prosperity on the back of foreign credit. Second, for a small, remote economy like ours, a deliberate focus on raising savings is needed to make New Zealand a more attractive place for companies to locate.

There will always be pressure for companies to move from New Zealand to larger markets, but having deep, liquid capital markets will help to counter this agglomeration pressure.

Generating a domestic pool of capital will strengthen New Zealand's capital markets, lead to more aggressive pricing of companies, and provide expansion capital for large and small New Zealand companies. These factors will help to anchor companies here as they expand their operations internationally.

Without a greatly increased level of savings, New Zealand is likely to become an increasingly peripheral economy.

This country will continue to struggle to hold on to New Zealand companies as they grow.

Becoming a "branch office economy" may not be catastrophic, but neither is it conducive to creating a New Zealand economy that can generate high rates of income growth into the future that will enable this country to converge to the income levels of Australia and other developed countries. Our economic future will be much brighter if we increase savings.

Given New Zealand's current savings performance and the importance of increasing savings, it is time to rethink our current policy approach to savings.

It is instructive that Australia's outcomes look very different after 15 years of a very different approach to savings policy.

The Australian compulsory superannuation scheme is widely credited as having been the major factor driving the growth in their capital markets, and has assisted Australian firms to aggressively expand internationally as well as supporting robust economic growth.

Australia's private pension funds under management are currently about $840 billion (compared to $30 billion in New Zealand), are growing at over $100 billion a year, and are projected to approach $3 trillion within the next decade.

The debate in Australia is about the difficulties of having too much capital to fund domestic investment opportunities - not a conversation heard frequently in New Zealand.

After 15 years of these different policy approaches, the evidence is increasingly clear that our approach to savings is not delivering good outcomes. Indeed, policy neglect with respect to personal savings has made us unique in the OECD, and it is unlikely to be a coincidence that we have both the most hands-off approach to savings in the OECD and also among the worst outcomes.

If we continue the current approach, we will remain exposed to serious risks and more importantly the economy will not be strong enough to hit its full growth potential.

New Zealand should learn from countries like Australia and Singapore which have benefited enormously from a more deliberate approach to savings. In this context, the Government deserves credit for introducing the KiwiSaver scheme, even if it only has a modest effect on savings.

Something much bolder is required to respond to the challenges and opportunities described above.

The KiwiSaver scheme does, however, provide a platform on which to build a much more ambitious savings scheme. There is growing awareness of the need for action, and there is a window of opportunity to respond with a strong fiscal position, corporate profitability, low unemployment, and strong wage growth.

But to convert this concern into action, political leadership is required. We need to seize this opportunity with both hands and not squander it as we have in the past.

* Dr David Skilling is chief executive of the New Zealand Institute, a policy think tank comprising business, community and education leaders.

Mark Peart: It's too easy to take water for granted

2006-05-08T06:43:00.000+09:30

Until just over a year ago the sum total of my knowledge about water allocation could neatly and squarely occupy the space on the back of a postage stamp.

Then, kicking and screaming and struggling, I was assigned to cover the Waitaki catchment water allocation process. I thought it would be a nine-day wonder and I could move onto other things.

It wasn't and I didn't. Now, you could fit what I know about the mechanics of water allocation on to the back of two postage stamps.

However, you could also now assemble what I've learned about the politics of water and water allocation on the back of several sheets of postage stamps, or maybe even incorporate it into a small book.

Water allocation is an undeniably fraught, complex, and highly politicised science, as the members of the Government-appointed Waitaki catchment water allocation board learned only too well last year.

Competing and conflicting interests abound; farmers, irrigators, electricity companies, recreational users, conservationists, everyone wants their share. Inevitably there will be winners and losers.

It's human nature to take fresh, clean, water for granted. We turn on the tap and out flows the elixir of life, unsullied and unadulterated (hopefully).

It's like flicking on a light switch. It isn't until the bulb blows, or the fuse, that we appreciate just how fragile our existence is without essential utilities.

In a country like New Zealand dominated by alpine regions, water supplies appear to be limitless. Yet they are not.

It is unsurprising then that dairy farmers have been the most vocal in their reaction to the Government's recently released blueprint for sustainable water management.

The Sustainable Water Programme of Action is taking a wide-ranging look at water management, including studying alternatives to first-in-first-served water allocation mechanisms and how the transfer of consents to use water can be improved.

Farmers have a history of claiming first dibs on the use of freshwater resources. They would argue their economic livelihood, and through agricultural exports a large part of the nation's livelihood, depends on it.

The leader of the Dairy Environment Review Group, Jon Penno, said last month: "A whole lot of farmers ... don't want or need further regulations or rules that just roll out and make farming less viable."

That's probably right. But in this wider debate about sustainability, should farmers have the dominant say and the overriding influence?

Water is one of those resources which no one, not even the Crown, should claim ownership of. Sure, the Crown has de facto responsibilities for its prudent management and stewardship. But it doesn't own it.

Penno said the Government's programme and a strategy released recently by his group for protecting the environment had many points of agreement. Dairying clearly needed to use water "in a way that the wider community believes is acceptable".

The wider community didn't consider it acceptable when dairy giant Fonterra, a farmer-owned co-operative, was found to be polluting the Clutha River near its Stirling cheese factory in south Otago this year. The Otago Regional Council and Fonterra now have a revised agreement to remedy the problems at Stirling. And so they should. It took an awful lot of bad press nationwide to make Fonterra face up to its responsibilities.

The Government, for its part, needs to ensure it doesn't start brandishing the big regulatory stick too vigorously.

Hopefully common sense will prevail and the parties can agree without a vital resource being used as a political football.

From now on, I will bow to the kitchen sink in awed reverence every time I go to fill my glass with filtered water and contemplate the challenge we face not to squander and waste it.

* Mark Peart is a Dunedin-based freelance writer.

Jim Eagles: Around the world by blog

2006-05-08T06:42:00.001+09:30

The idea for what was probably the world's first internet travel diary was cooked up in a spa pool on Stanley Pt on Auckland's North Shore on a fine January night five years ago.

Freshly arrived from Britain, Dominic and Sharon Stow installed a spa pool in their new home - "because that's what Kiwis do, isn't it?" - and sat back in the warm water to ponder the meaning of life.

Keen travellers, they recalled some of their trips together and bemoaned the fact that while they'd sent lots of newsy emails to family and friends they had no record themselves.

Maybe it was the inspiration of the starry night but Dominic, a software engineer, suddenly came up with the idea of a website where travellers could post their travel diaries for contacts to read and remain a permanent record.

"The more we talked about it the more brilliant it seemed. Ideas just came pouring out. You could post your photos. The site could automatically notify your contacts by email whenever you added a new report. There could be an interactive map so you could trace your journey. We could create personalised e-vaults where people could record secure information like passport numbers and travel insurance details. It was amazing."

It took a while to transform that idea into reality - "because I had a real job and I go windsurfing so the website was written on wet days when I wasn't working" - but by mid-2002 Backpackersdiary went live.

These days blogs are commonplace and there are several travel diary websites but then the concept of posting information on the internet was still in its infancy.

"If I'd taken the idea and run with it when it was new maybe I'd have made a fortune," says Dominic now, "but that wasn't the object of the exercise.

"I just wanted to create somewhere people could record their journeys, let friends know what they were doing - maybe do a bit of online gloating - exchange ideas and get useful information. And that's still what I'm doing."

These days backpackersdiary.com remains a low-key operation, promoted only by electronic word of mouth, which Dominic manages in his spare time.

The site includes all the features he first thought about during his epiphany, plus a few extras like global weather and currency information, but the main thrust is still to allow travellers to record their words, photos and maps, to be shared with friends and preserved for future reminiscences.

Once you've registered you just sign in through an internet cafe or laptop, write your journal, download photos, update the trip map and ask for your contacts to be told there's a new chapter waiting to be read.

It is free, though you will have to pay if you want to store more than 1Mb of photos or to take advantage of a link which allows mobile phone text messaging.

It also remains non-commercial, though he is thinking about trying to find sponsors from the travel industry.

It has around 500 regular users, who send details of their travels to some 2000 contacts, and is expanding by half-a-dozen a day.

"Most of the users are in Britain, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the US," he says, "but I am starting to get more from Asia.

"For instance," he adds, checking his laptop, "today I've had people sign up from Indonesia, India, Britain and US ... and here's one from the Philippines, there's quite a few starting to come in from there."

Although the travel blog scene is getting crowded Dominic reckons his is still cutting edge. "I think this is the only free blog offering a secure e-vault for storing personal information and I don't know of any others offering a text message link."

And he is keen to keep it that way. "There are a lot of features I'm working on adding, mainly to take advantage of new technology, like using GPS to update locations or letting people send data and pictures from mobiles.

"I certainly don't make money out of the site. In fact if you were to cost out the hours I put in it would be costing me a lot. I still enjoy it, it's fun to run, and I get a real kick out of knowing there's a lot of people out there using my site to exchange their stories around the world which is what the internet is all about."

Tony Watkins: Rates system past its use-by date

2006-05-08T06:42:00.000+09:30

Asking someone if they want the blue door, the red door or the green door is an old and transparent way of avoiding asking them if they want the door.

The whole point of long-term planning is that it provides an opportunity to ask fundamental questions. In the short term you paint the door; in the long term you ask if you still need the door.

In the short term you admit that our property-based rating system has passed its use-by date. In the long term you ponder what you are going to do about it.

The concept of everyone paying rates based on the value of their property made good sense when New Zealand was an egalitarian society with every citizen having the reasonable expectation of owning, and possibly even building, their own home.

Those times have gone, and a gulf has opened between rich and poor. Houses have become investments. We now have a property market, but not everyone is a player.

Those who want a home rather than a house, and those who love living in a place where they belong, are driven out by a process which has nothing to do with them. The injustice needs to be addressed.

Mayor Dick Hubbard put it succinctly when he suggested that the good news about alternatives to our rates-based method of financing local government is that central Government is trying to work out solutions, while the bad news is that in spite of all the reports no progress has been made.

One possible alternative to rates lies within the endlessly repeated conventional wisdom that everyone wants a low valuation to reduce their rates, and a high valuation so they can profit from capital gains.

Property sales could be "rated". Every time a property is sold, about 20 per cent of the sale price could be taken by the council. This alternative would reflect an actual rather than a theoretical ability to pay.

It could be argued that any sale price reflects not only the value of the property itself but also the value of council infrastructure and services which provide a context for the property. The council would be merely taking its due and would no longer need to subsidise those making a profit from the property market.

In one sense this process already exists. Real estate agents, lawyers and financiers benefit from every sale, and if the property turns over regularly the yield can be considerable.

Achieving a high price would fuel another round of inflation which in turn would increase the rates take. Inflation adjustment of rates could be a thing of the past.

Those who felt this system was unjust could simply decide not to sell. In a political sense people would be empowered because they would be able to take control of their own lives.

If the result was more stability in our population that would be an enormous social benefit.

A world-class city knows its stories and respects the keepers of its unique traditions. At the United Nations Cities Summit in Istanbul, placelessness was identified as the most important issue for cities in our time. Placelessness leads to lack of commitment at best and violence at worst. Sustainable development means sustaining and developing our whakapapa.

Good footpaths do not make good communities. Good communities make good footpaths. We need a method of financing which will build good communities.

It would be a simple move to leave behind a tax on a theoretical but unrealised value and to replace it with a tax on realised profit.

Rates rebates may alleviate inequity but they fail to address the real issues.

Auckland City Council needs to take the lead in approaching central Government.

A world-class city will never result from the inaction of providing the right answer to the wrong question.

* Tony Watkins is a ratepayer with more than 30 years' experience in planning.

Peter Griffin: Unbundling order not before time

2006-05-07T18:49:00.000+09:30

Why didn't someone send Helen Clark to South Korea sooner? Last year the Prime Minister came back from that country, a high-speed internet Mecca, and said she'd felt like a "country cousin" on seeing internet services there.

By the time parliament resumed in February she was talking about urgent new regulatory measures to increase competition in broadband.

"Our country is on a journey - away from the old economy to a new one," she said. We need to increase competitiveness to keep up with the rest of the world. Last week's decision to open Telecom's network to its competitors was a welcome one that should have been made three years ago.

The template for what was decided last week was set out in a report by the Commerce Commission back in 2002. But the commission did a U-turn after hearing submissions on the matter. The then communications minister Paul Swain took the recommendation not to unbundle to the Labour cabinet and despite his own reservations, it was approved.

Instead of unbundling we got a flaky wholesale internet regime that Telecom's competitors haven't been able to make any money out of.

Unbundling means you won't have to keep paying Telecom $42 a month in line rental just so you can have a broadband connection with another supplier. It means that competitors can deliver internet and phone services at speeds and levels of service they decide on.

These companies can put their equipment in the Telecom exchanges that will make them money, the ones in urban centres. It's inevitable that customers in rural areas won't initially benefit from unbundled services and the Government will have to step in.

The biggest winner will be TelstraClear which has been restricted from selling residential broadband services profitably outside of its cable networks in Wellington and Christchurch.

The ball will now be in TelstraClear's court. Its Australian parent, Telstra, knows the unbundling game; it's spent years trying to keep competitors out of its exchanges across the Tasman. The other winner is iHug and its Australian parent iiNet which has been putting its equipment into Telstra's exchanges to deliver unbundled services.

It knows what's involved and has in the past pledged to invest $20 million in rolling out services here if unbundling was mandated. Depending on the pricing and Telecom's level of cooperation, things are looking up for businesses and consumers.

Be warned, wherever unbundling has been introduced, it takes a long time to get right. Incumbent operators drag the chain and haggle over price.

Britain's unbundling regime got off to a shaky start. But in 2004 after four years of minuscule progress, the British regulator Ofcom demanded that BT lower the prices it charges competitors for granting access to its lines.

Suddenly it became economical for internet providers like Easynet, UK Online and Wanadoo to put equipment in BT's telephone exchanges. America Online entered the British phone and internet market in January. British consumers are spoilt for choice when it comes to internet services.

Early last year, only 31,000 BT lines had been unbundled. By February of this year 300,000 lines were unbundled.

Richard Prebble: Leak demands full inquiry

2006-05-07T18:48:00.000+09:30

It is the "C" word - corruption! We have to find out not just who leaked the Budget Cabinet paper to Telecom, but why. What did they expect to get?

Nothing less than a commission of inquiry by a High Court judge with broad terms of reference and powers of subpoena is needed to inquire into what is the most serious leak of Budget information in New Zealand's history. It is not just the government's reputation at stake; our country's reputation for the lack of corruption is at risk.

Shareholders around the globe lost money. The world is watching and nothing less than a public inquiry where we can see witnesses giving answers will satisfy.

A commission of inquiry can investigate whether this was a one-off, or if, as Minister of Finance Dr Cullen is reported to have said, Telecom has been receiving other leaks and using them to influence government policy.

Everyone knew how sensitive the information was. Telecom, in its now notorious letter to previous Communications Minister Paul Swain, said deregulation would wipe huge value off its shares.

I am amazed at suggestions that at least 50 officials as well as ministers may have read and been able to copy the document.

In my experience of a document as sensitive as this, it should have been in a separate envelope marked "minister's eyes only".

Once Budgets were full of surprises and the whole country listened as it was announced after markets closed. Today, Budgets rarely have market-sensitive information.

I suspect Minister David Cuniliffe, who has never been in parliament when a dramatic Budget is announced, just does not know how to handle a sensitive Budget paper.

Finding out which Cabinet paper was leaked will be easy. Each paper is numbered and Telecom admits it has kept the leaked document. Telecom staff are paid well, but none is paid enough to go to prison rather than reveal the leak. But we need to know why they leaked and what else has been leaked to Telecom.

Telecom is the best lobbyist in Wellington. I have always been amazed at how well informed it is. It knows in detail what ministers' and officials' views are, and the status of telecommunication regulation. We are an open democracy.

There is nothing wrong with transparency, but somewhere, somehow, someone has gone over the line.

Our government needs to restore confidence and publicly investigate the most serious Budget leak in our history.

Matt McCarten: Politicians pay the price for hocking family silver in sell-off of the century

2006-05-07T18:43:00.000+09:30

Wasn't the decision on Telecom great last week? It was the crime of the last century that our entire public telecommunications infrastructure was hocked off to a multi-national for a song. The profits alone creamed from this monopoly and sent overseas would have been enough to give our country a completely free education system.

Privatisation means the people's assets get flogged off to multi-nationals cheaply. These corporates thus get themselves a giant monopoly and screw us big-time.

To think of the tens of thousands of Kiwis who lost their jobs, and the untold pain and worry that destroyed a generation still makes my blood boil today.

The assets our ancestors had built for us were sold off on the premise that it would help competition and lower prices for us ... Really? Name one privatisation that has lowered prices for consumers.

Every time we have sold off public assets it has meant only job losses, fewer services and higher prices.

Our politicians hocked the family silver on the cheap to corporates which then took out loans to pay for it. The new owners, granted a monopoly, were able to charge whatever they liked to pay off those loans and tap exorbitant profits. The corporates make fortunes; senior managers rake in bonuses that would make any mafia boss's eyes water - and the silly politicians who sold our assets use the purchase money to cut corporate taxes. Telecom was the biggest theft of all. Ever since our phones were sold off, Telecom has expended all its energy in maintaining the stranglehold on its monopoly, preventing any form of competition.

The fact Telecom got the Cabinet paper within hours of it being approved is being touted as the leak of this new century.

It probably is.

But it illustrates the reach the company has had within the political system - and partly explains how Telecom has been able to use its contacts to protect its cash cow.

The decision to cut Telecom's monopoly on internet and phones cost Telecom a billion dollars on their share price in a couple of days. So you can see how important the political strategy to maintain their grip was. Telecom has always has a full-time political lobbying team headed by a senior manager who reports directly to the chief executive.

I have first-hand experience of the company's lobbying strategy.

In 1996, I was running the campaign for the Alliance.

At that time, it looked likely the party would substantially increase its number of MPs and could form part of Government.

I wrote a begging letter to all businesses I knew made political donations, including Telecom.

The usual patter is that, as large companies, they should support the democratic process by making a donation to political parties.

I got invited to lunch by a member of the Telecom lobbying team. He told me Telecom was prepared to make a donation - but was concerned about the attitude of the Alliance towards them.

I reminded him that, of course, we didn't support our publicly-owned phone company being sold off to overseas interests and that view wouldn't change.

My host responded that if we stopped bagging the company and had a telecommunications policy his employer approved then we'd get a substantial donation.

He then offered to "assist" in writing a suitable policy. I was impressed by the audacity of the proposal. I asked if this was an arrangement he had with other parties. He chuckled, and said that it would be irresponsible of his employer to "invest" in the democratic system without a return. Unsurprisingly we didn't get a donation, although he assured me Telecom had made substantial donations to other parties. He no longer works for the company.

During the following election, in 1999, the Alliance didn't even get a reply from Telecom to our standard solicitation letter. Telecom takes its political strategy of keeping its finger on the pulse very seriously.

I'm glad Labour has now changed its mind. I'd rather Telecom kept the monopoly and the Government nationalised it - but the proposed deregulation is the second best choice and the Government should be congratulated for its decision.

Deborah Coddington: Hide's antics final nail in coffin for ailing Act

2006-05-07T18:42:00.000+09:30

You have to wonder if Private Heather Roy wants to learn to fire a gun so she can shoot Rodney Hide. She's a good MP but no matter how earnestly she promotes policy, Act's media coverage is fully subscribed by Hide's scandal-busting and personal life. Or is Hide preparing to cut himself loose from Act and stand as an independent?

But meanwhile, who's filling the policy vacuum? In its early days, Act won 70 out of every 1000 votes; today it can barely get three out of every 1000. So where have those 67-per-1000 missing voters gone?

National's impressive recovery at the last election, in no small part from Don Brash's support of Act's policies, came at Act's expense.

But National's latest policy wobbles over tax cuts, the Maori seats, and a Treaty-based constitution indicate the conservatives are still in danger of outflanking Labour on the left.

I would suggest that now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of a new political party.

I don't mean a re-born Act (don't look at me, the lady's not for recycling), nor a liberal or libertarian party. Not right wing or left wing, nor the parliamentary arm of the Business Roundtable.

But a niche party like the Greens, not afraid to boldly put forward new and controversial ideas for debate. Sue Kedgley doesn't care if people abuse her because she wants to ban junk-food advertising. Sue Bradford's the only MP with the guts to champion a law change giving children the same legal protection as adults if they're beaten with bits of wood or hose-pipes. And in the pre-election debates, Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons showed more courage and integrity than all leaders put together when asked about drug-law reform - a subject which even causes libertarian Hide to duck for cover. Fitzsimons calmly said the Greens did not flinch on this matter, basically a health rather than crime policy, even if it lost them votes.

In Britain, many abandoned voters are flocking to support the British National Party (BNP), but they're basically pretty racist, objecting to the "blimmin' Africans taking over old Blighty".

Parties like this do okay in the UK but Kiwis are different. We might mutter about refugees jumping the queue for state houses, or taking over the taxis and dairies, but if they move in next door we're at the gate with a batch of scones and "join us for a beer and barbie?"

I surmise that at the last election those who abandoned Act gave National or Labour their party votes, but because these voters are neither conservative nor politically correct, they still don't have a political home to go to. They're liberal-minded in that, for example, they don't care if gays want to marry each other and adopt children, but they don't see why they should be prohibited from advertising for a pretty girl to work in reception.

Many consider themselves feminists, but they privately doubt that equal rights meant downgrading motherhood as not a valid career choice.

They support, in principle, Treaty settlements where the stealing of Maori land is clearly proven. But they see injustice in the Treaty gravy train making lawyers rich at the expense of impoverished Maori people.

They enjoy the arts, music, New Zealand films and literature and don't advocate abolishing state funding of such, but they'd like some tax breaks so they can choose their own pleasure.

They see a role for the state in providing healthcare, but are not ideologically opposed to private involvement for quick and efficient surgery and cancer treatment.

They want children to be well educated, and believe all parents, not just the wealthy, are capable of choosing the best school for their offspring.

They don't really care if it's NCEA or Cambridge exams, so long as all children learn to read, write, do mental arithmetic and leave school with an internationally recognised qualification.

And overwhelmingly, they realise the burgeoning welfare state is causing more problems than it cures, but they despair that no political party is coming up with an alternative.

Here's one idea to think about. It comes from American academic Charles Murray's new book, In Our Hands, and UK Chancellor Gordon Brown's already shown an interest. Abolish all welfare and instead pay $10,000 a year to every New Zealander aged 20 and over. Then, for example, a solo mother could grab $10,000 off the baby's father, and with their parents' and grandparents' entitlements there's a potential $80,000 a year. Or don't get pregnant if you can't afford to support a child.

It comes back to accepting responsibility for one's choices, which is quite another thing from deciding between the tango and the foxtrot.

Are there 1000 people prepared to sign up and register such a party or is New Zealand inexorably sliding back to a two-party system?

Kerre Woodham: Are we ready? Absolutely not

2006-05-07T18:41:00.000+09:30

Last year I presented a one-off telly special called Are You Ready? It looked at New Zealand's preparedness for a civil defence emergency.

The documentary looked at a volcanic eruption, a flood and an earthquake and in all three scenarios, the answer to the question Are You Ready? was no, New Zealand was not ready to cope with the consequences of a natural disaster. The good people of Gisborne had their own dramatic what-if scenario this week - and it seems that New Zealanders still aren't ready for a disaster.

An international tsunami warning was issued early on Thursday morning after an earthquake in Tonga and within half an hour of the warning, international media were broadcasting a story that said Gisborne was due to be struck by giant waves just after 6am. This being a global community, concerned expat Kiwis frantically phoned their family members and friends and warned them to head for the hills. Which is precisely where local residents fled. They piled into their cars, many still in the pyjamas, and made for the Waimata Valley Rd lookout first stopping at local service stations and filling up with essential supplies - like gas and cigarettes. Following the insouciant example set by Charles Upham, when you're staring death in the face, you can do so with equanimity while you're puffing on a fag.

By a quarter to seven it was all over - in fact, by a quarter to seven it would have been all over for thousands of people had the tsunami struck.

New Zealand's Civil Defence team issued its first public statement, advising that it was a false alarm, 20 minutes after the tsunami had been predicted to hit. When residents pointed out that this vital information was a bit late coming, civil defence officials went all wide-eyed and innocent and blamed news organisations for broadcasting inaccurate and sensational information. Which is all very well and good, but if Civil Defence has a secret - and they know that the tsunami is unlikely to happen which is something officials knew as early as 4am, apparently - why not let everybody know?

It's not like the bad old days of the civil service surely, when information was only released after requests for information had been received in triplicate and had gone through the appropriate channels.

The third and final notification, cancelling all warnings occurred just after 5.30am - there was plenty of opportunity to let people know that it was a false alarm, thus averting the panic in Gisborne.

For heaven's sake, overnight talkback hosts are just sitting there, praying for phone calls, and most news organisations have staff rostered to work through the wee small hours for this sort of scenario.

Radio is the quickest way to disseminate information. Civil Defence officials need to understand that the media is their friend - although I very much doubt the Wellington civil servants will be feeling particularly warm and fuzzy towards the media given the caning they're now experiencing in editorials and letters to the editor.

Civil Defence has to be an organisation that is nimble, quick and highly responsive - it can't be a lumbering great beast that takes three hours to make a decision or change direction.

There needs to be a complete rethink about the way the entire bureaucracy is structured - simply chucking money into the beast's maw is not going to help. And hopefully this exercise will reinforce to New Zealanders that when disaster strikes, communities will be pretty much on their own. You are the army that will be mobilised to help. So stock up those cans, store that water, have the emergency kit ready. You don't want to end up looking as unprepared and slow-witted as Civil Defence has done should disaster strike.

Kerre Woodham: Schools should wake up and cater to teenage sleep patterns

2006-05-07T18:39:00.000+09:30

Sometimes when I'm lying awake at four in the morning, as you do when you reach the magical age of 40, I think of my teenager lying in the arms of Morpheus in the next room and I am consumed with envy. Morpheus being the Greek god of sleep of course, not the six-packed son of some West Coast hippies.

Nobody can sleep like a teenager. When the young things do actually stagger into bed, after working through the night to finish an assignment or slinking home after a party that lasted until the sun came up, they sleep like champions.

If sleeping was an Olympic sport, they'd get 10 for performance and 10 for technique. Waking them to get them off to school seems just plain cruel, although I suppose it is parental payback for all those times they bounded into your bed as toddlers at quarter to six in the morning.

And really, you have to wonder, as you send them off bleary-eyed into the cold harsh light of day, how much information is going to be retained as they slump over their books at school.

So full marks to a team of junior scientists at Wellington High School whose video documentary on teenage sleep patterns convinced the school decision-makers that lessons for senior students will now start from 10.15am.

And good on the principal for being prepared to cede to a reasoned and intelligent pitch. Senior lateness has just about vanished apparently so both the school and the students are winners. It's good to see commonsense can still be learned at schools.

John Armstrong: King's firm hand on wheel

2006-05-06T12:11:00.000+09:30

Maurice Williamson likes to ask his audiences a couple of simple questions when he talks to public meetings about Auckland's traffic woes. Do they think congestion has been getting better or worse since Labour promised to fix the city's roading crisis? And, by the way, did anyone come to the meeting by public transport?

The answers speak for themselves.

At one meeting no one had travelled by bus or train despite the venue being well-served by public transport.

As for clogged roads, Transit New Zealand's latest state highway forecast confirms what Williamson's audiences already know from painful experience: traffic growth is continuing to grow at about 2 to 4 per cent a year, causing increased congestion, particularly for peak-period commuter trips and freight vehicles, at an estimated cost of about $1 billion a year.

Williamson has the patter to sell ice-cubes to Eskimos, but his is a clever sales pitch nonetheless. National's transport spokesman allows his audiences to draw their own conclusions about the effectiveness of Labour's roading policy.

He then holds out the prospect of more roads sooner by doing what Labour is not doing - allowing more flexibility for tolling roads, allowing private sector participation in road construction, and the Government funding new roads by incurring debt and then treating them as revenue-generating assets by tolling them.

The clarity of Williamson's message is in stark contrast to Labour's wonky handling of roading policy, something which Prime Minister Helen Clark has addressed by installing Annette King in the transport portfolio.

There was the bizarre episode in February when Transit revised its 10-year state highway construction programme because of an apparent funding shortfall. This would have forced the deferral of some projects and delays in start dates for others.

Conscious that the backlog of projects is already long enough, ministers were not amused. Money to make good the shortfall was quickly made available. Yet ministers had been told back in November that Transit would have to revise its plans.

The fuss vividly illustrated just how slow Labour is going in making progress on this infrastructure crisis, despite significantly increasing spending on roading.

Even a "top priority" project like the Western Ring Route, which will circle Auckland and take the pressure off State Highway 1, will not be completed until 2015 at the earliest.

Everyone agrees the infrastructure deficit is the result of historical low spending on roading relative to gross domestic product.

Labour trumpets its extra spending. But saying you have spent so many millions on extra roads and public transport does not soothe motorists stuck in ever-lengthening queues - just as Pete Hodgson's cataloguing of the amount Labour has spent on extra operations is irrelevant to those patients booted off surgical waiting-lists and referred back to their GPs.

Like the demand for elective surgery, Labour is constantly playing catch-up as traffic volumes escalate. It may still have valid reason to blame National for the roading crisis, but that now rings hollow after six years in power.

Labour must worry that public frustration sparks a different kind of road rage, one which finds expression at the ballot box.

Clark needs no reminding that when Auckland voters turn against a government they can really turn against a government.

However, when the Government allowed the Ministry of Transport to float something as potentially unpopular as congestion pricing - charging motorists to enter Auckland city - it was inviting a backlash.

Congestion pricing is putting the cart before the horse. This is a last-ditch solution used in cities overseas where there is simply no room for more roads. Yet Auckland motorists could find themselves subject to congestion pricing simply because authorities have neglected to build the roads which would enable them to bypass the city centre.

Letting congestion pricing get out of the bag is also a sign of bureaucrats running amok.

Enter King. Giving David Parker's job to the front-bencher shows that Clark wants to give Labour far more political grunt in the transport portfolio. Parker had too much on his plate and Clark was clearly worried that such a politically sensitive portfolio might not have got the attention it deserved.

There have been murmurs that officials were trying to bury Parker in paperwork. As a relatively new minister, he also does not convey the authority which comes naturally to a front-bencher of King's experience.

Both Parker and his predecessor in the portfolio, Pete Hodgson, hail from Otago, where, as Williamson jokes, a traffic jam is three cars meeting at an intersection.

King is not an Aucklander. But as a Wellington electorate MP she is well-versed in the capital's own protracted traffic project sagas, notably the off-again, on-again Transmission Gully as the main arterial route out of the city, and the planning consent nightmare of the inner-city bypass, now finally under construction after years of delay.

There are also parallels with her old portfolio where she was dealing with the Ministry of Health nationally and district health boards locally.

She is now confronted with a spaghetti junction-like tangle of separate roles and responsibilities held by a jumble of state entities, including Transit, the Land Transport Safety Authority and the Ministry of Transport.

That is further complicated by regional bodies such as the new Auckland Regional Transport Authority, and territorial local authorities such as the Auckland City Council, all of which have their own transport strategies.

King is saying nothing publicly about the approach she will be taking until she has been fully briefed by officials from the state entities.

However, she has been given the job because she is good at getting those developing policy and those lobby groups affected by it working in unison. She is good at knocking heads together - gently.

She is also good at communicating directly with voters. Expect Labour to start talking about completed roading projects in concrete terms of what they achieve, rather than merely in dollar sums.

And expect roading to get a big push in the Budget, now less than two weeks' away.

King is not going to make lavish promises about fixing Auckland's roads. There is no quick-fix.

What matters is that Labour remains credible on roading and that voters do not start looking at solutions on offer elsewhere.

Editorial: Flaws must be faced to avoid real disaster

2006-05-06T12:10:00.000+09:30

The adage about learning from experience is particularly applicable to civil defence. Natural disasters, or events that suggest an emergency may be imminent, do not happen every day. Every possible lesson must therefore be extracted from them, and acted upon. The worst response is to try to paper over flaws, or attach the blame for these to a convenient scapegoat. Yet that is precisely what happened in the wake of Thursday morning's tsunami warning, which saw thousands flee their homes in panic.

The initial reaction of the Civil Defence Minister, Rick Barker, was to blame the BBC and other media. There was, he said, "no acceptance of a mess-up". Subsequent developments and disclosures have shown this to be the crassest of conclusions. The implications in terms of New Zealand's preparedness to cope with a major natural disaster are worrying. Even the jolt delivered 18 months ago by the Boxing Day tsunami seems not to have been sharp enough.

The earthquake off Tonga early on Thursday morning triggered a communication breakdown on several levels. About all that can be said, unequivocally, to have worked correctly was the transmission of an alert from Pacific tsunami warning officials in Hawaii to Civil Defence's National Crisis Management Centre. That centre, ignoring the fact that the international media had also received the warning, chose, effectively, to sit on it. Civil defence personnel in potentially affected areas were allowed to sleep on, and emergency advice phones remained unmanned.

The public, of course, would also have been unaware but for frantic calls and emails from overseas friends and relatives who had picked up the alert on the likes of the BBC and CNN. It goes without saying that this development should have been factored into the management centre's response plan. When it was not, and when no information was available locally, a degree of panic became inevitable.

Overseas broadcasters cannot, as it turns out, be blamed for that state lasting longer than it should have. They had no way of updating their bulletins when, as the tsunami warning centre has now conceded, there was a "messaging mix-up" and some media outlets did not receive the follow-up to the initial alert.

Obviously, Civil Defence officials must strike a balance between waiting for confirmation of an emergency and spreading unnecessary alarm. But, when there is only strictly limited time for evacuation, they should err on the side of warning the public. The lesson about the media's global reach merely re-emphasises that.

The lack of preparedness extends even to public alerts, however. Emergency instructions in the Yellow Pages telephone guide instruct people to "listen to your radio for advice and information". But Civil Defence has yet to sign an agreement with the radio networks to broadcast warnings. On Thursday, radio stations and other media were left to search fruitlessly for information that would clarify the situation.

Belatedly, Mr Barker has called for a review, and acknowledged that the flow of information to the media and all agencies involved in civil defence needs to improve. That, at least, is progress. Hopefully, the Civil Defence potentates will also now be on heightened alert when, on May 17, Auckland's regional system is tested in an international exercise modelling, appropriately, a Pacific Ocean tsunami.

The system flunked its first test, involving a once-in-100-years cyclone, in early December. A surfeit of shortcomings was identified, several involving communications. Lessons learned from the blunders then and from a genuine alert, no matter how shortlived, must be acted upon. The first step towards that is an unambiguous acknowledgment of their very existence.

Paul McIntyre: Costello spits tacks over rates rise

2006-05-06T12:09:00.001+09:30

Up went official interest rates on Wednesday to their highest levels since early 2001 - 5.75 per cent - and didn't Australia's federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, kick up a stink.

Completely unnecessary, he said, reminding the world that next Tuesday's annual Budget would carry an alternative forecast on inflation and its likely impact on interest rates.

The only mob which won't give a toss about this week's rise - the first in 14 months - is the one living in the boom state of Western Australia. Its housing market and broader economy continues to travel at high altitude off the back of the global commodities boom. The big, flashy state of New South Wales, meanwhile, is trying desperately to get off the ground and the latest interest rate movement is not going to help, particularly as it faces a declining property market.

The latest annual growth rates of state economies show just how much Western Australia is benefiting from the resources boom: It's up 9.2 per cent, followed by Queensland on a very respectable 6.5 per cent, Victoria 4.3 per cent and New South Wales bumping along at 2.3 per cent.

A recovery in the New South Wales property market and broader economy is not expected now until next year. Benchmark Sydney house prices fell again in the March quarter, according to Australian Property Monitor figures released on Thursday, although the trend was the same for all eastern state capitals. No surprise that Perth was the only exception to the downward pressure on home prices.

It's partly this trend which has Costello begging to differ on the overall direction of the Australian economy with Reserve Bank of Australia governor Ian Macfarlane.

Macfarlane is worried about forecasts of further global economic growth and its positive impact on Australian exports along with return to credit growth in the domestic market. Indeed, one of the key reasons for the bank's interest rate rise this week was that households, which last year started to consolidate their balance sheets and slowly rebuild savings, have begun borrowing again and Macfarlane said the sobering effect of declining house prices on consumer spending might have stopped. The bank noted a rebound in credit growth since it touched a low in the September quarter last year.

"These domestic and international trends have added to inflationary pressures in an economy that has been operating for some time with rather limited spare capacity and low unemployment," Macfarlane said.

Costello, however, wasn't buying the central bank's rationale. "There is a lot of respectable opinion each way on this decision and it was a line-ball call which was taken by an independent bank," he said. "We note its decisions and we note its reasons but we will be producing our own inflation forecast in the Budget next Tuesday."

Prime Minister John Howard also had a view on the rate rise: "I don't think [inflation] is taking off. I think what the Reserve Bank is saying is that there are some inflationary pressures and pre-emptive action now will mean less action later."

That was also the view of Westpac's chief executive, David Morgan, who this week announced a 16 per cent rise in earnings for the six months to March but saw the bank's share price cut by 2.6 per cent on Thursday. Morgan, in fact, said he would have preferred an interest rate rise in February for Australia but is now calling for a easing in rates in New Zealand.

"On balance I would have recommended the move," Morgan said of the Reserve Bank decision. "I think this is a gradual and measured move in response to the slow build-up of inflationary pressures."

Access Economics director Chris Richardson, however, wasn't so convinced. "The Reserve Bank is clearly trying to slow the economy down and the Government is showing every sign of trying to speed the economy up," he said. "We would be better off if both did nothing."

Most most say the main impact of the rate rise will be as a warning shot.

Geoff Austin, head of retail products at the Commonwealth Bank, Australia's biggest home lender, is not concerned by the rise. 'If there were four or five increases in a row, you might see more stresses but I don't think a single rise of this magnitude will have much of an impact," he said.

And if it does get tough, there's always work in the mines of Western Australia.

Fran O'Sullivan: Wanted, a new breed of revolutionaries

2006-05-06T12:09:00.000+09:30

New Zealand punches above its weight - it's the cliche our politicians trot out when they want to make us feel good about ourselves.

And certainly we (mostly) do when it comes to the All Blacks, our Oscar-winning film-makers, our America's Cup sailors, our fashion designers and - dare I say it - with our early focus on free markets and free trade.

But it's the other "ours" we slide over that really count - the areas where New Zealand punches below the weight it once used to enjoy.

This was brought home vividly to me in Sydney on Thursday night when the huge success of Australian schoolteacher-turned ideas entrepreneur Greg Lindsay was celebrated at the 30th anniversary of the Centre for Independent Studies.

The CIS had a huge influence on policy debate in the 1980s and 90s on both sides of the Tasman - not just the free-markets mantra, which now enjoys bipartisan support in both countries, but areas which have not caught fire here, such as social reform and the debate on democratic freedoms and personal liberty.

Australia's most prestigious independent think tank has had a profound influence on that country's policy choices, as Australian Prime Minister John Howard drove home in his speech to a 600-strong audience.

The story of how Lindsay started the think tank in a backyard shed is well-known to policy wonks on both sides of the Tasman.

Mining boss Hugh Morgan persuaded a few Melbourne mates to kick in $5000 each so that Lindsay could leave his teaching job and start raising hell by challenging the protectionist and frankly dull status quo of the late 70s.

I won't hold this against John Howard, but a clear omission in his paeans of praise for this orchestrator of new ideas was the fact that Lindsay, like other New Righters as we used to call them, found New Zealand Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas a much more willing revolutionary than Australian politicians of that era.

Both Australia and New Zealand deregulated their financial markets. But it was Sir Roger who kicked the struts out from under our agriculture sector by taking farmers off welfare, starting the process that has made them among the world's most efficient.

So it went with labour market deregulation, taxation reform, and the corporatisation and privatisation process for Government-owed commercial enterprises.

I'm not suggesting Lindsay was responsible for the revolution here. Sir Roger, former Treasury boss Graham Scott and the Business Roundtable's Roger Kerr all have their fingerprints on our changes.

What I am pointing out is that there was a rich nexus of policy revolutionaries on both sides which worked together to keep the focus on the changes necessary to make both countries more competitive.

Unfortunately the first mover advantage New Zealand initially enjoyed - by making more courageous calls than Australia - has long since evaporated. Since "reform" became a dirty word when Labour resumed power in 1999 the focus has been on gradual improvements to the status quo.

The intellectual rigour and openness which should characterise our major policy debates has been suppressed. Too many senior public servants second-guess ministers, and those who persist in proffering free and frank advice that is not wanted get a clip around the ear.

One of the reasons I believe the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum taking place in Auckland this weekend is so crucial to "our" future is that it enables New Zealand politicians, bureaucrats, business people and leaders in education and arts to form a new transtasman consensus on the way ahead.

New Zealand and Australia face major challenges: ageing societies, economic integration with East Asia, China's challenge to our leading role with the increasingly unstable Pacific Islands, our own security as under-populated countries in a world facing resource constraints.

But Australia is replenishing its declining human capital by raiding our skilled workers.

New Zealand was quicker to put a toe in the water on the East Asian integration. Australia is now signing better deals and faster.

Australia has moved in on what we used to consider our back yard. But Australia is seen as arrogant; New Zealand is not.

Australia has the comfort of knowing it has a US security protection blanket; we do not.

Both countries are pragmatically responding to China's regional diplomacy and signing resource deals, but have yet to face the real test of how we grapple with China's desire for "movement of peoples" to be acknowledged in our respective free trade negotiations.

But what stands out is that while these and other issues are likely to be touched on in this weekend's and future forums, not enough makes its way into broader public debates here.

Debates over regional security and trade are not examined here sufficiently in an adult way.

Worryingly, the External Assessments Bureau has stopped publishing an annual summary of the strategic environment facing this country.

Business people say they can find out more about China's free trade stance from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website than New Zealand's.

The beauty of this weekend's forum is that it will equip key players to better engage in these vital debates. But recapturing our first mover advantages may require a new bunch of revolutionaries.

Paul Thomas: Real-life not only spark for fictional fireworks

2006-05-06T12:08:00.000+09:30

Double Booker Prize winner Peter Carey's new novel Theft: A Love Story has been denounced as a "misuse of literature" by his ex-wife.

She argues that because the book's protagonist, an Australian artist living in New York, has so much in common with Carey, Theft will be read as an account of their marriage and divorce and she'll go down in literary history as a vindictive, money-grabbing "alimony whore".

Carey has denied the book's about him, which I suppose leaves open the question of whether it's about her.

Novels in which real people are disguised as fictional characters are known as romans a clef, literally novels with a key. The key is the au fait reader's knowledge that enables him or her to identify the individuals on whom the characters are based.

I suspect Carey's denials will fall on deaf ears because a significant proportion of the reading public seems to think all novels are romans a clef.

In my novel Old School Tie, the main character, a feckless failed journalist, gets a freelance commission from the editor of New Nation, a successful monthly magazine that doesn't mind treading on toes.

This was in Metro's heyday and it seemed to be taken for granted that New Nation's editor Jackson Pike was Metro editor Warwick Roger in skimpy disguise.

New Nation was indeed based on Metro but it didn't follow that Jackson Pike had to be Warwick Roger. Pike wasn't based on anyone; I made him up.

In a subsequent novel Pike meets a grisly end at the hands of the people who were really responsible for the Rainbow Warrior bombing, as opposed to those two saps who ended up doing their truncated time on a Pacific atoll. Warwick's a friend of mine; if I ever did base a character on him, I certainly wouldn't kill that character off.

All novelists draw on their experience but the process of converting that experience to fiction generally involves more than simply changing the names.

Humbert Humbert's motel odyssey in Lolita was based on Vladimir Nabokov's own exploration of America; in real life, however, the author was accompanied by his wife rather than a nymphette.

And rather than simply modelling characters on real people, writers tend to borrow interesting bits and pieces of other people's experience.

I was fortunate that, at the time I was writing picaresque crime novels, several of my friends and acquaintances were considerate enough to get themselves into trouble with the law.

I worked with a guy in Toulouse who, late at night and under the influence, used a starting pistol to break up a catfight outside his apartment building.

What he didn't realise was that a senior Palestinian leader was over-nighting in the building and the French interior ministry had laid on security in the form of a crew of trained killers from some shadowy special forces outfit.

Thinking the shots meant an assassination attempt was underway, they stormed my friend's apartment and gave him a thorough working over. He was just lucky he didn't have the starting pistol in his hand when they kicked down the door. I used this incident to get the feckless failed journalist back to Auckland and on to Jackson Pike's radar.

Another acquaintance, seeking a discreet drug experience in the privacy of his Bangkok hotel room, made the mistake of buying his narcotics from a police informer and spent several weeks in the Bombat Drug Rehabilitation Centre. His ordeal in that wildly misnamed institution kickstarts my novel Inside Dope.

Then there was the friend who had the distinction of being the first person convicted of insider trading in New South Wales. His travails were fictionalised for background purposes in Final Cut.

The point is that while their (embellished) misadventures found their way into my books, they themselves didn't. These shenanigans aside, they were too normal and, when push came to shove, sensible for what I had in mind.

Closer to home, The Empty Bed was about the unravelling of a marriage. A reviewer commented that it came as no surprise to learn that Thomas' marriage had recently broken up.

This struck me as a somewhat gratuitous observation. For a start, 50 per cent of marriages in this country fail so there can't be many adults who haven't observed a marital crack-up at close quarters.

Second, the novel was conceived and embarked on almost four years before it was published, at which time my marriage was in good shape.

In fairness to the reviewer, the likes of Philip Roth and Hanif Kureishi (and now perhaps Peter Carey) have done little to discourage the perception that for writers relationship failure is just grist to the mill.

Perhaps the tendency to assume fiction must be based on actuality is a reflection of a dormant imagination. If you hardly ever use your imagination, it must be hard to get your head around the notion of someone spending their days making stuff up.

But sometimes it works the other way: with a single imaginative bound people conclude that they're the model for a character, invariably an attractive one.

As I had to ask one such Walter Mitty, the character in question is handsome, witty and charming - so where's the resemblance?

Brian Gaynor: Merger schemes deserve to be trashed

2006-05-06T12:07:00.001+09:30

Two controversial issues stand out regarding the takeover offer for Waste Management, namely the process and the target company's valuation.

The main reason for the opposition to the bid, which is being presented as an amalgamation or merger under Part XIII of the Companies Act 1993, is the process, although the offer price is also a concern.

These amalgamations or schemes of arrangement, which require a majority of 75 per cent instead of 90 per cent under a takeover, have also been criticised in Australia. A recent report by the Financial Services Institute of Australasia (Finsia) had several important points to make about amalgamations or schemes of arrangement.

The study is called "Takeovers Package - Finsia's proposal to reform Australia's takeovers regime to improve the market for corporate control, remove existing anomalies and protect the rights of minority shareholders".

According to Finsia, schemes of arrangement have become increasingly popular in Australia and now represent nearly 40 per cent of all large (over A$1 billion) change of control transactions across the Tasman.

These schemes are derived from traditional English laws that were drafted before modern corporate takeover activity was contemplated.

Until recently amalgamations or schemes of arrangement were mainly used in the following situations:

* For complex transactions that couldn't be achieved by a takeover.
* For agreed mergers where the premiums were much lower than in hostile or contested takeovers.

Finsia, which is a merger between the Securities Institute of Australia and the Australasian Institute of Banking and Finance, argues that there has been a growing tendency to go down the amalgamation/schemes of arrangement route as potential bidders put a "bear hug" on the target company.

A "bear hug" is when the bidder offers a market premium price to the directors of the target company under an amalgamation or scheme of arrangement process but not under a takeover offer. The target company directors are forced to recommend this offer to shareholders under the threat that their refusal will be made public and will be subject to shareholder and market scrutiny.

Finsia believes that this "bear hug" strategy is successful because directors have become increasingly sensitive to public pressure, which has been heightened by greater shareholder activism and higher standards of corporate governance and director's duties.

The "bear hug" also reduces the prospect of a counter bid, as does the potential payment of a break fee (a break fee of $8 million is payable by Waste Management to Transpacific if the proposed merger does not proceed).

The reduced prospect of a competing bid is particularly relevant to Waste Management's shareholders because the company has an open share registry, and there would have been a greater opportunity for alternative bidders if its directors had not agreed to amalgamation.

These "bear hugs" have meant that a large number of change-of-control transactions in Australia, which previously would have been effected as takeovers, are now being achieved by amalgamations and schemes of arrangement.

This Australian analysis should be particularly interesting to New Zealand shareholders because the two most controversial transactions, Origin/Contact Energy and Transpacific/Waste Management, have been initiated across the Tasman and the directors of the New Zealand companies have vigorously supported the deals before an independent appraisal report has been commissioned.

Finsia is concerned that schemes of arrangement adversely affect rights of shareholders. Its biggest worry is that these schemes become effective if 75 per cent of shares voted at a meeting support the scheme, whereas 90 per cent of all shares are required for a bidder to move to compulsory acquisition. It believes the difference is difficult to justify as careful consideration was given to the compulsory acquisition threshold when Australia's takeover rules were drafted.

Finsia's takeover study recommends that the threshold for effecting schemes of arrangement should be brought into line with the compulsory acquisitions provisions of the takeover rules. This proposal would still be different from takeovers in that it would apply only to shares voted at the meeting as distinct to 90 per cent of the target company's entire capital under the compulsory acquisition provisions of the takeover rules.

Finsia believes this proposal would significantly reduce the advantages that schemes of arrangement have over takeovers, particularly in their ability to force dissenting minority shareholders to sell their shares. It proposes that schemes of arrangement resolutions would fail if more than 10 per cent of the shares on issue voted against the resolution.

The Australian analysis raises the prospect that the directors of Contact Energy and Waste Management have been trapped in clever "bear hugs", particularly as they rushed to endorse their respective deals before any independent analysis was available.

The Waste Management board has been caught in a particularly awkward situation because one minute it refers to the deal with Transpacific as a merger, yet in the next it quotes a statement from the Grant Samuel independent report that refers to the deal as a takeover. (The independent report was released after the Waste Management board had strongly recommended the deal.)

According to Grant Samuel's appraisal report, "The Amalgamation Payment cum dividend of $8.80 represents a premium of 25 per cent to the closing share price of $6.99 on 24 March 2006, the day prior to announcement of the proposed transaction and a premium of 32 per cent to the volume weighted average price of $6.66 in the month prior to announcement. The premium for control is consistent with the premiums for control observed in other successful takeovers of other listed companies in New Zealand and Australia".

Grant Samuel is correct, it is a takeover because Waste Management shareholders are being offered a premium, whereas in a traditional merger most of the control premium is retained and is available to shareholders of the merged group if an outside party makes a takeover offer at a later stage.

In addition, the name of a merged entity usually contains elements of the constituent companies and they contribute equally to the board and management. One company usually provides the chairman and the other the chief executive.

The Waste Management board is entitled to the view that the Transpacific offer is fair, but to agree to an amalgamation process, where the compulsory acquisition threshold is 75 per cent of shareholders instead of 90 per cent under the Takeovers Code, is totally unacceptable to many shareholders.

New Zealand shareholders have becoming increasingly sceptical about board recommendations because they consistently undervalue top quality New Zealand companies. Bill Gates would never have become an extremely wealthy man in this country because the first bidder to offer a 30 per cent premium for Microsoft in the late 1980s would have received support from a board with a majority of independent New Zealand directors.

On May 17 Waste Management shareholders will have the opportunity to question their directors and vote on the amalgamation proposal. Whatever the outcome, the process is unsatisfactory as far as New Zealand shareholders are concerned.

The amalgamation or schemes of arrangement process reduces the prospect of an alternative bidder and seriously curtails the ability of shareholders to stop the offeror from compulsorily acquiring their shares.

Amalgamations and schemes of arrangements should be available for complex situations, and when companies want to initiate a genuine merger with a limited premium for control on offer. But to avoid the increasingly common "bear hugs" they should be subject to the same 90 per cent shareholder threshold as compulsory acquisition under the Takeovers Code.

Richard Inder: Hitchhiker's guide to regulation

2006-05-06T12:07:00.000+09:30

One of the most hilarious episodes in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is his description of the colonisation of Earth by the Golgafrinchams.

The colonists, humankind's ancestors, were the useless and unwanted third of the Golgafrincham civilisation - telephone sanitisers, hairdressers, and advertising account executives.

Those who remained on the planet - the leaders and the workers, the people who actually did things - had concocted the fiction that Golgafrincham was threatened by a mutant star goat. They then packed the colonists into a ship called the "B Ark" with the promise that they would follow in two other ships, which were of course never launched.

They also arranged for the ship carrying the colonists to crash on Earth to ensure they never returned to Golgafrincham.

When they arrive on Earth, it quickly becomes apparent the Golgafrinchams are woefully unprepared to fend for themselves. This is aptly demonstrated by their efforts to recreate technology as basic as fire and the wheel. The former endeavour is delayed while a committee investigates matters such as what people expect from fire and how they will relate to it. The wheel is delayed because another committee cannot agree what colour it should be.

Adams does not often feature in the pantheon of great economists. But these points (and many other episodes in the classic "trilogy in five parts") are salutary, especially after two key regulatory decisions of the past weeks - the move to open up Telecom's network to competitors and the Electricity Commission's rejection of Transpower's line through the Waikato to Auckland.

Adams is arguing that bureaucracy can mire simple and vital decisions in complex and woolly thinking.

The commission's decision on Transpower gives perhaps the greatest pause for thought. Attached to the decision, commissioner David Close highlighted what he called his "deep and fundamental" reservations about the way the regulator had reached its conclusion.

Without getting into the detail, his objections centred on the grid investment test. This is an assessment of Transpower's proposals against alternatives the regulator concocts. It is also a key plank of the regulator's decision-making process.

Yet Close still voted with the commission to reject Transpower's plan. He believed the decision could be technically correct even if it was based on a flawed premise.

Close could be right about the flaws in the test, but his objection looks - at the very least - inconsistent when set against his vote.

Equally, commission chairman Roy Hemmingway can claim the test is valid. But Close's objections cast more than a grain of doubt over the commission's decision-making process. If such a lack of consensus is apparent in the public domain, what must discussions be like around the boardroom table?

Transpower and the regulator agree that the line is needed, the main point of difference is when. The commission says not until 2017 and not, as Transpower says, 2010. The commission says the delay will save New Zealand $250 million.

But the calculation of that $250 million difference is dependent on two very different views of the world. The commission, for instance, dismisses Transpower's view that the extra capacity of the line - which will make it easier to sell electricity generated by wind over the hills of the Wairarapa in Auckland - is worth $190 million.

The commission says that the line could be delayed even further if generators build more capacity closer to Auckland, suggesting it is willing to sanction the development of regional monopolies.

These are but two of the many differences between what is a rare alliance of the generators and Transpower, on the one hand, and the commission on the other.

No one suggests that Transpower should have untrammelled power to decide how the network is constructed and operated, but such a level of disconnection between those who are at the coalface and those who are watching is disturbing.

It is still early days for the decision to clamp down on Telecom. On first blush the measures announced by the Government - accounting separation, local loop unbundling and better access to wholesale broadband - look simple enough. And, if the $1.6 billion wiped from Telecom's sharemarket value is anything to go by, the measures should benefit many users.

However, the devil will be in the detail. For instance, local loop unbundling - which entails Telecom making available to competitors the copper pair linking the home phone to the exchange - is fiendishly complicated.

It requires the regulator to establish protocols as fiddly as the time of day when competitors' technicians are able to enter Telecom's exchanges and the exact number of square metres Telecom must make available in its exchanges for competitors' equipment. Deciding what colour a wheel should be may be simple in comparison.

John Gardner: The money game can be a wobbly business

2006-05-06T12:06:00.000+09:30

That odd vibration you may have noticed in the wallet region this week was just a symptom of another great national achievement. According to a study reported this week the kiwi dollar is, with the Japanese yen, winner of the "world's wobbliest currency award".

The study by Victoria University's Professor Roger Bowden and doctoral student Jennifer Zhu pointed out that between late 2000, when the kiwi dollar stood at below US39c, and late last year, it had almost doubled to reach US74c.

Today, of course, the switchback has taken it to around US63c - not so much wobbly as wandering.

Professor Bowden came to the faultless conclusion that this was a bit of a problem for New Zealand importers and exporters. They've noticed that too.

Although he cast doubts on the effectiveness of inflation target guidelines, Professor Bowden suggests the problem isn't going to go away and that firms exposed to currency fluctuations should actively manage their risks.

And, of course, major companies do treat hedging as a major part of their business.

They have no option. Making the best mouse trap might bring the world flocking to your door but you will go bust if you lose 10c on every one you have priced in zlotys.

You can have a great year's business and yet make less than if you've had a poor trading year if the dance of the dollar catches you out.

There is, as seen from the outside, something insane about the world of money.

It is not unknown for companies who engage in currency dealing for the purpose of securing their profit to earn more from the currency dealing than from the million widgets they export.

It's a bit like the car dealers who do better by providing finance for your purchase of the old banger than they do from the car. The days of traders being so pleased to get cash you expected a discount have gone. They'd rather have a slice of the hire purchase interest, thanks.

The big players have taken this to the logical conclusion. A fascinating piece in The Business this week profiled Goldman Sachs, the phenomenally successful investment bank which in the first quarter of this year turned in a 40 per cent return on equity.

How they do this, as the article admitted, is something of a mystery, but what isn't mysterious is that they don't actually make or sell anything. They handle money.

That all this activity lies at the fringes of rationality is not surprising, because it all falls within the province of the science of economics, a field more contradictory and less endearing than the charm, spin, quarks, bosons, leptons and fermions of particle physics.

Whether economics is actually a science is open to question. As long ago as 1849 Carlyle called economics "the dismal science" and its ability to generate any certainties is dismal.

It is, of course, fashionable in these relativist days to argue that no science is anything other than a cultural construct and that no science enshrines definitive truths.

But physical sciences do exist on a basis of repeatable consistent results, a claim it is hard to establish for economics, no matter how complicated the equations it generates.

The practitioners of the dismal science employ an increasingly sophisticated barrage of statistical techniques and computer models to analyse growth, inflation, productivity and the movement of capital.

But the lights are still out. They seem not to have the answers to the most fundamental questions.

Admittedly the questions are tough and the irrational and complex nature of how people act can derail the best laid analyses.

In his book Critical Mass, which is largely concerned with applying mathematical approaches to human behaviour, Philip Ball chronicles a series of attempts to model stock market movements. None work.

A survey of doctoral candidates in leading American economics departments, published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, found that only 9 per cent of them believed that economists agreed on fundamental issues.

And these people are governing our lives.

According to Professor Bowden, commenting on his study of our volatile cash, the Reserve Bank often raised interest rates at the wrong time, making the currency rise inappropriately.

Fair enough. But the Reserve Bank will not have made its decisions by studying the tea leaves or by reading the horoscopes column in the Woman's Weekly. They will have based their actions on solid analyses by highly trained, and probably highly paid, economists, perhaps just as eminent as Professor Bowden.

When I worked in developing nations their policies were guided by some of the best-respected brains in the economic business and their advice, tendered with great conviction, was not only often wildly differing but frequently calamitous.

Stephen Morgan, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, has been saying for years that the world has been on the brink of economic Armageddon because of the imbalance between the United States current account deficit and the Asian-held reserves of foreign exchange. He may well be right. But it hasn't happened and now he seems to be saying it probably won't.

He will undoubtedly have cogent explanations for both of these positions, but one might be forgiven for thinking only psychics do better than economists in getting away with being proved wrong by events while not suffering any loss of reputation.

The suffering is left for the poor punter with the wobbly dollar or the developing nation squeezed to death by the wrong fiscal policy.

Sideswipe

2006-05-05T05:11:00.000+09:30

It takes guts to park your car so close to Paul Holmes' 2006 Bentley (L), Movers & Shakers salt and pepper shakers.

By Ana Samways

Think global, ignore local? Starbucks Coffee, the purveyor of homogenous coffee outlets around New Zealand and the world, would like to raise awareness of its new Fairtrade Certified coffee, Caf Estima Blend from Latin American and East African beans. Coinciding with Fair Trade Fortnight the PR noise is an effort to "bring attention to critical social and economic issues facing coffee farmers", says a story on AP. And conveniently, their ubiquitous brand. Meanwhile, the very same Starbucks pays its young workers some of the lowest wages around.

* * *

Battle of the ostentatious car brands: A Porsche driver writes: "With regard to the silly antics of a yellow Ferrari driver in the eastern suburbs, reported in Sideswipe last year, seems Mr More-Money-Than-Brains is at it again. City-bound traffic is queued at a red light at Mission Bay. Mr MMTB takes the left turn lane, pauses, then accelerates straight through the intersection against the red light. Hope he got to work that 30 seconds earlier ... If you are the Ferrari owner in question, are you not aware how conspicuous your vehicle is? I hope it doesn't get vandalised by someone who really objects to your idiotic driving!"

* * *

Quotable: Said by a skanky contestant, after being booted off season seven of find-yourself-a-rich-husband reality show, The Bachelor: "There is such a racist against beautiful people in this country."

* * *

Anne Martin was amused by these reasons given by pet-owners in England for handing their unwanted pets in to the RSPCA.

1. The cat's fur doesn't match the new carpet.

2. I thought chinchillas only lived for two years. I don't want a pet that lives for 20.
(Source: Medway News)

* * *

Movers and shakers: Salt and pepper shakers for the very, very lazy: Slashfood.com says, "I find Movers & Shakers (Picture above) , the self-shaking salt and pepper shakers, to be ridiculous. To operate you pull the cord at the bottom of the shaker, invert over your plate and they vibrate, shaking out as much or as little seasoning as your taste buds desire. The only thing that they don't do is hold themselves over the plate."

* * *

China's Ministry of Public Safety has issued new guidelines for baby names that exclude thousands of rare Chinese language characters. The rules are tied to the introduction of electronic identity cards. Authorities say they cannot write rare characters on ID cards anymore and they will register only names included in the official database. (Source: reason.com)

John Armstrong: Rattled by unprecedented and malicious leak

2006-05-05T05:09:00.000+09:30

While maintaining an air of composure, the Government will be rattled by the leaking of confidential Cabinet papers to Telecom.

Understandably so. On the scales of political and commercial sensitivity, this leak is right off the dial.

There appears to be an enemy within. That is worrying enough.

While Labour has not been damaged so far, there is the other worry that the State Services Commission inquiry confirms the leaker is a public servant or political adviser working in a ministerial office in the Beehive, rather than some anonymous official based inside a large Government department.

That would be highly embarrassing for the affected minister - and could even raise the prospect of resignation if procedures for handling sensitive documents in his or her office are deemed to have been lax.

National is demanding Communications Minister David Cunliffe resign because the Cabinet paper went out under his name. That is a pretty harsh call, given the paper was in the hands of all ministers last Friday and was not received by Telecom until Wednesday.

However, the Opposition is right in underlining the serious nature of this leak, which is thought to be unprecedented.

Sir Roger Douglas offered to resign as finance minister in 1986 after his office mailed Budget documents to news media organisations ahead of Budget day. That was a bureaucratic botch-up. This leak was malicious.

The closest comparison may be the 2001 case of a consultant working for the Treasury who leaked potentially sensitive information about the business plan of the yet-to-be-established Kiwibank to Act's Rodney Hide.

However, the current case is more serious for involving Cabinet papers, which are deemed sensitive by definition and whose circulation is subject to strict rules.

The Telecom paper was doubly sensitive for being Budget-related. Moreover, it contained information of the highest commercial sensitivity which was bound to impact negatively on the share price of one of the country's largest companies with tens of thousands of shareholders.

There is the question of motive. Was it some official who believed opening Telecom to more competition was bad policy?

Or was the leak an effort to sabotage the Budget?

Or was there a financial motive which saw the perpetrator benefit personally through insider trading?

If the leak was politically motivated, the perpetrator would more likely have handed the document to the Opposition in order to embarrass the Government.

The Prime Minister is said to be running the full gamut of emotions from fury to apoplexy, demanding the leaker be caught post-haste and summarily sacked.

The list of ministers and officials who would have had a copy or access to one are thought to number around 50.

There seems to be no obvious reason why a minister would have leaked the paper as that would have cut across Labour's Budget strategy.

Helen Clark is not so worried that the Government's decision to boost uptake of broadband has become public earlier than planned as the announcement has had plenty of positive exposure. But she hates leaks. She is a stickler for discipline. Leaks are a sign of lax discipline. Leaks of this scale help the Opposition paint a picture of a Government at war with itself and not in control.

The Prime Minister was already on the warpath following a couple of recent minor leaks from the Labour caucus.

Whatever the State Services Commission uncovers, you can guarantee there will be some stern lectures to the troops from on high.

Editorial: Telecom must accept new reality

2006-05-05T05:08:00.000+09:30

When, in a symbolic act, a statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in central Baghdad, it was tempting to assume the battle for Iraq was over. A malign influence had been removed, and peace, prosperity and freedom beckoned. Now, three years on, we know it was only the beginning. It is not stretching too long a bow to wonder how, three years hence, we will regard the Government's momentous decision to end the tyranny of Telecom and open its network to competitors. Will the euphoria that followed the announcement of the unbundling of the local loop have been justified? Or will this country remain burdened by expensive high-speed internet access and a slow uptake of broadband?

The answer lies, first, with the Government's fortitude in pressing ahead with, and overseeing, the changes. But it also rests, more importantly, with Telecom's response. It is unlikely to be mature cooperation. But will it be resistance or insurgency? The company's history is not encouraging. Since its birth, legal haggling over alleged anti-competitive practices and formidable lobbying, in which it portrayed itself as a Kiwi battler assaulted by giant overseas rivals, have become its stock in trade. Millions of dollars have been garnered in the process. The defence of this last vestige of its monopoly has been no less zealous.

Now, Telecom will be considering whether to persevere with that policy. It knows that the more it can stall, the longer its profits will continue unimpaired. It can also draw inspiration from across the Tasman, where the long-running obduracy of Telstra, the incumbent, has meant that only some 3 per cent of broadband connections have been supplied via the unbundling of the local loop. Telstra's competitors claim it has prevented greater penetration by charging ridiculously high sums for hooking up to its network.

But if Telecom is tempted to mimic that obstinance, it should consider where it has led. A feature of the Government announcement was the absence of even a smidgen of compensation for the company. The botched privatisation of 1990 meant Telecom could claim a property right, and, in return for the opening of its network, could expect, say, a leavening of its Kiwi Share obligations. But all it got was a warning from the Communications Minister that if it did not play ball, the structural separation of its retail and lines operations would be next in line.

The strength and scope of the Government's decision suggests its patience has been exhausted. It will no longer countenance New Zealand being ranked 22nd out of the 30 OECD countries for broadband uptake, unlike the National spokesman and Telecom's chief appeaser, Maurice Williamson, who argues we are poor and that explains poor broadband rates. The Government may also have recognised the situation is the product of its own gullibility.

As long ago as 2000, a ministerial inquiry recommended unbundling. Yet since then, Telecom has persuaded, first, the Telecommunications Commissioner and, then, Cabinet, to reject it. In the second instance, in 2004, even the advice of Paul Swain, then the Communications Minister, was ignored. Now, and most worryingly, Telecom's reach has been re-emphasised by its receipt of confidential Cabinet papers within hours of the unbundling verdict being signed off. There could be no clearer illustration of the company's proximity to the seat of power. This breach must be investigated rigorously: the papers were official Budget secrets.

Telecom's suspicious omniscience has not stopped this decision, however.

The message is clear. Telecom's best response, for its shareholders, consumers and the economy, would be to accept the new reality and put all its energy into competing for customers. Its huge presence and profile are significant pluses, and have already been used to advantage in the likes of the cellphone market. Telecom is being asked no more than to compete in what, internationally, is the telecommunications norm. It is about time.

Brian Rudman: Council's proposed inner-city parking bylaw a dead-end idea

2006-05-05T05:04:00.000+09:30

Street-side parking in the inner suburbs has always been a perilous business. First you have to find an empty spot near your house. Then you have to leave your car to the tender mercy of those who park by touch, and to any passing rat-bag trying to break in.

Now Auckland City wants the power to tow my vehicle away if it hasn't moved in seven days. Parking officials want to add an anti-garaging by-law to the existing abandoned vehicle legislation they already employ. It thunders: "No person may ... park or keep continuously any vehicle, or part of a vehicle on a road, roadway or public space for a period exceeding seven days."

It's part of the council's campaign against congestion. But what causes more congestion? My little car tucked quietly against the kerb minding its own business, or me revving it up and taking it for an anti-garaging bylaw spin around the neighbourhood?

Luckily, council's legal advisers Simpson Grierson have warned the city to back off.

A report to a recent transport committee meeting explained that Simpson Grierson is concerned that "the proposed bylaw could be challenged as unreasonable in that it invades the common law right for passage on the road" and "without real evidence of an actual nuisance or problem, the bylaw could also be found to be unnecessary or unjustified".

The bureaucrats see the new anti-garaging bylaw as "an additional tool to dealing with potential nuisance" - their words.

Simpson Grierson warns that going after potential nuisance makers by targeting every person in Auckland City who may wish to park outside their house, could be going too far. Legally speaking that is.

The lawyers say it's arguable that the council has sufficient powers to deal with cars left for extended periods under existing Local Government Act abandoned vehicle procedures.

They say the bylaw is not targeted at a particular problem location and is not linked to a safety issue. It appears, they say, to be intended to address general policy that parking should be shared and that it is unfair for people to use road space as a place to park their vehicles continuously.

However, under the Local Government Act there must be an identified problem, nuisance or danger for such a bylaw to be imposed.

At last week's council meeting, instead of abandoning the chase, councillors decided to call for yet another report.

It would have been smarter to have cut their losses, taken Simpson Grierson's advice, and quietly dropped this draconian proposal.

I live in one of these so-called problem areas and, like many of my neighbours, lack off-street parking.

On occasion in the past I could well have fallen foul of the proposed new bylaw, either while away on holiday, or by being a good inner-city citizen and electing to walk or bus.

The thanks I get from my council is to seek the power to be lurking around the corner ready to impound my car if it doesn't move in seven days. How will they monitor that? Surely they have better things to do.

If they're concerned about congestion around my way, why, last October, did the council approve, without consulting neighbours, an 80-seater restaurant at the top of the street without requiring one off-street carpark?

The council's parking services manager Chris Geerlings says the city will get around 4000 complaints this year from people complaining about a car abandoned outside their house. He says 85 per cent of these cars turn out to be "garaged", parked there legally - if at length - by neighbours.

"At the moment, if the car is parked legally, in theory you can leave it there for ever."

But what happens is, council writes to the owner's address, and if there's no response within 14 days, they tow. If there's no response after another 21 days or so, the car will be dismantled or crushed.

Mr Geerlings says only two distraught owners have subsequently emerged in the past 18 months or so.

He says amendments to the Transport Act going through Parliament reduces the time before a car can be declared abandoned from 14 days to 10. To an on-street parker like myself, that sounds alarmingly short. As for seven days, that would be downright predatory.

Jim Hopkins: Scientific breakthrough offers hope for millions more

2006-05-05T05:02:00.000+09:30

By Our Science Reporter
Biff Throttle

Scientists round the world are hailing the discovery of the previously unknown element Derisium as a major medical breakthrough, and many are calling for the miraculous substance to be added to public water supplies as an essential mental health supplement.

The proposal has been enthusiastically endorsed by eminent New Zillun microproctologist and emeritus professor at the University of Dargaville's Post-Graduate School of Catastrophic Events, Dr Edward Foreskin-Rodgers.

"Derisium is a miracle" said Dr Foreskin-Rodgers in an exclusive interview with anyone who'd listen. "It's the fluoride of the soul. Early indications are it could be the silver bullock in our ceaseless efforts to eliminate the calamitous effects of Global Warning.

"I'm very excited - in a calm and rational, scientific sort of way."

He cited test results which indicate that when Derisium is added to water supplies at concentrations as low as five parts per million, it has a dramatic impact on public behaviour.

"It's b@%&*y amazing," said Dr Foreskin-Rodgers, casually splitting an atom with a hammer and chisel. "Normally, when a randomly selected group of traditionally compliant and acquiescent New Zillun citizens are exposed to bizarre political decisions, ridiculous bureaucratic edicts or absurdly expensive and antiquated transport remedies they meekly shuffle off and do what they're told. But not any more!

"Whack a shot of Derisium in their cocoa and they're totally paralytic. With laughter, of course. And it's not just chuckles, either. This stuff has them defying the laws of gravity. I've seen 'em rolling round the laboratory floor, clutching their stomachs, utterly convulsed with derisive glee."

One of the biggest reactions Dr Foreskin-Rodgers and his team recorded involved a Waitakere City planning inspector directing a retirement village resident to move her pot plants 1.2m away from her deck railing in case visiting children endangered themselves ascending the herbaceous perils.

"Our lot just wet themselves," said the distinguished researcher. "That guy was potting mix by the time they'd finished."

Similar levels of Derisium-induced derision occurred when volunteers were exposed to the Green Leader of the Joint Party's announcement that since she was opposed to the microchipping of any dogs, she would naturally be voting for the microchipping of all dogs. And also to the announcement that the gummint was going to pour money into a Canadian-owned Kiwi music station mainly because no one was listening ("They loved that! Especially since they were paying for it.")

Equally mocking was the reaction to solemn declarations from the ARC that the only solution to Auckland's transport woes was spending billions on an electrified rail system using power from empty lakes delivered through already overloaded transmission lines.

"Normally," said Dr Foreskin-Rodgers," the only reaction to that sort of tosh is a few earnest letters to The Harold. But not with Derisium. One drop and everyone's chortling. They suddenly realise you'd have more luck putting jelly in a corset than you ever will trying to fix Auckland's gridlock with trains."

Dr Foreskin-Rodgers believes Derisium "may let us conquer Global Warning once and for all." While acknowledging "some gormless plonkers" still dispute the human origins of this "terrifying climatic apocalypse" he's convinced the case is incontrovertible.

"What we know, is that the past 150 years has seen a hideous explosion of bureaucracy throughout the developed world. Vast tracts of wilderness have been converted into offices to house these dangerous polluters who have been recklessly emitting rules, regulations, edicts and decrees since the latter half of the 19th century and the cumulative effect has been devastating .

"Thanks to their activities, we've seen a dangerous build-up of Curbing Dioxide (or NoCanDo) in the upper atmosphere creating an inert layer beneath which vast amounts of initiative, adventure, optimism and common sense have been trapped with potentially disastrous consequences for the human race."

New Zillun's leading microproctologist points to the soaring number of endangered species, including parents, children, home builders, DIY fans, cigar smokers, scout masters, car drivers, beer drinkers, dog owners, speedway racers, Happy Meal purchasers, pool owners ("When was the last time you saw a council fence a river?"), fire eaters, sword swallowers, people on waiting lists and "little old ladies in retirement homes" as conclusive proof that Global Warning is a sociological disaster which is having a devastating effect on our bio-diversity.

If humanity was to survive, "we need something that'll clear the b@%&*y air and I don't think anything'll do that better than a healthy dose of Derisium."

Unfortunately, the bureaucrats don't agree. In a joint statement released by the PSA, Local Government New Zealand , the Electricity Commission, the Corrections Department and the Waitakere City Council, a spokesperson said, "Our officers are silly enough as it is, without people realising it. We will oppose any moves to add Derisium to water supplies."

The joint statement was tragically interrupted when officials evacuated their building in response to a tsunami warning they hadn't received.

Te Radar: Frozen, pickled, eaten - it's your body

2006-05-05T05:01:00.000+09:30

Once I have no more use for the body I inhabit I would be more than willing, after my demise, to have it donated to cannibals, or necrophiliacs, but feel constrained from doing so for fear that such an action would unduly upset my mother.

I mention this in relation to the rather startling revelation about the dire lack of organ donors in this country, with only 29 people out of the 27,000 who had the misfortune not to see last year out donating their organs.

Rationally, the human body should be treated like a used car. When we are done with it we place it on blocks and strip it for parts.

There are some constraints to this, one being that given my lifestyle, I suspect that those in need of organs probably wouldn't want mine. Even I am not entirely happy with how they are performing.

Organ donation does raise fascinating ethical issues. Once a person has become a donor, can they then specify who does and does not get their organs? In the US some have taken their cases to court to try to enforce their wish not to have their organs donated to people they find "undesirable".

I simply wonder if we can specify that we only want to live on in the body of an attractive member of the opposite sex?

New and novel ways of disposing of the husks of the dead will soon become a pressing concern, as their numbers increase and cemetery space becomes limited.

While some prefer to be frozen, and others crushed into diamonds, I would be happy to simply be pickled and placed in a jar.

An exhibition that is being proposed to tour here features a delightfully modern twist on this theme, and unsurprisingly, has already aroused controversy.

The exhibition features dissected corpses preserved by a process of plastination, whereby the water and fat in the bodies is replaced by silicon.

Some of this hullabaloo derives from those who simply find the concept icky, as it shows in exquisite detail the mechanism of the human form.

Much of the controversy however has not been about the use of the bodies, but where they came from. With the exhibition deriving from China there was a concern that some of the bodies were those of executed political prisoners.

This was denied by Chinese authorities.

However, one previous touring version of a similar show had several bodies returned by concerned curators after it was discovered that there were what appeared to be bullet holes in the backs of the skulls.

One gets the feeling this wasn't caused by budget constraints in Chinese euthanasia programmes.

China has long been plagued by claims that prisoners have been harvested for organs.

I suspect that not only could lives in this country be saved by utilising the organs of our more degenerate prisoners, but the simple threat posed to potential wrongdoers of being human spare parts may deter the committing of other crime.

This way, everybody wins.

Michael Geist: Technology alone not enough to win spam battle

2006-05-05T04:59:00.000+09:30

Last month Government officials from throughout the Asia-Pacific region gathered in Calgary, Canada, for a two-day meeting on the anti-spam battle.

Delegates could almost be forgiven for believing that the spam problem has largely disappeared. Spam filters have become increasingly effective in limiting the amount of spam that lands in inboxes, while internet service providers in many countries have become very good at blocking spam messages before they leave their networks.

But first impressions can be deceiving. Global spam volume continues to increase, with recent surveys indicating 80 per cent of all email is now spam. Spam has also become far more dangerous as many messages secretly contain viruses or other hidden programs that can turn ordinary internet users with broadband connections into large-scale spammers.

Spammers have compounded the problem by branching out beyond traditional unsolicited commercial email. Millions of blogs have been hit with spam postings known as "splog", internet telephony is facing a growing spam problem referred to as "spit", and phishing emails, which deceptively send users to phony websites in order to extract personal information, are credited with being responsible for hundreds of incidents of identity theft.

Unfortunately the legal frameworks in both developed and developing countries have failed to keep pace with the new spam-related concerns. While countries such as Canada stand pat, others, including New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Japan, have introduced new anti-spam laws over the past year. In addition, Australia is currently reviewing the effectiveness of its well-regarded anti-spam law and many US states have enacted anti-spam statutes designed to supplement the federal Can-Spam Act.

Australia has also led the way in developing the world's first binding internet service provider anti-spam code of conduct. Drafted in consultation with the industry itself, the framework provides regulators with the power to intervene should an ISP fail to abide by industry anti-spam standards.

The need for stringent anti-spam laws has become particularly important in light of the growing emphasis on cross-border enforcement. Spammers regularly use computers in several countries to send their email and attempt to hide their tracks by routing their profits through multiple jurisdictions.

While there are a growing number of participants in the global dialogue on enforcement, the absence of a comprehensive anti-spam law could hamper many authorities' ability to pursue spamming activity.

Even the technical successes may be short-lived. By focusing on filtering spam or blocking it before it leaves the network, some countries have addressed the symptom rather than the problem. This technical approach clearly does not eliminate spam, but masks it from internet users, leaving everyone vulnerable to spammers, who invent new ways to circumvent ISP filters and blocking techniques.

The long-term elimination of spam requires action against the spammers themselves, including the use of privacy legislation, criminal codes, and anti-fraud statutes. Moreover, tough penalties are needed, since the deterrent value of anti-spam legislation depends upon spammers' perceived risk of violating the law.

The need for tough anti-spam laws is particularly acute in the developing world. Given limited bandwidth and internet infrastructures, the spam deluge is often the equivalent of a denial-of-service attack for developing countries. Many are ill-equipped to handle the increased email traffic, with the result that legitimate internet traffic comes to a standstill.

Moreover, as spammers turn to email servers in developing countries, those same countries risk being cut off from the global internet as ISPs consider blocking all traffic originating in a particular country as a crude mechanism for dealing with large spam volumes.

With spam still growing, countries must act on both the domestic and international levels.

Domestically, those without anti-spam laws should remove the uncertainty associated with the current anti-spam legal techniques by upgrading domestic legislation with tough penalties against spam.

On the international front, countries should increase their presence by working on cross-border enforcement initiatives. The OECD recently released a global anti-spam toolkit in the hope of promoting consistent anti-spam approaches worldwide, while the London Action Plan, a group consisting of 70 countries and private sector organisations, serves as the focal point for global anti-spam co-operation.

Ironically, the recent improvement in spam filtering may have the unintended result of decreasing public pressure for anti-spam action since the full impact of spam may be hidden from internet users. However, with spammers branching out to computer viruses and identity theft, and ISPs reporting that four out of every five email messages are now spam, the risks associated with the problem continues to increase.

* Michael Geist holds the Canada Research chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law.

Jim Traue: Old-fashioned greed to fore in attitudes

2006-05-05T04:57:00.000+09:30

The conflicting opinions being expressed on whether Charles Upham's daughters should sell the medals for his VC and bar on the open market point to a much more substantial, and growing, difference in values in our society.

On the one side are those who see the medals as commodities, assets tradeable in the marketplace, while others insist that some things cannot, or should not, be bought and sold in the market.

However, the line between these positions is fluid, and it has shifted markedly over time. For several thousand years it was accepted that humans were chattels that could be bought and sold in slavery.

It was only in the early-19th century that the sale of votes was prohibited by law in Britain. In most Western societies it is now widely accepted that political power and influence cannot be bought and sold and we have laws against bribery and corruption. After a major scandal over the sale of peerages for political donations, laws prohibiting the sale of titles were passed in the early-20th century in Britain.

Criminal justice is not for sale; the bribery of judges and members of juries is a criminal offence, and now lawyers for the defence are provided at the community's expense.

Professional qualifications allowing people to practise as doctors, engineers and airline pilots, and success in examinations, are all fenced by government and professional associations from being bought in the marketplace.

In most Western societies, women are no longer owned by their fathers or husbands and are not tradeable by fathers. However, after centuries of legal prohibitions against the selling of sex, prostitution is now legal in several countries.

The mediaeval Christian church sanctioned simony, the sale of ecclesiastical offices, and the buying of divine grace, and had to go through a reformation to outlaw such sales of the sacred. Over time, societies have defined a number of separate spheres, each with its own set of operating principles and rules.

Michael Walzer, an American political philosopher, calls these "spheres of justice", and argues that widely accepted - what he regards as just - rules for the distribution of the social goods exist within each separate sphere.

Within the political sphere we accept as just the use of political power by our elected representatives and their public servants for the good of the community. However, we rightly protest if this political power is used by them to gain access to other social goods outside the political sphere, by accepting bribes and favours to enrich themselves, getting jobs in the public sector for their families and supporters ahead of better qualified applicants, getting access to better education, medical care, or housing.

We use strong words such as corruption and nepotism to show our displeasure, and back it up with criminal sanctions.

Money has its proper sphere. Within that sphere certain social goods are freely marketable, and a rich man can quite properly buy commodities, products and services, such as a better house, car, private medical services, and a better lawyer and tax consultant. Money does its work in the market, and the market is open to allcomers, even if they are not all equal.

What disturbs most of us is the conversion of one social good into another when there is no inherent connection. This is an intrusion, from one sphere into another, of an inappropriate set of principles.

The most obvious and common intrusion is that of money. Because it is the universal medium of exchange it has the greatest ability to seep across boundaries.

In most Western societies, after the social disasters of laissez faire during the industrial revolution, the boundaries between the spheres were made more impermeable by public opinion and legislation, and the power of money outside its proper sphere was curtailed.

But in recent years there has been a marked seepage of old-fashioned greed back into public affairs. Witness the use of their position by chief executives and their underlings in the United States to plunder, legally and illegally, the companies they are paid to manage to feather their own nests.

Witness, too, the growing number of prosecutions of public servants in New Zealand for misappropriation of public funds and accepting bribes, the furore in Britain over "loans" to the Labour Party by rich men in pursuit of peerages, and the downfall of politicians and lobbyists in the US for bribery and corruption.

Charles Upham found no difficulty in the 1940s in recognising the boundaries between the sphere of personal prestige, gained through exceptional bravery under fire, and that of personal financial reward when he refused a substantial monetary gift from a group of Christchurch citizens. But the line has shifted since then.

* Jim Traue is a former public servant and chief librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Stock takes: Dead cat bouncing

2006-05-05T04:54:00.000+09:30

By Liam Dann

Even a dead cat bounces ... or so the old broking expression goes. And so it goes for Telecom shares which closed at $5.06 yesterday - down 49c but still up slightly from the mid-morning low of $4.95.

In the end there were a few disappointed traders as the sell-off failed to drive the share price to bargain-basement levels.

Independent broker Brett Wilkinson was hoping there would be some buying opportunities around the $4.80-$4.75 mark.

"I thought there might be a bit more panic actually," he said.

The great unknown now is the point at which the stock becomes a bargain. Wilkinson did end up doing some buying yesterday around the $5 mark.

But Macquarie Equities investment director Arthur Lim warns there is still plenty of potential downside in the short term.

The thing to remember is that the big international funds will determine where the share price finally settles, he says.

They are likely to take a few more days to decide whether they want to stay in the stock with the threat of regulation hanging over it.

In the end they could go either way, says Lim, who remains optimistic on Telecom's longer-term prospects.

But anyone investing on the basis that Telecom's price has bottomed out needs to bear in mind that they are taking a punt on a big unknown.

Oh the irony ...

Small investors relying on the NZX website yesterday for news on their Telecom stock price faced a frustrating time as the heavy traffic made the page almost inaccessible for long periods. Users of dial-up internet stood next to no chance.

If only we all had faster, cheaper broadband.

Who's next?

Shares that copped some fall-out because of investor jitters about Government regulation included: Auckland International Airport which shed 2c, and Vector, which lost 4c cents. Is the threat real? Is this Government on a mission to wipe out monopolies before the end of its third (and possibly final) term?

Well, maybe, but when you consider the groundswell of public attention the unbundling issue has received this year it was inevitable the Government would have to act.

Regulation of infrastructure is a notoriously unsexy topic which television news shows are loathe to tackle. So perhaps a good rule of thumb is when Close Up and Campbell Live start focusing on a company's regulatory future - as they did towards the end of the Telecom debate - then its time for shareholders to start worrying.

Tax wars, round two

Having come out of his corner swinging, GPG's Tony Gibbs was never going to let his stoush with the Revenue Minister (on the proposed changes to taxation on overseas investment) just peter out ... so to speak. Following on from last month's war of words with Peter Dunne, Gibbs has attempted to reignite the debate with a politically charged letter to shareholders. The letter invites people to send views directly to the Prime Minister - and kindly provides the email address. Presumably the theory is that if GPG's large Kiwi shareholder base can successfully tug on Helen's heart strings she's the one with the executive power to sort out some sort of exemption. Well, it worked for farmers when the Government proposed its ill-fated fart tax. If and when it ever happens, a Gibbs-led hikoi to Parliament will surely be a sight to behold. That address for the PM is: pm@ministers.govt.nz if you have any strong views you'd like to share.

Backpacks and bedpans

After making the news for its part in the $275 million leveraged buyout of Kathmandu last month Goldman Sachs JBWere's New Zealand-based fund - Hauraki Private Equity No 2 Fund - has followed up with a $20 million investment in retirement village owner and operator Vision Senior Living.

The fund takes a 28.5 per cent stake in the business which currently has 600 residents in four rest homes and plans for big expansion. With all the hype about Australian private equity investors like PEP its great to see a New Zealand-based fund being so active.

Maybe they read last week's Stock Takes item about the bright future for the aged-care sector.

Air New Zealand sticking to the skies

Times are so tough in the airline industry that it might just be better to stay on the ground ... at least it appears that's the way Qantas is looking at it. The Australian national carrier has revealed it is considering diversifying into other forms of transport - like roads and rail.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported this week that Qantas was considering broadening its freight business as part of a move to reduce its exposure to soaring jet fuel prices.

Despite the general state of cuddliness between the two airlines Air New Zealand says it will be sticking to the skies. Land New Zealand just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Maturing well

Any fermenting doubts about the success of the Delegat's float have been well and truly corked with its shares forging on from the opening day close of $1.57 (after listing at $1.40).

The stock closed at $1.62 yesterday suggesting - in similar fashion to the Goodman Fielder float - that their may have been a little too much negativity in the market.

OK, in Delegat's case the dollar story has really come to the party but a fall in the currency from US$70c levels was hardly unpredictable.

Strong run

Another company in the middle of a strong run is Allied Workforce, which specialises in supplying workers for pretty basic blue-collar and administrative jobs on a contract basis. It was struggling against some negative sentiment just two months ago but has leapt up by about 30 per cent since then to close at $1.45 yesterday.

The theory that Allied would benefit from the slowing economy seems to be kicking in as rising costs put the heat on big companies. Employers like Fonterra and Air New Zealand are almost certainly looking at ways to avoid taking on full-time staff as a collective whammy of external factors starts to bite.

Suburban Paradise

The successful launch of the colossal Cantabrian property development - Pegasus Town - has prompted Goldman Sachs JBWere to upgrade its forecasts for Hirequip.

The listed equipment hire company is not to be confused with rival Hirepool, which has been tipped this week as a possible candidate for listing.

An equipment hire company might not look like an obvious beneficiary, but Hirequip owned the land on which the instant town of 5000 residents is to be built.

It has a number of other non-core assets including an interest in a Marlborough marine farm, dairy farm interests and an apartment development north of Auckland.

The Pegasus Town project made national headlines last month when the first auction of properties raised $122 million in less than seven hours.

That success has prompted Goldman to take another look at Hirequip's sale agreement.

The deal was for a potential $30 million, with $10 million paid upfront.

But the total payment had been conservatively estimated to come in at $23 million. Goldman now believes Hirequip is almost certain to get the full $30 million.

The only downside is that extra money may mean receipt of the funds is delayed, meaning a reduction in forecast profit for 2007 with an increase in the forecast from 2008 onwards.

Goldman is maintaining its $1.12 valuation. The share closed at $1 yesterday.

Anchors aweigh

Mooring Systems, the listed manufacturer of ship docking technology, has become something of a market darling in the past 12 months with a string of high-profile international sales boosting revenue and - just as importantly - boosting its global profile. But staff at the Christchurch-based company were a bit bemused at the strength of the share price surge related to last week's US Navy deal.

It rose nearly 5 per cent to the $4.60 mark, where it was still berthed yesterday.

It's not that it isn't a good deal. After all it does offer the company an opportunity to show off its capabilities to one of the biggest potential customers in the world.

But some media reports seem to have suggested that the deal might be worth $45 million to Mooring. That's way off the mark, and it be would unfortunate if that misunderstanding was driving the share price. For the record, a company called Oceaneering International has secured a US Navy contract worth a potential $45 million through to 2010. Mooring has just signed a deal to continue working for Oceaneering on the project.

That's a good thing, but in terms of measurable value, deals such as the $3.1 million sale of automated mooring units to a port in Oman (announced in March) probably offer more useful insight. With any luck there will be plenty more of those deals to come.

Brian Fallow: Next target should be power market

2006-05-05T04:51:00.000+09:30

A first world economy needs first world telecommunications, especially if it is tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner of the world.

The Government has at last acted on that rather self-evident proposition by unbundling Telecom's local loop and decoupling access to its broadband network from the requirement to buy phone services from it as well.

The move comes 6 years after Labour was returned to power, but better late than never.

And it's a welcome departure from the prevailing Government view in the 1990s, which seemed to be that while Telecom was a quasi-monopolistic so-and-so, it was our quasi-monopolistic so-and-so, a Kiwi David battling foreign Goliaths like Telstra and Vodafone. Deregulation was always good and regulation was always bad, and if we were out of step internationally it was because we were smarter than everybody else in devising regulatory regimes.

The cost of these delusions is to be seen in low rates of broadband uptake, reflecting high charges and low speed.

The sound of impatient prime ministerial fingers drumming over this matter has been audible for some time, but the share price reaction yesterday suggests the changes are heavier-handed than the market had expected.

The Business Roundtable describes unbundling as infrastructure socialism - what's yours is mine by Government decree rather than on commercial terms. Yet somehow capitalism survives in all the other developed countries which have gone down this route.

The regulation of market power is a precondition of effective competition. Other internet service providers will have to pay Telecom rent for the use of its network; it's just that a regulator, not the incumbent, gets to set the price.

The argument that competitors are free to roll out their own networks - as the late lamented Saturn did in parts of Wellington and Christchurch - misses the point. The same could be said of local electricity lines networks, which are regulated as a matter of course.

The broadband issue has now been addressed, and funding for roading has been dialled up, we are told, as high as the physical capacity of the construction industry can handle.

But electricity, an even more alarming area of infrastructure deficit, has barely rated a mention in the infrastructure passages of Michael Cullen's speeches lately.

Will the Government now turn its attention to the uncertainties besetting that sector which have reached toxic, investment-blocking levels?

Cindy Baxter: Climate of doubt

2006-05-05T04:49:00.000+09:30

The British Government's chief scientist, Sir David King, has warned that climate change is the most serious threat facing the planet..

In the face of overwhelming evidence that the human race is causing the climate to change, there has been a resurgence of activity of climate science scepticism.

On Monday, the new Climate Science Coalition was launched in New Zealand. The coalition includes a member of a conservative think tank, scientists linked with the climate sceptic movement, and a former national co-ordinator of the National Party's Blue Greens.

Three weeks ago, a letter signed by 60 scientists, including members of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, wrote to the newly elected conservative Canadian Government, pushing for it to abandon the Kyoto Protocol. The letter was followed by another, from scientists, calling on Canada to stick with Kyoto.

These efforts are the latest in a campaign run by vested interests to discredit climate science and to stop the Kyoto Protocol from going forward.

But their arguments have little to do with science, and everything to do with politics and business.

In the late 1990s, US Republican Party pollster, communications guru and political adviser, Frank Luntz, proposed a strategy on climate change for the Republicans.

"The scientific debate remains open," he wrote.

"Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."

He went on: "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science."

This advice has been the strategy of the climate sceptic industry over the past decade, stepping up greatly once Kyoto was agreed, and then when George W. Bush came to power in 2000. They claimed a huge victory in 2001 when Bush dumped Kyoto.

What is this climate sceptic industry? Its members are the darlings of a PR and industry lobby, run out of neo-conservative organisations and think tanks based largely in Washington, who have the ears of the White House and money from the oil industry.

Greenpeace has spent considerable time investigating the sceptics, and one of their main funders, ExxonMobil. Since 1998, Exxon has spent more than US$18 million to challenge the science of climate change.

One example is the George C. Marshall Institute, established in the 1990s in response to negotiations on the climate convention. Since 1999 it has received more than US$800,000 from ExxonMobil.

Head of the institute, William O'Keefe, was an Exxon-Mobil-paid lobbyist working the White House in the crucial months before Bush dropped Kyoto. He was former chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute and former chair of the vociferous anti-climate industry lobby group in the 1990s, the Global Climate Coalition.

The institute's senior scientific adviser, Dr Sallie Baliunas, is the "dean" of the climate sceptic industry.

She is also environmental editor at the big industry-funded Tech Central Station website - a mouthpiece for industry, funded by Exxon.

Here, we find the links to the New Zealand sceptic group. Two of its scientists, Vincent Gray and Australian Bob Carter are contributors to Tech Central. Gray's book, The Greenhouse Delusion, has been touted by sceptic think tanks and websites.

Carter has been taken up by the Australian Institute of Public Affairs, which has strong links to the Exxon-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Baliunas and another scientist, Willie Soon, wrote a controversial paper, part funded by the American Petroleum Institute, which challenged the work of a major climate scientist, Michael Mann.

The paper was published by Climate Research, a scientific journal. The editor who took it through the peer review process was Chris de Freitas, of Auckland University. After the paper's publication, three other Climate Research editors resigned from the journal in protest at what they considered a flawed review process.

Today, amid overwhelming evidence of climate change, and our part in causing it - Luntz's "window of opportunity" has closed.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, identified by 17 national academies of sciences as the pre-eminent authority on climate science, and consisting of more than 1500 climate scientists, is clear.

It has confirmed that the links between climate change and human activity, and that the main cause is the burning of fossil fuels.

The IPCC has a long list of expert reviewers to ensure scientific credibility of its reports. These reviewers represent a range of scientific opinion and include climate change sceptics, such as Gray.

But the question remains: Why do these sceptics get such an airing?

Why are climate change stories being "balanced" by stories of bad science from a tiny group of oil, coal and gas industry-linked climate sceptics touted by the neo-conservative think tanks?

Former British chief scientist, and president of Britain's Royal Society, Lord May, noted: "There is no danger this lobby will influence the scientists. But they don't need to. It is the influence on the media that is so poisonous."

* Cindy Baxter is the Greenpeace campaign manager and co-author of the website Exxonsecrets.org

Sideswipe

2006-05-04T05:24:00.000+09:30

A jewelled brooch attached to a Madagascar hissing cockroach.

By Ana Samways

Salt Lake City fashion designer Jared Gold recently began offering jewelled brooches with brightly coloured crystals affixed to live, 7.5cm Madagascar hissing cockroaches that the wearer can allow to roam a short distance around her dress or jacket via a silver chain attached to the roach's back. The roaches used are male and live up to a year if fed (fresh bananas) and hydrated properly, says Gold's website. The brooch sells for $80. According to the News of the Weird website, the New York Post reported an animal-rights spokesman as calling the bauble "just the gift" for the "person who doesn't mind a small animal excreting on them throughout the day".

* * *

In an interview this week with Angelina Jolie on NBC's Today show, anchor Ann Curry got all deep and meaningful and said what she liked best about being pregnant was the feeling of never being alone. Cool as a cucumber, Angelina politely said she hadn't felt that at all. (Source: the Scanner blog at www.nerve.com).

* * *

A reader would like to thank roading company Fulton Hogan and the North Shore City Council for a wonderfully orchestrated event outside his house. "They managed to spend an entire weeknight, from 9pm till 7am, re-sealing a residential street in Northcote using the largest and most obnoxious machinery known to man. Every house on the street had its light fittings and dentures shaken to destruction, as rollers drove up and down repeatedly. The road workers didn't care, and blamed the council for choosing the time and place, while the council guy (at 4am) volleyed the blame back at Fulton Hogan."

* * *

Remember the days when fundraising kids would be collecting bottles, selling biscuits or chocolate? Now, with the pandemic of child obesity bearing down on the middle classes, sensible schools like Mt Albert's Gladstone have opted for a healthy school fundraising product : dinky six-packs of bottled water. (Thanks kids, I have plenty in the tap, but there's a garage that needs a sweep ... )

* * *

Sideswipe has discovered yet another Ahmed Zaoui unauthorised diary.

Thursday, May 4:

10am: Must ring Dave Dobbyn re, new single, Free Ahmed Zaoui (Love the lyric: "His freedom fettered by the shackles of the State/His body hounded by the harbingers of Hate").

11.30pm: Change library books.

12.30pm: Meet Keith Locke to hang out in the University of Auckland Quad.

2.30pm: Present the Fair Play award at the Students Against State Tyranny soccer tournament. Give usual speech: "Islam is a religion of tolerance and respect".

4pm: Deborah says court looming again so we need me back in the media. Phone friends in the media. Must call Finlay. Haven't heard from him recently; I like our chats on "the myth of impartiality in the Western media". Wise head.

5pm: Check with Deborah re Legal Aid.

7pm: Must watch Campbell Live so I can tell JC tomorrow how much I enjoy his work.

John Armstrong: Labour must be feeling relief after extracting sore tooth

2006-05-04T05:23:00.000+09:30

The "unbundling of the local loop" - the quaint euphemism for forcing Telecom to allow competitors access to its home and business phone lines - has been the political equivalent of extracting a very sore tooth.

The issue has been nagging away at the Government for so long that there must have been a sense of relief among ministers around the Cabinet table yesterday at actually having done the deed, at least as far as broadband is concerned.

There is still going to be a lot of squealing. Sizeable shareholders in Telecom will be spitting. Market purists will be bleating about what they will decree to be a raid by the state on private wealth. There will be predictable warnings about sending the wrong signals to foreign investors.

Labour should hold its nerve. Long-time Telecom shareholders have benefited financially many times over from the shambolic privatisation of the former state company in 1990.

Not only was Telecom sold too cheaply, it went on the block without a proper regulatory framework being established first to ensure the telecommunications industry would be truly competitive.

The Government can justify the opening up of Telecom to more competition on simple, common-good grounds.

Ministers will rebut criticism of "regulatory creep" by arguing the new regime will still be less interventionist than regulatory frameworks in other countries and that the move will increase competition, not limit it.

The biggest political danger is that the policy will not work. Officials have warned that it will take "some time" to create a more competitive market for broadband and that there might even be a short-term dip in the sector's performance.

However, that is also an argument for delaying no longer.

Labour's longer-term difficulty is to find additional but not so immediately obvious policy gems to make good on its promise of "economic transformation" - the key thrust of its third term.

Yesterday's announcement is the first element of that agenda to see the light of day as frantic policy development continues to find more such initiatives to lift the New Zealand economy out of reliance on high international prices for agriculture-based commodities.

However, improving broadband uptake had been foreshadowed by the Prime Minister for months. The announcement begs the question "what next?"

It also appears the announcement was to have been showcased in the Budget, now just two weeks away. That was kiboshed by the leaking of a Cabinet document within hours of the Cabinet decision, which forced the Government's hand late yesterday afternoon.

Michael Cullen had been warning it was going to be a boring Budget. But then he always says that. There will now be a mad scramble in the Beehive to find something to fill the vacuum and prove him wrong.

Editorial: PPTA must take long, hard look

2006-05-04T05:22:00.000+09:30

The Post-Primary Teachers Association has reacted with remarkable equanimity to alarming findings on the state of the teaching profession. Teachers, the Massey University report concludes, comprise a fractured workforce, with some decrying their colleagues as lazy, incompetent and uninterested while others buckle under workloads and unruly classes.

That verdict does not faze Debbie Te Whaiti, the association's head. Any workplace would, in her view, have similar fractures when it came to feedback on colleagues' performance.

To some degree, that may be true. But not to the extent outlined in the report, which was commissioned by the Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education. It uncovered a catalogue of woes. Teachers felt "overloaded, inadequately rewarded, undervalued and insufficiently supported". Perhaps most worryingly, the report forecast recruiting difficulties as the next generation spurned a career in teaching, seeing it as "underpaid, stressful and too ordinary".

If, as seems to be the case, the PPTA construes all that as normal, it will be doing teachers a gross disservice. Instead, it should be pondering the reasons for this crisis in morale. And the fact that any objective analysis would conclude that the union's own policies have played a major part in creating, and perpetuating, the situation.

At the seat of the teachers' grievance is the fact that the present system of national pay bargaining denies schools the opportunity to reward those who distinguish themselves in the classroom through excellence and hard work. The same arrangement pays poor teachers too much. Unhindered by appraisal systems, they coast on the coat-tails of better colleagues. It is no wonder many in the latter category feel aggrieved.

The solution lies in payment by performance, through workplace bargaining and individual contracts. While that is the norm elsewhere, it has been thwarted by the PPTA, which foresees, and fears, a greatly reduced influence on the fabric of education. The same impulse prompted the union to oppose the trend to greater autonomy for schools. Once that included bulk funding, the vehicle which allows schools to tackle the workload of teachers by paying staff salaries out of their bulk grant.

The introduction of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement, in place of an examination-based qualification, has undoubtedly placed far more pressure on teachers' time. The report confirms, unsurprisingly, that it has become a significant source of discontent. Reducing the workload hinges on schools being able to employ more, and better quality, teachers. Freedom to pay by performance, and no longer be shackled by a system that sponsors mediocrity, would allow that.

The Government, unfortunately, seems as reluctant as the PPTA to acknowledge as much. The startling message of the Massey report seems barely to have registered with the Education Minister. Steve Maharey says the formula for raising professional standards will centre on "increased salaries, professional development and awards for excellence". In other words, nothing will change.

That approach has led to the present crisis in teacher morale. It is time the Government and the PPTA acknowledged that, and the fundamental reason for it. Teachers may also be demoralised by having to battle what they see as an accumulated lack of respect from the Government, pupils, parents and the public. But the best of them are more aggrieved that their excellence and diligence is going unrewarded. Pay by performance would explicitly recognise their value and their important contribution to society.

Peter Nowak: At last, a bold plan for better broadband and cheaper calls

2006-05-04T05:21:00.000+09:30

After years of ineffectively regulating telecommunications and allowing itself to be hoodwinked by Telecom, the Government has finally got it right. For consumers, its plan to break the company's monopoly is monumental, bold and far-reaching, and it should do much to erase New Zealand's international reputation as the developed world's backward country cousin.

The Government blundered in 2004 when it decided against allowing Telecom's competitors access to its network, and the country has suffered from high prices and slow broadband ever since.

Yesterday's decision rectifies that error. Not only will competitors such as TelstraClear, ihug and CallPlus be able to offer their own services and actually make a profit, prices should come down drastically thanks to the ensuing competition.

The unbundling decision will include a regulated price that will force Telecom to demonstrate the actual cost of providing internet services. Sources have indicated this could be as low as $8 a customer, but probably somewhere around $15, which means that competitors should be able to offer broadband for between $20 and $30 a month.

These won't be at the dreadfully slow speeds on offer today. The Government is also forcing Telecom to offer the fastest speeds its network is capable of handling, which has been found to be 7.6 megabits per second download - or twice what is now being sold.

Competitors will also be installing equipment capable of providing 24 megabits just as soon as the legislation comes in. New Zealand's internet is about to become a whole lot faster and cheaper, for real this time.

But the Government didn't stop there. Telecom will also be required to split its phone and broadband services from one another - a rare phenomenon known as "Naked DSL".

Broadband customers will no longer be forced to buy a phone line if they don't want one, and can instead use their mobile or a host of emerging internet-based calling services - which are either free, or practically free.

Only five other countries in the OECD have Naked DSL, but it is an emerging trend. The Government should be applauded for taking this forward-thinking and somewhat unexpected step.

The Government has also taken solid action in ensuring transparency at Telecom by demanding accounting separation, which will allow the public to see just how much money is being made off its network.

Garth George: Civil unions fuss turns out much ado about nothing

2006-05-04T05:20:00.001+09:30

It is inevitable, I suppose, that the matter of civil unions will continue to crop up from time to time, but the manner of the latest eruption of discussion is extraordinary, to say the least.

It began a week ago today when Hugh Kempster, parson of St Columba Anglican Church in Grey Lynn, wrote a letter to this newspaper which, probably because of its oddity, was made the lead letter of the day.

In it he complained, bitterly and emotionally, that although he was both a priest and a civil union celebrant, he wasn't allowed to perform civil union ceremonies in his church.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Kempster's letter generated a gaggle of responses, mostly from others who are entitled to the honorific "Rev", and the vexed question of civil unions vis a vis the Church has once again been aired.

And so far every single one of them has missed the point.

Which is that the whole idea of having civil unions was to give people, mainly male and female homosexuals, the chance to enter into a recognised union - a marriage in all but name - in which the Church had no say or involvement.

The law was intended to give legitimacy to same-sex unions simply because no church in New Zealand will have a bar of them, even though there are persistent movements in a number of mainline denominations- Methodist, Presbyterian and Anglican in particular - towards that end.

So what on earth is an Anglican priest complaining about because he can't carry out civil union in his church? For that matter, what is an ordained priest doing being also a civil union celebrant?

It seems strange that a priest forbidden by his church to indulge in unifying same-sex couples should become a civil union celebrant and thus become entitled in the eyes of the state to do exactly what his employer has told him he cannot.

Is it any wonder that the word has come down that these ceremonies are not to be held in his church?

To read Mr Kempster's letter you would think that this is a big issue for a lot of people. It isn't.

In the first year of the Civil Union Act, a mere 460 couples - 178 male, 199 female, 81 opposite sex, plus two who changed from marriage to civil union - have availed themselves of the opportunity.

And since there are some 600 marriage celebrants in New Zealand, Mr Kempster's share must have been minuscule, even taking into account that a disproportionate number of same-sex couples probably live in Grey Lynn and its environs.

(By comparison, incidentally, there were some 22,000 marriages conducted in the first 12 months of the Civil Union Act.)

The 2001 Census recorded that there were 5070 same-sex couples living together in that year (0.6 per cent of the number in some form of couple relationship).

There will be more by now, so it appears that less than 6 per cent of same-sex couples have bothered with a civil union.

The experience in other countries which have similar law - Holland, Denmark and Belgium, for instance - is that the first year for civil unions is the big one then they taper off.

United Future MP Gordon Copeland, who has made a study of the European statistics, reckons that once our New Zealand backlog has been dealt with, we'll be looking at about 55 civil unions a year.

So much for those politicians who insisted that this law was so vital for so many people and rammed it through despite widespread public opposition.

Nor is it surprising that many civil union celebrants, who went to considerable time and expense to get "qualified", have packed it in, and that a number of websites set up to self-promote homosexual celebrants have abruptly disappeared from cyberspace.

Says Matthew Flanagan, an ethicist, moral philosopher and theologian who is spokesman for the conservative think-tank, the Locke Foundation: "I remember Tim Barnett saying that multitudes of New Zealanders were suffering a huge injustice and were being prevented from expressing the commitment they so desperately wanted to.

"They have now had the opportunity to affirm that, and they haven't."

Greg Fleming, CEO of another conservative think-tank, the Maxim Institute, says the low number of registered civil unions shows that the existing law is not meeting the needs of many New Zealanders and should be amended.

"The Civil Union Act discriminates against people in committed but non-romantic relationships who want the legal certainty of registration but not the marriage-like ceremony of a civil union," says Mr Fleming.

"Maxim Institute firmly believes that clarity around next-of-kin status is important for all people, not just romantic relationships."

He says neither the Civil Union Bill nor the Relationships Bill attended to the issues of next-of-kin status or hospital visitation rights and "there is a need for an opt-in relationship which has clear legal rights but does not mimic marriage as the civil union does, because this is inappropriate for many people".

Mike Petrus, president of the Society for Community Standards, points out that the tiny number of homosexuals who have entered into civil unions since the act was passed proves that legislators were conned by all the hype and rhetoric generated by a tiny group of vociferous homosexual activists and their supporters.

And that, judging by the genesis of the latest discussion, is still going on.

Michele Hewitson: Bad Jim, worse gymslip

2006-05-04T05:20:00.000+09:30

Michele Hewitson: Bad Jim, worse gymslip

04.05.06

What a nice email I had from a lady, who is obviously not psychic, about something I wrote some time ago about some silly show on psychics and unsolved murders.

That she is not psychic is an assumption, of course, but it is based on the fact that it took her such a long time to read the aforementioned review. Surely she should have been psychically outraged as soon as the thing came out?

This is silly, but not as silly as such shows. Apparently I am a nasty horrible cow for saying such things. But perhaps I will revise my opinion of people who think they can sense creepy stuff because you will hardly believe this; I can hardly believe it - I seem to have come over all psychic myself.

Because there we were, the girls talking over coffee about Bad Girls and how glad we were the really nasty Fenner had met a nasty end at last. "He'll come back," I said.

Nah, they scoffed, not even on a show as mental as Bad Girls would they attempt that stunt. Not even in the series finale.

Well, ahem, ladies. He did. In the series finale. This was during an exorcism which, by the way, I believe in - in the same way I believe in crystal balls, shows about psychics and that anyone looks good in those long shorts worn with high heels.

Fenner came back as a ghost. Well, of course he did. There has never been anything as bad on Bad Girls as the plots. Except, perhaps, the acting.

I could also have predicted, if I hadn't been so busy putting my powers to greater uses, that Rodney Hide would be appearing in the second series of Dancing with the Stars.

I could have achieved such dizzying psychic heights by concentrating very, very, hard on a recent photograph of him.

This concentrating very, very, hard on photographs is a psychic trick. Sometimes, the really good telly psychics don't even have to turn the photograph over. No, they can feel ... stuff emanating through the photograph.

It is true that I am envious of such a trick. Think what a hit you'd be at parties.

Anyway, had I concentrated not very hard on a photo of Rodney, I might have been able to tell you that he was going to appear on Dancing with the Stars because he has lost so much weight that even his head seems to have shrunk. (Also, it was the telly world's worst-kept secret.)

This is a strange phenomenon in itself, given that to go on a show with a name which includes the word star must mean that you think a bit of yourself. Either that or your party's profile is shrinking along with your waistline.

That is not a very respectful thing to say, and no doubt somebody will write in to say I should have more respect for the living, the dead and for alleged stars.

But I can't help but say something quite rude about Top of the Class in which we are subjected to the spectacle of Louise Wallace in a gym frock.

"That's the most stupidest idea of the century, voting for Matthew Ridge," said one of the "celeb's" little buddies. No, Louise Wallace going on telly in a gym frock is one of the most stupidest ideas of the century.

Peter Lyons: Murder points to system failure

2006-05-04T05:18:00.001+09:30

The murder of Wan Biao, whose body was found floating in a suitcase on the Waitemata Harbour, highlights New Zealand's failings in its duty of care to young overseas students studying here. Unfortunately, the attitude of many New Zealanders to the influx of overseas students over the past decade has been ambivalent and in some cases verging on inhospitable.

The huge growth in the export education market in the late 1990s led to a proliferation of education providers, some primarily concerned with profit rather than the well-being of their students. It is an industry where growth has been tumultuous and poorly managed from a national perspective.

The police officer responsible for investigating Wan Biao's death said Asian students studying in New Zealand should be wary of fellow students, particularly those who are failing or have dropped out of formal study. While this is sound advice, the industry itself should bear responsibility for ensuring that vulnerable students are provided with a greater and consistent degree of protection and support.

The pastoral support available to overseas students varies considerably depending on the institution they study at or their living arrangements.

Wan Biao's death and the anguish of his parents highlights the inadequacy of New Zealand's approach to international education.

The industry grew dramatically with the huge influx of Chinese students in the late 1990s. The development of this industry was largely self-regulated, particularly in terms of student welfare. The decline in the industry in recent years can partially be attributed to some shoddy practices with students being treated as little more than cash cows. The miserable experiences of some students in New Zealand are the worst possible form of advertising.

My first experience of the international student market was while teaching at a secondary school in the early 1990s. Like many secondary schools, it needed to generate additional revenue to subsidise inadequate government funding.

There was much variability in how different schools administered their fee-paying student programme. Some schools paid lip service to meeting the pastoral and educational needs of these students. Students were dumped into classes with little support under the guise of the benefits of immersion.

Local students resented the sudden influx. They had little awareness that the new sports facility, swimming pool or computer suite was a direct result of the large fees these foreign students were paying. They were criticised for congregating with each other and failing to make the effort to integrate with local students. There is a rich irony here that should be evident to any Kiwi who has spent time in London on their OE.

In 2001 while at the University of Otago, I was fortunate to be involved in the establishment and management of several student hostels catering primarily to Asian students. It was an immensely rewarding experience and provided a fascinating insight into the experiences of many of these students in embarking on study in a foreign country.

Many are desperately homesick when they arrive in an alien environment. It also became apparent that though the vast majority of these students were motivated and eager to succeed, a small percentage were sent here to prevent them from causing embarrassment to their families at home. It is these students who are most likely to prey on their fellow pupils.

The vulnerability of adolescents from other countries studying in New Zealand is enormous. Imagine 17- and 18-year-old New Zealanders being sent to Beijing for several years to study in a foreign land and language. It says a lot for their tenacity and work ethic that so many of these foreign students succeed and, in many instances, surpass their Kiwi counterparts. They do this in spite of the language barrier. They are also paying enormous fees for the sometimes dubious privilege of studying here.

Complaints by Kiwi students that foreign students are obsessive in their study habits are more a reflection of our own lack of appreciation of the value of education. Most are well-balanced individuals and are eager to learn more about their host country and to fit in, but are denied the opportunity because of a reluctance of locals to bridge the gap.

Unfortunately the export-education industry has become entangled with the political bunfight over immigration. There is a lack of appreciation that the exporting of education services is a major earner for this country and the benefits accrue across a wide section of New Zealand society.

The death of Wan Biao highlights a systemic failure in our approach to international education. To rely on individual institutions or accommodation providers to ensure the protection of these students is too haphazard. At the very least, all students should have access to a nationwide network of support in their own language and should be made aware on arrival that this facility is available.

* Peter Lyons is a former international hostel manager who teaches economics at Wanganui Collegiate.

David Pang: Students' safety a shared obligation

2006-05-04T05:18:00.000+09:30

The latest "body in the suitcase" is a tragic case. The death of Wan Biao once again raises the now habitual questions concerning New Zealand's safety record for foreign students.

As expected, there is a tendency to engage in fault-finding, blaming and being defensive: Should it be up to the system, the school, the parents, or the students themselves to provide and exercise the necessary care?

Are these students adequately prepared to study in a system so different from what they are used to? Who should make the adjustments?

Make no mistake, educating students from non-traditional nations in a Western country like New Zealand does present challenges to the educational institutions and the community.

Besides coping with the normal growing up issues, young Asian students have the additional burden of confronting "culture shock" and "academic shock" in the West.

But this is not to say that the problems that they have encountered are solely due to the conflict and stress of the acculturation processes.

Asian (read Chinese) students themselves can be perpetrators of their own misfortunes. Some students come to New Zealand with pre-existing negative attitudes. Others have conducted themselves more foolishly or even wantonly in New Zealand than they would in their own country.

It is accepted that health and safety are a prime concern for Asian parents - any parents for that matter - when sending their children abroad.

It would be a mistake for anyone to suggest that the "body in the suitcase" incident is statistically insignificant because it was one of very few occurrences. The fact is that one death is really too many.

As a "service" industry, New Zealand simply cannot allow a single incident to exert a disproportionate pressure on what is otherwise a good reputation. There is a link between market share and the wellbeing of foreign students.

In recent years, several studies funded by the Ministry of Education, Education New Zealand, Asia New Zealand and research centres at universities have aimed at issues relating to foreign students. The authorities concerned have introduced a Code of Practice, International Student Homestay Guidelines, and the International Education Appeal Authority.

There is a Chinese version of a guide to living and studying in New Zealand for students.

What unites these initiatives is a recognition that providers and operators have the obligations and ethical responsibility to provide high quality support services.

With 100,000 foreign students in the country, responding to their health and security needs is a formidable task. The reality is that it is not possible to anticipate all problems that foreign students may encounter.

Managing foreign students should be regarded as an evolving process, not a fixed, one-off event and some steps can be taken towards this.

Develop an international education clearing house to compile and disseminate information about good practices concerning health, safety and other issues; strengthen international education advising and student learning centres; encourage and promote inter-agency cooperation; develop crisis management skills in a cross-cultural setting as part of professional practice; and conduct regular reviews so that the experience gained is incorporated into programmes and new initiatives are undertaken.

* David Pang has a PhD in education from the University of Auckland. He is an academic learning adviser at the university's Student Learning Centre (Epsom Campus).

Christopher Niesche: Worse could still be on the way for telco as separation threat looms

2006-05-04T05:16:00.001+09:30

Things could get even worse for Telecom.

As the telco's stock plunges on the local sharemarket, another threat looms over the country's largest listed company.

The Government had been widely expected to force Telecom to open its network to competitors - unbundling the local loop - but the surprise lies in what it is considering next: structural separation.

This would break the company into two separate arms, one which owns the phone network and the other to sell phone and internet services. Telecom would lose control of its most valuable asset, its network.

Communications Minister David Cunliffe said the Government was studying the desirability of structural separation and this was no empty threat. Yesterday's decisive action showed that the Government has completely lost patience with Telecom.

The company's fate was sealed last year when Helen Clark attended an Apec meeting in South Korea. A demonstration of the latest communications left the Prime Minister feeling as if New Zealand were the "country cousin".

New Zealand is ranked 22nd of the 30 OECD countries in broadband uptake - South Korea is second - and if uptake doesn't improve, the Government will take further action.

If Telecom chief Theresa Gattung and her executives try to stall local loop unbundling - as Telstra has been accused of in Australia - then the Government will break the company apart.

The changes will ensure that Telecom's profits drop, and probably sharply, though it's too early to guess by how much.

Telecom now faces the challenge of trying to get its profits growing again under the new and tougher rules.

These rules should ensure that the telecommunications market in New Zealand flourishes. Telecom should embrace the change and try to get as big a slice of the larger market as it can by providing the best and most up-to-date products and services it can.

Its other option is to continue with the strategy that failed it so miserably yesterday - digging its heels and fighting any change.

If it does that, things will get worse.

Brian Fallow: Oil putting heavy pressure on Bollard

2006-05-04T05:16:00.000+09:30

Will Alan Bollard trust us to trust him to keep the lid on inflation? As much as anything that is what will determine how long we continue to labour under a policy interest rate of 7.25 per cent, exceeded within the OECD only by Turkey and Iceland.

It's all about inflation expectations.

In his review of the official cash rate last week, the Reserve Bank Governor said the drop in the exchange rate and the rise in world oil prices would keep inflation above 3 per cent for longer than previously projected.

He would not try to counteract the one-off boost to prices from the exchange rate and oil price shocks.

"However, monetary policy must remain vigilant against these price shocks spilling over into inflation expectations and price and wage-setting behaviour."

Resisting that spillover is a bottom line for any inflation-targeting central bank.

There is a justified dread of returning to the bad old days of the wage-price spiral, the cost-plus mentality and the self-fulfilling expectation among businesses that their costs would keep rising relentlessly, so their own prices had better too.

Squeezing that mindset out of the system was a painful business. No one wants to go there again.

But how much risk of that is there, really?

True, confidence that we live in a low inflation environment is being sorely tested.

Annual consumer price inflation has been above the top of the Reserve Bank's 1 to 3 per cent target zone since the middle of last year.

In a recent Reuters survey of 10 economic forecasters all but three expect it still to be over 3 per cent at the end of this year - and two of them have it at 2.9 per cent. Indeed two forecasters expect inflation still to be outside the bank's comfort zone at the end of 2007.

Which raises the question of what it takes for the Governor to be in breach of his job description - the policy targets agreement with the Government. The problem is he is judged by an elastic tape measure. The agreement was amended in 2002 so that the target is no longer to keep inflation under 3 per cent in any 12-month period but only "on average over the medium term".

If "the medium term" is long enough, or if inflation is really low the rest of the time, then even 18 months or two years outside the zone can be arithmetically consistent with that.

And Bollard has another out: oil.

Without the increase in petrol prices, inflation would be 2.5 per cent not 3.3 per cent.

Ever since the inflation targeting regime was introduced in the late 1980s it has been clear that the bank should be allowed to disregard the direct effect on prices of supply shocks, such as a sharp rise in the international oil price.

Such a rise sucks spending power out of the economy.

First NZ Capital economist Jason Wong has calculated that if petrol and diesel prices stay where they are for the rest of the year then an extra $1.5 billion will be spent on those fuels compared with last year, and all else being equal $1.5 billion less will be available to spend on everything else.

For the bank to raise the cost of borrowing as well, in response to an oil-fuelled rise in headline inflation, would perversely compound the activity-sapping effect of the oil price hike.

So although Bollard has some explaining to do, to his board in the first instance and then the rest of us through monetary policy statements, he is unlikely to lose his job.

Don Brash, after all, spent two years at or above the top of the inflation target range, then 2 per cent, with impunity.

But there is perhaps a deeper sense in which Bollard has departed from the spirit, if not the rather fuzzy letter, of the policy targets agreement.

The charge is that he runs monetary policy in a manner more reactive than pre-emptive, basing decisions on current conditions when he should be focused on a medium-term horizon.

In theory he should focus on the likely balance of supply and demand in the economy two years ahead, since that is what he can influence through interest rate moves now.

In practice, the official cash rate tends to rise and fall closely in step with the headline inflation rate - the consumers price index (see graph above). When inflation is high, so is the policy interest rate.

This suggests the Reserve Bank is not so much looking ahead as looking sideways.

What might account for this is a preoccupation with inflation expectations and the need to keep them "anchored".

Some recently published research by senior Reserve Bank economist Bernard Hodgetts on the way the inflation process has changed notes that inflation expectations two years ahead have remained relatively stable over the recent economic cycle. They did not for example jump in response to the steep drop in the exchange rate in 2000, as the bank might have feared.

This makes the bank's task much easier.

"However we have been extremely wary of simply assuming that inflation expectations are 'anchored' and taking policy risks based on that assumption," Hodgetts wrote.

Bollard's warning to wage-setters last week is also somewhat at odds with the bank's own research, which suggests that the days when wage rises drove inflation are long gone.

While wages led prices in the 1980s, the relationship reversed in the 1990s, with wage movements tending to scamper along behind inflation, struggling to keep up.

Adjusted for productivity, wage settlements were often lower than inflation over much of the past 10 years, and rarely exceeded significantly, Hodgetts said.

But again the bank seems reluctant to trust this conclusion: "Helpful as this has been ... we have remained wary of the potential for wage inflation to reassert itself as a direct driver of inflation."

Which begs the question: why would Bollard expect business people setting prices to be any less wary than he is?

Bank of New Zealand economist Craig Ebert says that when firms ask him and his colleagues what inflation they should be budgeting for, "The academic reply is that we should all trust the Reserve Bank when it says don't worry, inflationary pressures will be drifting back down again before too long. But we can understand the disbelief of companies, employees and savers alike already burned as inflation has risen above the 1 to 3 per cent target band."

Businesses are dealing with real inflation pressure and their expectations inevitably reflect this, Ebert says.

Their inflation expectations right now, as recorded in the National Bank's monthly business outlook, average 3.07 per cent.

It is still above the top of the Reserve Bank's target band, of course.

But historically those expectations are closely aligned with actual inflation at the time or in the previous quarter - and no guide at all to inflation a year to two ahead.

Both Bollard and the companies themselves can take comfort in that.

Talkback: A plan to avoid fear and loathing

2006-05-04T05:15:00.000+09:30

By Robert Bree

Given the option of accompanying an axe-murderer on a camping trip or running the annual marketing plan "summit", just about everyone I know would start shopping for those little strap-on head-mounted torches.

No-one doubts the importance of the marketing plan, so why do we loathe doing it so much and, more importantly, how can we make the whole exercise more rewarding, painless and efficient for everyone involved?

Attitude is very important. If senior management present the plan requirement as a burden, then so will the marketers. I personally recommend treating it as a great creative opportunity to bring the wider team together on a regular basis to objectively evaluate how we're doing, discuss our problems, opportunities and aspirations, agree on our goals and "create" strategy - i.e. awesome brand marketing.

One problem I frequently observe is the "popular" burden of form filling. Every multinational and increasingly more of our local companies are becoming obsessed with planning templates, standard operating procedures and global uniformity of planning systems. So let's get real. A marketing plan is simply an assessment of our market and brands, pending market opportunities, and current company or brand performance married to an assessment of our intended future capabilities. Once agreed, we then compile a set of activities that will result in improved appeal, activation, penetration and adhesion of our brands.

I recommend a four-step process from where we are now to where we plan to be:

* Current situation analysis/brand review leading into key issues by market, segment and brand;

* Overview of growth opportunities including assessment of various best-case/worst-case market scenarios;

* Confirmation of strategic/brand priorities including objectives, brand strategy, customer plans and financial forecasts (including any capital investments);

* Key programmes/tasks including tactics, timeframes, budgets: what we'll do, how we'll do it, what it will cost.

Do it in stages, maybe spreading those four meetings or steps over four months. Using this approach you can test your team's thinking at each step and agree on key decisions before moving on.

At this rate, you should be able to reduce pressure and still complete the plan by the end of the third quarter.

Start your planning around five months into the financial year with a business or brand review. For the brand review I recommend you pull last year's plan out of the drawer and take a day out reviewing the predictions you made, performance vs the targets you set, progress on any key initiatives identified.

Get your wider team involved at the relevant points. Not only the agency, but your research partners, your sales managers, maybe even one or two of your key accounts.

Treat the plan as a team effort, that way everyone will feel committed to it and its results.

Finally, put someone in charge. Alternatively, check out those strap-on head-mounted torch dooberees. Pronto!

* Robert Bree of Viso Cognito is a growth solutions consultant. You can contact him at visocognito@xtra.co.nz

Sideswipe

2006-05-03T04:25:00.000+09:30

The Langham Hotel

By Ana Samways

The Langham Hotel (above) is offering packages to entice mothers for a pampering on Mother's Day. Is this the same hotel which was outed at the weekend as the place where Customs takes drug mules who have swallowed the evidence while they wait for them to, er, download the narcotics?

* * *

Yesterday Sideswipe revealed that Ahmed Zaoui needs a diary co-ordinator to handle his busy schedule (Sarah at zaoui_volunteers@xtra.co.nz). Thank you to all those who contributed to this first instalment of Zaoui's Day:

Tuesday, May 2:

6am: Arise early at the Dominican Priory, Newton, and ponder peace in the Middle East.

6.05am: Mint tea. Return to my book, Repressive Tolerance, by philosopher Herbert Marcuse.

7am: Breakfast.

8am: Regular discussion with Father Chris "that America is a neo-colonial, repressive, intolerant regime which is perpetuating most of the evil in the world."

8.11am: Finish agreeing with Father Chris.

9am: Talk to Deborah re legal aid.

10am: Must attend prayers to show inter-faith respect.

11am: Check with Sarah about upcoming diary commitments.

12: Take Algerian cooking class for the Arts Collective at Grey Lynn Community Centre. Must remember to take copies of my Conversations over Couscous: Cooking with Ahmed Zaoui (retail price $20, including postage).

1.30pm: Meet Deborah re legal aid.

2.45pm: Must phone David re speaking at opening of the Human Rights Film Festival.

3pm: Coffee at TVNZ about new ad campaign.

4pm: Meet "Friends of Ahmed". Remember to read latest poem, The Shackles of Internment. (Might keep Stroking the Neck of the Penguin in reserve.) Discuss Marcuse.

5.30pm: Fax Deborah the legal aid sheet.

6pm: Speaking engagement at the University of Auckland political studies department. "Internment, Shackles and Repression: The Islamic Viewpoint".

8.30pm: Lost, TV2.

9.30pm: Bed.

To Do: Buy more couscous; check the Algerian for rugby; email the Inter-denominational Support Group against Internment of Muslims among the Dominicans. Didn't quite understand what they want. Must ask Deborah why my poems about penguins had Father Joseph sniggering. Look up carrot cake recipe. Ask Father Chris to tape Dragon's Den. AND thanks to all the observant techy geeks who pointed out that Thursday afternoon's computer calendar reading of 01:02:03 04/05/06 will not be unique. It will happen again in 100 years. May you live to see it. ON the subject of Dragon's Den, who will be the millionaires who get to savage the budding entrepreneurs when the programme comes to New Zealand? Sideswipe bets it will be Bob Jones, naturally.

* * *

Sideswipe usually tries to steer clear of giving out weird websites (too many, too contrived) but rules are made to be broken. So check this out: http://members.aol.com/hearseq/movies.htm. A couple of guys were playing a drinking game of thinking up movies with hearses in them. They put it on a site and the rest, as they say, is history.

It even has its own Yahoo category - Hearse Enthusiasts. Best entry: A Gnome Named Gnorm: features a chase scene about seven minutes long, in which the cop in the movie commandeers a hearse from a funeral train to pursue a suspect in a Corvette. The hearse appears to be an all black 1971-72 Superior. The hearse unfortunately gets shot up but it makes for a good scene.

John Armstrong: Opposition MPs wear expletive as badge of honour

2006-05-03T04:24:00.000+09:30

There is only one thing worse than being called a "bastard" by the former chairman of Television New Zealand. That is not being called a "bastard".

For all the huffing and puffing around Parliament over Craig Boyce’s unfortunate choice of expletives, TVNZ’s stocks are so low that being described as a bastard by the state broadcaster’s top brass is credibility enhancing, rather than politically damaging for an Opposition MP.

Act’s Rodney Hide went as far as declaring he would have been more worried had Mr Boyce thought he was not a bastard given it was his job to ensure accountability from state enterprises like TVNZ.

This tendency to wear the "bastard" label as a badge of honour undermined Don Brash’s attempt to maintain a high "outrage" quotient in Parliament yesterday. He demanded to know why Mr Boyce was still serving on New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s board, given that his "contemptuous" attitude to Parliament made him unfit to do so.

The Prime Minister agreed Mr Boyce’s language had been "inappropriate". But Helen Clark did not buy Dr Brash’s proposition he should be dumped from the board of another state entity.

Since the contents of his embarrassing emails had been exposed, she said Mr Boyce had "clarified" things by insisting he was not contemptuous of Parliament - just Opposition figures like Murray McCully, the MP who got the emails under the Official Information Act.

Mr McCully’s response was the beaming smile of someone, who, having landed a king-hit, could not care less what he was called.

Dr Brash then questioned Helen Clark on the email in which Mr Boyce cautioned TVNZ’s former chief executive Ian Fraser not to discuss undisclosed matters that occurred midway though last year between Mr Fraser and former board member Dame Ann Hercus, saying "that would be a disaster for everyone".

Was it acceptable for directors of state enterprises to suppress politically damaging information? Would the Prime Minister reveal the nature of that information?

Unfortunately, she could not. To National’s disbelief, she insisted Dame Ann, a former Labour Cabinet minister, had not kept her appraised of what went on at the TVNZ board.

That brought Mr Hide to his feet - immediately realising the worst fears of Act supporters that his appearing on Dancing with the Stars gives Act’s opponents every excuse not to take him seriously. Worse, it seems to have given those opponents licence to drag out every dance-related joke possible.

Stand-up comedy is not Helen Clark’s forte. But she had rehearsed a line in readiness for Mr Hide nevertheless.

He suggested no one should be surprised by TVNZ withholding sensitive information given the Labour Government had been doing that ever since it had been elected.

The Prime Minister noted Mr Hide’s dancing lessons. "But dancing on the point of that particular pin will only prick his balloon."

Labour MPs dutifully broke into laughter as if this was the funniest thing they had ever heard.

"That wasn’t even witty," Mr Hide grumbled, before arguing with the Speaker, accusing Margaret Wilson of failing to uphold Parliament’s standing orders by requiring the Prime Minister to address his question properly.

Margaret Wilson could have taken justifiable umbrage at this serious challenge to her authority.

She let it pass - maybe because it was Parliament’s first day back after a three-week recess; maybe out of sympathy for Mr Hide facing his own date with performance-related accountability next Sunday night courtesy of none other than TVNZ.

Editorial: Break this cycle of bad behaviour

2006-05-03T04:22:00.001+09:30

Few incidents in this country’s sporting history can have been handled so ineptly as that involving drunken cyclists at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. The initial attempt to cover up what CyclingNZ now describes as a "dirty, grubby" episode was foolish in itself. As was the ongoing determination to prevent the details becoming public. But all that has been trumped by the decision not to punish Marc Ryan and Tim Gudsell, the two cyclists found guilty of breaching disciplinary policy. It is little wonder that the mother of Liz Williams, the female cyclist involved in the incident, has lashed out at the failure of the sport’s administrators to eradicate a "destructive, unsafe" culture of drinking and abuse of women.

Cycling will invite such criticism until that environment is tackled. The treatment of Ryan and Gudsell suggests that time has yet to come. The pair can hardly have been chastened when told to seek counselling and a session with a sports psychologist. Such token punishment will not be the catalyst for a dramatic improvement in their behaviour, or that of others of similar ilk in the national squad. Likewise, CyclingNZ’s statement that it did not want to harm the cyclists’ careers sends precisely the wrong message. It suggests their future wellbeing outranks their participation in a particularly tawdry episode.

We still do not know, of course, exactly what happened in Melbourne. But an Australian newspaper reported at the time that two New Zealand cyclists had tried to strip a teammate and urinate on her during post-competition celebrations at the athletes’ village. The report has never been denied, even though, in perhaps the most shabby response, Liz Williams was prevailed upon to describe the episode as a "non-event". Her real reaction, and the nature of the incident, can be gauged by her disinclination yesterday to say she remained friends with Ryan and Gudsell.

CyclingNZ’s president, Wayne Hudson, says he has dealt with 15 complaints about drunken behaviour during the past three years. Despite that, he had yet to conclude that cycling was different from any other sport. Most others, however, reached that verdict some time ago, based on cycling’s long history of behavioural problems. They also deduced that that history was the product of a tolerance that extends now to what even Mr Hudson acknowledges could be interpreted as a limp response to serious allegations.

Cycling should not have to resort to independent managers to oversee its squad, or appoint chaperones to safeguard female riders. The answer lies in the effective punishment of those who breach its disciplinary policy. It does not have to look far for guidance. Consider, for example, the way that Australian rugby player Matt Henjak was sent home for drunken conduct in South Africa last year. Or how Wendell Sailor was suspended, and then sent home from the republic for a repeat offence this season.

But perhaps the closest parallel lies with cricket’s treatment of Stephen Fleming, Dion Nash and Matthew Hart after they smoked cannabis on the 1994 tour of South Africa. They were suspended for three matches when the incident became public on the team’s return to New Zealand. In the case of Fleming, in particular, careers could not be said to have been damaged.

Ryan and Gudsell’s unsavoury antics, perpetrated in a public place, were hugely embarrassing for both cycling and this country. They should have resulted in suspension from the national team and a loss of funding. Their non-punishment can only mean the bad habits in cycling are set to continue.

Brian Rudman: In matters of life and limb, professors should lead the way

2006-05-03T04:22:00.000+09:30

When it comes to protecting CBD trees, Auckland City does do a great inquest! The felling of the much admired, Parliament St jacaranda after Christmas has been marked by not one, but two official reports.

The latest, entitled Desktop Analysis of Trees in the Private Realm, will be presented at Friday’s meeting of the environment, heritage and urban form committee.

The message is that the 274 (give or take a few) "unscheduled" trees on private property in the central area should be very afraid. The report reiterates that they are at the mercy of the nearest property developer’s chainsaws.

Unlike trees in the rest of the city, CBD trees don’t enjoy any general tree protection. Out in the suburbs a property owner has to go through a lengthy rigmarole to get permission to chop down, trim or dig near the roots of any native tree over 6m in height or with a girth greater than 600mm. For exotics, the height trigger is 8m and the girth 800mm. It’s a much-needed restraint on our settler instincts to slash and burn, and permission is often not granted.

But that’s only in suburbia. In the central city, unless a tree is marked out as "notable" on the district plan, it’s fair game. David Sanders, senior planner, explained it thus in a report in February. "In the Central Area environment, with its intensive urban form and associated high land values, the emphasis of the tree protection methods ... is on ensuring that trees contribute to the amenity of the public realm."

Thus the emphasis is on tree protection in public parks and streets, with a total of 500 protected in places like Albert Park, Old Government House grounds and other public areas, and another 65 on private property.

None of this is new. I remember back nearly five years ago writing about the furore associated with Manson Developments hacking down anything green immediately upon buying a development site at the corner of Emily Place and Shortland St. A few months later, a century-old London plane tree was felled to make way for a new lecture theatre at Auckland University’s engineering school. Auckland Museum’s curator of botany, Ewen Cameron, was upset at the lack of consultation, noting it was one of only a few large, well-formed plane trees in the city.

Friday’s report, based on an analysis of aerial photographs, highlights how "a large portion" of the unprotected trees in the CBD are concentrated to the east, on the slopes of Grafton Gully, and up into the grounds of Auckland University. The analysis estimates there are 39 unscheduled large trees with canopies greater than 12m in diameter, 39 trees with canopies between 8m and 12m and 82 with canopies under 8m. Of the 39 large trees, 19 are in university land "or clustered on the railyard land in Quay Park".

Given the horrors that have occurred on the Quay Park site, my surprise is that any tree has survived intact. Those that remain deserve to be awarded the arboreal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, and be granted protection for life.

As for the university trees, I’m amazed they remain unprotected under the city’s scheduling process. Sure, it’s hard to imagine the professors out with their chain saws doing damage to the university greenery, but the felling of the century-old plane tree and the removal of historic houses over the years, were timely reminders that PhD and Philistine share the same page in some dictionaries.

Five years ago Tony Palmer, the university’s grounds superintendent, rang me with his concerns for the unprotected state of the virtual botanic garden of native plants surrounding the original university campus. Since the 1920s, successive professors of botany had gradually brought the bush to the CBD. Mr Palmer feared for what might happen to this treasure after he had gone.

On Friday the committee will be ask to authorise further study to flesh out the details of the unprotected trees. Could I suggest the university bush is already one of the most studied pieces of greenery in the land. What is needed in its case is a decision to give it some protection. Suggest to the professors they set an example to the other private owners of central city trees by applying for scheduling themselves. Then let’s get serious about the others.

Ross Wilson: National plans to give bosses licence to sack

2006-05-03T04:21:00.000+09:30

New Zealand workers got a taste last month of what a National government might have dealt to them had it been elected last September. A member's bill introduced by the National Party would enable employers to sack workers without reason and remove personal grievance rights for all workers in their first 90 days on the job.

National's Wayne Mapp is calling this the Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill. This is disingenuous. It is a complete removal of any employment rights for the first 90 days, not a genuine, agreed probationary period between an employer and employee as the Employment Relations Act already provides.

If the bill passes, employers will be able to dismiss employees for any reason they choose - they need not provide any basis or reason for their decision.

Regardless of how well an employee is performing or how much effort is put in, if the bill becomes law, an employer will be able to terminate his or her employment at any stage in the first three months.

National's bill is truly the thin end of the wedge. Given the chance, National would also do away with the highly successful network of workplace health and safety reps, throw up the fourth week of annual leave for negotiation, and abolish time-and-a-half for working on public holidays.

The 90 days bill is totally unjustified. Employers can already employ people on a casual basis. They can already employ people for a fixed term. And they can already start someone on a probationary period, provided it is conducted and terminated fairly.

The Employment Relations Act already provides for all of these things, and all National is doing is giving employers a free pass to sack workers at will.

National's approach to employment is a stark contrast to the system we have. It is no coincidence that the Employment Relations Act has coincided with the strongest economic growth and the lowest unemployment in the OECD, and for the second year in a row the World Bank ranked New Zealand top out of 155 countries for ease of doing business.

Companies are continuing to enjoy good profits, and despite a slowdown in the economy, the labour market is predicted to remain tight for the foreseeable future.

Unions argue for an investment approach - in skills and training, in capital, in sound health and safety procedures - to move our country to a high-wage, high-value economy.

The National bill is a direct challenge to this approach. It is a strategy that failed the New Zealand economy in the 1990s and would fail it again now. The key issue facing the labour market right now is how to attract workers with skills, not how to sack them.

Workers have, on average, about six job changes in their lives. So six times in a lifetime, the average worker would be denied their employment rights, as we would all be turned into casual workers for 90 days.

Why would workers take the risk of a new job when they knew that they would be without employment rights for the first three months? The National bill will add to labour market rigidity, not ease it.

The National Party has introduced this bill saying that the removal of personal grievance procedures for new employees will encourage employment growth. But unemployment has gone down substantially in the past 10 years without such a provision.

It is mischievous and untrue for the National Party to use this as a reason for the introduction of this bill.

The bill is a major attack on the rights of all workers. It removes basic employment rights for every worker in our society.

Although this bill would particularly affect short-term, casual and seasonal workers it would apply to every single one of us each time we started a new job.

National's bill is not conducive to building positive and trusting employment relationships in the workplace but instead would create a climate of fear and suspicion.

We certainly hope that the select committee, presented with the evidence, will see fit to reject this bill, as it adds nothing to our workplace relations.

* Ross Wilson is President of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.

David Lowe: Committed employees have nothing to fear

2006-05-03T04:18:00.001+09:30

Wayne Mapp's bill providing a 90-day grievance-free period means employees will be given a chance to show they can do the job. Some employees are missing out on jobs because employers are not prepared to take a chance on them.

A whole range of people need employers to be able to take a chance on them, including people with overseas qualifications, new immigrants, those with no recent work experience, as well as those wanting to step up in their careers or change their career path.

Under the present law, moving on an employee who is not working out can take a long time and be very hard on a business and other staff.

The huge employment grievance industry is one of employers' biggest problems.

An initial trial period to see how things work out is commonly used in other aspects of our lives and makes sense in employment too.

Many countries overseas have very similar legislation, including Australia, Britain and Poland.

Fears that a grievance-free period will be abused by employers are unfounded because good staff are hard to find and no reasonable employer will invest time and effort in taking on new staff just to avoid the risk of a future grievance.

Employees prepared to put in a good day's work would have nothing to fear from the type of probationary work period envisaged.

The Employers' and Manufacturers' Association is recommending that some features of the present Bill unrelated to the grievance-free trial period are removed, to ensure employees' minimum statutory employment conditions are not compromised.

In its "scorecard" of the Government's performance in helping small and medium-sized enterprises, the Small Business Advisory Group called the introduction of a probationary period the "single most important change needed in employment law".

The group has consistently identified the fear of hiring new employees as a significant impediment to business growth, since its establishment by the Labour-led Government in 2003.

The Ministry of Economic Development has found that small businesses' inability to grow into larger enterprises is one of the biggest roadblocks to New Zealand's economic performance.

Successful claims for unjustifiable dismissal cost employers an average of $8790 in awards, and more in terms of legal fees and time off work defending the allegation.

Though a finding of "unjustifiable dismissal" suggests an employer has sacked an employee without any good reason, in most cases the employer has simply failed to follow the strict formal procedures required as laid down in the somewhat arcane formulations of the Employment Court and the Court of Appeal.

Currently, the Employment Relations Act allows employers and new employees to insert a so-called "probationary arrangement" in their employment agreement.

However, the Act specifically states that the agreement between the parties does not change any of the law relating to unjustifiable dismissal. In other words, it allows for probationary periods but stipulates they can have no practical effect.

Because the consequences of employing the wrong person can be serious, many employers adopt a low-risk approach to recruitment. For example, teenagers currently have an unemployment rate four times the national average.

The frustrations often faced by highly qualified immigrants in getting their first chance in the job market are well documented.

Other disadvantaged groups, employment-wise, also stand to benefit strongly from such a provision, including people with interrupted work histories, such as long-term beneficiaries or parents returning to the workforce.

All these groups deserve the chance to prove themselves. Employers want to give them a go, but they don't want the expense if things sour.

Though unions may sometimes act as if a no-fault probation period is the end of the world, this is not borne out by experience in other countries. Many of our major trading partners have probation periods, and many also have strong trade union movements.

In Australia, while each state has its own governing legislation, all allow for probation periods of at least three months. A recent review of federal labour laws means that soon all states will share a common six month no-fault probation period.

In Britain, every employee is subject to a "qualifying period" of 12 months. During this time, the employee cannot bring a claim for unfair dismissal (the same as an unjustifiable dismissal).

Even Germany, which has some of the most strict unjustified-dismissal laws in the world, does not extend these protections to workers until six months' service has been completed.

In fact, all OECD nations except Denmark - and New Zealand - have legal probationary periods in some form.

Employers do not want open slather to tread on the rights of employees.

Where lengthy probation periods are available overseas, employees are still protected from discrimination on the basis of sex or race. They cannot be dismissed for exercising their rights under other laws, such as joining or refusing to join a union, taking parental leave, or whistle-blowing for health and safety reasons.

Employees have every right to claim unpaid wages during the first three months of his or her employment or any other time.

A fine-tuned bill that meets the needs of employers, encourages more job creation, and protects employees' fundamental rights would be like a lottery where everyone won.

* David Lowe is Employment Services Manager for the Employers' & Manufacturers' Association (Northern) Inc.

Graham Reid: Unfortunate in many ways

2006-05-03T04:18:00.000+09:30

She was what my mother would have charitably described as unfortunate. I saw her first on the promenade deck as the ship slipped its lines and slowly headed for the open sea.

She was standing alone, but even in a crowd she would have been hard to miss: overweight, in her 30s at a guess, her dark hair pulled tight at the temples and hanging in a long and unruly ponytail, thick glasses, a sour expression on her round face ...

I thought of my mother's likely description - then thought no more of her.

Some 1200 of us happy travellers plus 600 crew were on a 10-day cruise to Vanuatu and New Caledonia aboard Pacific Sky, a ship I once knew as the Fairsky but is now refitted to traipse lazily around the Pacific offering an affordable holiday-cum-escape.

The passengers on this cruise may have been typical: the aged, the infirm and the chronically obese who would find air travel uncomfortable, if not impossible.

But there was also, to my surprise, a large number of young people who partied on the deck until well after the rest of us had made for our cabins, worn out by sleeping in the sun, swimming, eating and reading.

The mood afloat was relaxed and friendly. By day, games and competitions were held on the deck, and every night entertainment came from the band, the DJ or the energetic dance company in the stateroom. There were talent quests and karaoke, a 24-hour pizza parlour and a cinema.

At meals in the two dining rooms - the Savoy and the Regency - or at the Outback Grill on the deck you would find yourself seated next to former strangers and would inevitably chat.

I chatted with lively and good-humoured senior citizens from Otaki and Dunedin, Oamaru and Christchurch, and young people from the North Shore and Melbourne.

And as you lolled by one of the two pools, lay around on the expansive deck under a clear canopy of blue, or sat in one of the many bars, you would also chat with fellow travellers.

Late one afternoon with Auckland hundreds of kilometres and a couple of carefree, sun-tanned days behind us, I went to check my emails in the internet centre by the library.

I had a little trouble logging on and a typically helpful crew member rebooted the terminal. Behind me a woman began to complain that she couldn't get on to the website she wanted, so the young man moved on to help her.

He couldn't figure out the problem so asked if she would try another terminal. She did but again couldn't get on to the site she wanted.

He was apologetic but she was becoming increasingly annoyed. He tried again and failed, her frustration turned to anger and the small room filled with palpable tension.

He politely asked whether this website had download potential because the company didn't allow for access to such sites.

No, said the woman with a bark. And then she demanded to know why the company didn't warn people of this before they bought their access code number.

The man remained polite, but the woman turned nasty and whining.

When she explained the nature of the site she was trying to log on to he had the unhappy task of telling her the company didn't allow for access to such sites either.

Away she went: passengers deserved better and should be told this; she had wasted her time and money; she was being made to feel it was her fault because the company probably wouldn't give her a refund ...

I, like the others in the room, turned to see who was making the fuss.

And I suspect we all shared a single thought. Why, when you are on a boat of 1200 people with get-together nights and a friendly camaraderie where people ate, talked and danced with previous strangers, would you want to get into a chat room?

Do what everyone else does on board. Just chat.

She was even more unfortunate than I first thought.

David Leggat: Something stinks in hidden details of cycling incident

2006-05-03T04:16:00.000+09:30

Cycling is the latest sports body to try avoiding bad news by ducking its head.

Whether it reached an appropriate punishment for two drunken Commonwealth Games riders is near impossible to assess as it won’t reveal what it discovered about the activities of pursuit pair Marc Ryan and Tim Gudsell and women’s national 500m champion Liz Williams early on March 19 in Melbourne.

There’s a common thread among many sports administrators in New Zealand. When there’s a whiff of trouble, go into lockdown. Say nothing and hope it will all go away. Here’s a news flash: It doesn’t.

Cycling NZ has done the men no favours with its decision.

Ryan and Gudsell have been put on good behaviour for the next year, told to get counselling and visit a shrink. Williams was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Yes, it’s a bit wet bus-tickety, as Williams’ mother, Patricia, claimed.

Then again, giving them 50 lashes and throwing them out of the national team for a couple of years would have been at the draconian end of the scale.

If Ryan and Gudsell’s behaviour was truly blown out of proportion, why not reveal it, therefore putting the matter to bed and putting the swirl of allegations in their place?

Keeping lips sealed only allows imaginations to run rampant.

If they are chosen for the Olympics in 2008, in many minds it’ll be, "Aren’t those the guys who ... ?"

Cycling administrators should also look hard at themselves over president Wayne Hudson’s comment that heavy drinking in post-competition celebrations had played its part and he’d dealt with 15 disciplinary and doping complaints in three years.

Come again? Fifteen? What the heck is going on in this sport?

In truth, maybe not much different to several other sports, but that’s not the point.

Let’s not get too prudish. Throw men, women and booze together in an unsupervised environment when they have completed a job for which they have been preparing, often monastically, for months and things will happen.

I’d wager there’s never been an Olympic or Commonwealth Games where new, often brief friendships are made. It will always be the way.

Hudson yesterday talked of not washing dirty linen in public, of not wanting to feed voyeuristic minds, which is precisely what has been done.

He also mentioned "bad aspects of behaviour amongst a certain type of cyclist". What type is he referring to? Young and male? Track riders? Road? Lefthanders? South Islanders?

You might think athletes are grown ups who should know how to behave while on national team duty. The reality is often you’d be dead wrong.

Should chaperones, as Mrs Williams insisted, be introduced? For 15-year-old gymnasts, absolutely.

For 20-something cyclists? No, but a sensible set of guidelines imposed by an independent manager, not a one-of-the-boys, turn-a-blind-eye official, would be a decent step forward.

Soon after the incident, Nick Hill, chief executive of Government sports funding agency Sparc, remarked that "it raises questions round the culture of cycling and the extent to which culture, performance and results are all tied up together".

Cycling, by most expectations, was an under-performer in Melbourne.

Cycling NZ deserves a pat for revealing what action it has taken. But it could have done much more.

WHAT HAPPENED?

* The allegations which circulated at the time of the incident include:

* Drunken cyclists Tim Gudsell and Marc Ryan strip naked and sprint laps round the Commonwealth Games village.

* They urinate on teammate Liz Williams’ shoes, which are subsequently thrown in a fountain.

* They try to strip Williams and threaten to urinate on her.

Tracey Barnett: Suicide bombers follow a morality of their own

2006-05-03T04:15:00.000+09:30

When her third son died during a terrorist action, bereaved mother Umm Nidal Farhat prepared boxes of halva and chocolates and handed them out to his friends.

"At first I did not cry. I said, 'Allah Akbar', and bowed in gratitude. The truth is I was ashamed to say, 'Allah, help me in my tragedy', because I consider this a blessing, not a tragedy," she told Egypt's Dream2 TV.

She was proud that her son broke into an Israeli settlement and spent 22 minutes going from room to room killing 10 and injuring 23 until he ran out of ammunition.

If civilians get in the way, "these are war necessities", she said.

"We cannot stop sacrificing just because we feel pain. My children are the most precious thing in my life. That is why I sacrificed them for a greater cause - for Allah."

She has 10 sons and will sacrifice them all if Allah deems it, "even if it costs me 100 sons".

Female suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat's mother feels differently. She lost a daughter and a son.

"If I had known, would I have let my daughter die? I already sacrificed one child, would I sacrifice another? Even if they offered you all of Palestine, you would rather give it all up than lose your son," she told Al-Jazeera TV.

"If you had known, what would you have said to her?" the interviewer asked.

"I would not have let her go. I would have tied her up. I would have locked her in her room and stayed with her for an entire year."

Meet the new mothers of "martyrs". We in the West can't touch the relentless passion, commitment and effectiveness their children are bringing to the ways of war.

Whether we like it or not, "terrorist" and "martyr" have become bastard synonyms. Decades have passed since terrorism and suicide bombing were aberrant individual acts by those on the margins.

Turn on television in the Arab world today and you don't have to look far for a culture nurturing martyrdom that we never get to see.

There's Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: "Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine and more eternal than the art of martyrdom?" (Channel 1, Iran); a Yemen cleric on how Yemenite women should reach out to their Palestinian suicide bomber sisters (Yemen TV); or a Lebanese information minister on martyrdom as an "art" that creates a "strategic balance" (NBN, Lebanon).

There are music videos, a national holiday and even children's animated cartoons all honouring the sanctity of what we would call a terrorist act.

Frightening? You bet. They are breaking all our rules:

War should be fought between soldiers. Involving innocent civilians is wrong. A soldier's goal is to live, not die, right?

But their moral surety is crashing head on into ours.

They argue they are using the most effective weapon of war - their lives - against a larger power.

There are two sides to this bloody tale and we're afraid to admit it.

Why is it so incendiary in our culture even to suggest they are ready to die for what they perceive as the greater good? We are both working from a moral imperative. Each of us can point to a holy reference that justifies our moral stance.

The reason we dismiss terrorism is because they aren't killing in the manner that the West kills. Who is to be applauded here for moral supremacy?

Because their methods are repugnant to us, it is easy to forget that suicide bombers in Iraq, Israel, Chechnya, Sri Lanka - or even London - are fighting a war for what they see as occupation of their homeland.

In Slate magazine, Fred Kaplan cites three new academic studies - diversely from America, Israel and one commissioned by Saudi Arabia - that independently say the same thing.

These young men - and now more increasingly women - are not blowing themselves up for some grand pan-Islamic rhetoric. They are doing this to resist what they see as foreign occupation of their homeland.

Does that make the killing of innocent civilians any more morally palatable to us? We in the West scream "no" without hesitation. To us the image of Iran's 40,000-strong Special Unit of Martyr Seekers marching with explosive packs around their waists and holding detonators is the stuff of sci-fi nightmares.

If we begin to see terrorism for what it is - a freshman entry into the arsenal of war - that doesn't mean we're likely to get any closer to holding hands and singing Kumbaya together anytime soon.

What it does mean is that as citizens, as voters, we can be asking our Western governments to see the bigger political picture and recognise that terrorism is a terrible symptom of a larger political disease.

It is our instinct to see the terrorist act itself as an inflammatory catalyst. But there is a dead end to our indignation. Effective governments can create a response that pushes past that.

Constructing policy based on immediate incitement is itself an act of political suicide. George Bush did it and now everybody is losing.

Sadly, the sheer effectiveness of suicide bombers is now battling for cultural credibility for an entire region of the world - and slowly winning.

Terrorism may be just a snapshot of our time, an ugly freeze-frame of war today. But perhaps the greater dirty truth is that the lines of morality in war may have forever changed.

And that is just about as scary as handing out halva and chocolates for murder.

* Tracey Barnett is an American journalist working in Auckland.

Sideswipe

2006-05-02T05:16:00.000+09:30

By Ana Samways

Like so many busy people in our hectic world, Ahmed Zaoui has had to resort to a diary co-ordinator to handle his heavy demands. The information comes from the good folk at Zaoui Volunteers in their latest email to friends. "We ask you for your continued support of Ahmed and his family at this very uncertain time," it opens. It then tells us his lawyer, Deborah Manning, is going overseas to see witnesses who cannot be briefed from New Zealand. But, in the meantime, "if you live in Auckland, please feel free to invite Ahmed to your homes or favourite place for coffee, lunch, dinner. If you would like to join him for dinner at the Priory also let us know. For efficiency reasons, please call Ahmed’s diary coordinator, Sarah on 836 5509 or email at zaoui_volunteers@xtra.co.nz." Sideswipe is seeking suggestions for Zaoui’s diary. Email them to newsdesk@nzherald.co.nz and we’ll make sure they get to Sarah.

***

Small differences: A reader clicked on the Woolworths online store and tried to order Lisas Hummus. Up popped a pic of Kylie Minogue.

***

It’s good to know they even have petrol problems in civilised Scandinavia. The chauffeur with Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf in northern Norway drove away from a petrol station without paying for his fuel, the palace admitted. The King and Queen Silvia have a cabin in Norway’s Troendelag region, which they routinely visit at Easter. On their way home from a day’s outing last month, the royals stopped to fill up. Their driver went in to pay and buy sweets but drove off after paying only for the candy. "As you do, he went to pay and didn’t think separately about paying for petrol," palace spokeswoman Ann-Christine Jernberg said. "When you pay with your credit card, you sometimes just sign ... It was really a mistake." The bill was paid after the owner of the petrol station at Graamyra south of Levanger contacted the palace in Stockholm.

***

Reader Kerry Bax sent in this news: "In 1996 when my children were 7 and 10 years old we had a holiday in the Bay of Islands. One of the highlights was to be a dolphin encounter. Unfortunately the weather was bad on the day of the boat trip and we never got to see dolphins. But Fullers gave us a voucher for a repeat trip, which could be redeemed at any time in the future. We never went back to the Bay of Islands so the voucher just sat in a drawer until my daughter (now 17) had a friend visiting from Wales in April. One of her dreams was to swim with dolphins. I found the voucher, and they took it with them on their trip up north. The woman at the booking office was surprised to see the age of the voucher and commented that although they had no way of checking it because it was issued before their computer booking system, they would honour it. On the trip itself the guide mentioned that if the group did not see dolphins they would get a voucher to return another time and pointed out my daughter as an example of the system working, saying that she had last been on the trip when she was 7 years old! This time the girls were lucky and had a wonderful dolphin experience." Good on you, Fullers.

***

One for trivia experts is this email doing the rounds: Check your computer this Thursday at two minutes and three seconds after 1 am. The time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. That won’t ever happen again.

John Armstrong: National deputy on right track with call for rethink

2006-05-02T05:15:00.000+09:30

His colleagues claim he simply said something he did not mean to say. But mistake or not, Gerry Brownlee deserves credit for suggesting the National Party take a hard look at its pledge to abolish the Maori seats.

National has to ask itself how long it keeps luring voters down this dead-end street under false pretences when its more pressing priority is building a solid working relationship with the Maori Party.

Sometimes the only exit from a policy cul-de-sac is to back out slowly.

National’s deputy leader appeared to be gently nudging his party towards engaging reverse gear at the weekend - only to be jumped on by his boss, who insists National is not about to dilute its pledge.

The result is confusion as to exactly where National now stands - something its MPs were subsequently trying to thrash out during a closed-door session on policy development yesterday.

The trouble is National wants the best of both worlds. It wants to keep its promise to axe the Maori seats for the votes that brings the party’s way. It also needs to establish a rapport with the Maori Party before the next election in the likelihood it will need its backing afterwards.

Reaching such an understanding is going to be difficult enough, yet National persists with a policy that threatens the Maori Party’s very existence.

The policy also comes a long way down National’s "must do" list. National would be unlikely to get the numbers in Parliament as other support parties would lack the stomach for what would be a particularly divisive measure.

The promise is, therefore, somewhat hollow. Its credibility is correspondingly devalued. As Labour was quick to point out, Mr Brownlee’s apparent willingness to discard it suggests National would willingly drop a supposed bottom line if that stood between it and power.

But Mr Brownlee could justifiably argue that National would be naive not to bring such policy into line with political reality - just as it is doing by firming up its opposition to visits by nuclear-powered ships.

It is better to be transparent well in advance of the election, rather than pretending to be sticking with a policy that everyone knows will be shelved once National reaches the negotiating table.

However, the difficulty with the promise to abolish the Maori seats is that it does not stand in isolation. The pledge symbolically underpins National’s fundamental assertion that Maori not receive any favourable treatment. Making an exception for the Maori seats would make a nonsense of that wider stance - one which sparked the party’s resurgence in the last parliamentary term and one in which Don Brash has invested a lot of his personal political capital.

There is already concern within the party that since the election, National has been blurring its differentiation from Labour on too many policy fronts.

Mr Brownlee’s remark - a response to a reporter’s question following his considered speech to the party’s northern region conference - is consequently being explained away as a slip of the tongue.

The other interpretation is that the party is speaking with a forked tongue. Mr Brownlee is sending one message to the Maori Party, while Dr Brash is sending a different one to Pakeha voters.

The more likely reality is that National’s wooing of the Maori Party was always going to be a long and delicate courtship filled with tentative advances and coy retreats.

Mr Brownlee’s advance is the latest. It won’t be the last.

Editorial: Protecting wishes of lifesavers

2006-05-02T05:14:00.000+09:30

Last year, only 29 New Zealanders became organ donors after they had died. That is a low number, even for a country in which the annual donation rate over the past decade places it towards the bottom of the developed world. But perhaps it is no more than expected, given the peculiar donation framework. That structure effectively ensures that the final outcome will bear no relation to the fact that 1.1 million people have said "yes" to organ donation on their driver's licence.

The problem starts with the status and scope of that affirmation. Unlike other parts of the licence, it is not legally binding. Nor does it specify what parts of the body can be used for patients needing a transplant. Nor, indeed, is the process of granting approval a matter that drivers are encouraged to regard as more than an afterthought.

All this has meant that people who have signed up to be organ donors do not always have their wishes honoured. In the highly fraught circumstances of emergency rooms, where suitable organs are most likely to become available, doctors allow grief-stricken relatives a veto. They decide, in effect, not to heap more trauma on family members by forcing a donation they do not want.

The sensitivity is understandable. But, notwithstanding the delicacy of the situation, it also denies donors their wish. And that fundamental fact has prompted an increasing demand for a more cogent donation framework, one which ensures donors' wishes are honoured and which alleviates the pressure on doctors to bow to the view of grieving families.

That demand has prompted a public petition, an expanded national donation agency, and a recommendation by Parliament's health select committee that an organ donor register should be linked to the driving licence database. The latter was initially rejected by the Government. But it has subsequently promised to set up a public register after the completion of a ministerial review.

That development ties in, albeit not completely snugly, with a private member's bill that will be introduced to Parliament tomorrow. The Human Tissue (Organ Donation) Amendment Bill, which is sponsored by National MP Jackie Blue, would create an opt-on database of people who, on the basis of informed consent, wished to become donors. They could state which organs they wished to donate. The bill would also prevent anyone from overturning the wishes of a registered donor.

Doctors are adamantly opposed to the bill, describing it as unenforceable. But that view does not tally with the fact that similar law is being passed by an increasing number of American states. The bill, as Dr Blue concedes, has flaws in its present forms. It will be the job of a select committee, aided by the current ministerial review, to refine it. At the very least, the legislation provides a foundation for tackling the low rate of organ donation.

The doctors' opposition is understandable on one count. Legislation, by itself, will do little to lessen the delicacy of their encounters with distraught families. For that to happen, there must be early and more intensive discussion within families. Prospective donors need to let their relatives know they wish to donate. Families forearmed with that knowledge and insight would be far less likely to pressure medical staff.

In sum, the removal of the veto will be best for all concerned - donors, families and doctors. As will the replacement of a framework perched unsatisfactorily on the periphery of driver licensing. Organ donors deserve more than that, as do those awaiting life-saving transplants.

Peter Nowak: Government holds web key

2006-05-02T05:12:00.000+09:30

The rural sector has been quite vocal of late in the broadband debate. Farmers and other provincial residents have been voicing their opinions in an effort to avoid getting left behind by the Government when it unveils its telecommunications review, evidently now only a month away.

If anything the complaints shine a spotlight on just how much broadband is the Government's problem, not Telecom's.

Hugh Ritchie, Federated Farmers telecommunications spokesman representing 17,000 farmers across the country, wrote in the Herald a few weeks ago that unbundling Telecom's local loop could be bad for rural residents.

"If Telecom's network is unbundled, can farmers and their families really continue to expect Telecom and other companies to invest in getting broadband services to rural New Zealand?" he wrote.

Telecom's competitors have admitted they'll concentrate their investment on high-value urban areas once unbundling is instituted. Telecom, for its part, has suggested the resulting increase in urban competition could mean less investment in rural areas.

Nobody wants to invest expensive telecommunications equipment in sparsely populated areas that show little promise of generating a return.

Strangely, Federated Farmers - which comes to Telecom's defence whenever there's a regulatory threat - seems to harbour the belief that the company is their benevolent friend.

But Telecom isn't necessarily providing rural New Zealanders with services because it wants to. It may be good for public image to do so, but it certainly doesn't stack up for the company's bottom line.

Telecom is obliged to provide these services by an agreement it signed with the Government in 1990. The deal requires Telecom to maintain phone services wherever they were available at the time, and the agreement was updated in 2001 to include dial-up internet services.

Each year, the Commerce Commission determines the total cost to Telecom of provisioning these services - $41.2 million in 2003-04 - and then forces other telcos, such as TelstraClear and CallPlus, to pony up a portion based on their percentage of the telecommunications market.

In effect, the Government requires Telecom to supply services to unprofitable customers, then forces other telcos to subsidise the act. It's a bizarre set-up that doesn't make business sense for anyone involved.

The broadband complaints from rural New Zealanders are inevitably about either their inability to get it, or if they can get it, the slow speeds and high prices on offer.

The cynical city slicker is often quick to spurn these complaints. Poor telecommunications and slow internet speeds are part of the price to be paid for living in the country, the argument goes. After all, rural dwellers don't have to deal with recycling trucks smashing bottles outside their apartment at two in the morning, and the sight of rolling hills or mountains is substantially more soul-soothing than concrete skyscrapers and traffic jams. We city dwellers may get better and cheaper broadband, but we don't get peace and quiet and nature.

But the issue goes beyond that. Given that the economics of the private sector provisioning rural residents with proper telecommunications services don't stack up, this is clearly a public sector problem.

The Government seems to understand this, but its solutions thus far have achieved only limited success. Four years ago, the Ministries of Education and Economic Development set up Project Probe to help facilitate the roll-out of wireless and satellite broadband to rural communities, primarily to schools.

Tens of millions of dollars later, the project was completed last year, but given the number of complaints that continue to roll in, it's obvious there's still much to be done.

The Government's first step should be the removal of the anachronistic universal phone service obligation on Telecom. Supplying rural New Zealanders with their phone and internet services should not be any company's obligation. They should only do so if there's money to be made.

Indeed, that fact has led to a cottage industry - pardon the pun - springing up. Internet service providers such as Iconz and Bay City seem to be doing quite well in trying to fill the void by selling satellite and wireless broadband services out in the boondocks. The impending addition of services from US-based PanAmSat will increase the choices - and thus lower the prices - for rural dwellers.

Still, as far as wired phone and broadband goes, if the Government is really serious about rural New Zealanders not being left behind it needs to knuckle up and invest some serious money of its own.

The Government needs to either build its own rural network, buy Telecom's, or pay the company to provide better services. Nobody else will, and nobody else should.

Eye on China: Few guests but many a reservation

2006-05-02T05:10:00.000+09:30

The United States' leading tech and entrepreneur magazine, Red Herring, has just held an interesting conference in Beijing. It was interesting in the same way a motorway pile-up is interesting.

Perhaps that's overstating the case - the lunch buffet was excellent - and the venue, the brand-new Intercontinental in the west of Beijing, was good as well. But problems became apparent from the first day.

The Intercontinental has a rock-bottom occupancy rate and there's a good reason for that - it's in a bad location. With typical obduracy, the Chinese Government has looked at the thriving downtown district in the east of the city and decided that setting up something completely artificial and inconvenient on the other side of town makes far more sense. They can't leave well alone.

Partly as a result, few people actually turned up. Cost was also a major factor: At US$1500 ($2300) a pop, the tickets were about 10 times what local people usually pay for such conferences, if they pay at all.

Ironically, many of the speakers were Japanese. Smart, polished and with well-established ventures behind them, these men reflect a resurgent Japan. They were much older than the Chinese present and they had accomplished far more.

Sacchio Semmoto spoke about his intense rivalry with Softbank founder Masayoshi Son, a rivalry which helped drive Japan's broadband access cost to among the lowest in the world - from being the highest - a situation which had put Japan's ability to compete in a new high-tech world seriously in peril.

Semmoto did so by creating the first rival to the incumbent Japanese telecoms provider since World War II. He's now hoping to do the same thing for mobile phone services in Japan.

Contrary to popular belief, airtime for Japan's mobile phones is expensive, and penetration and usage rates are relatively low. Semmoto exemplifies the tremendous impact the right kind of entrepreneur can have and his comments about the foolish decision of Japan to adopt mobile phone standards completely different to the rest of the world were revealing.

Japanese telecom monopolies at the time hoped thereby to keep competition from foreign companies away from Japan. They succeeded, but only at the extraordinarily high price of depriving themselves of export markets for their main products.

Yet despite the value of these speakers, it was something of a social gaffe. Relations between Japan and China are at their lowest point for several years and, in any case, Japan's economy is so large and isolated that it functions at a rhythm quite separate to the rest of the Asia.

While the organisers did their best to make the conference go with a bang, other problems rapidly became embarrassingly apparent. The second day was meant to start at 7.40am, but was delayed by more than an hour since not a single delegate was out of bed at that time. The dynamic West Coast American organisers' amazement at the much slower pace of life in Beijing was quite comical.

Another Chinese aspect of the conference was that the local delegates were basically uninterested in what was occurring on stage. They were networking like fury over the lunches - which thus also dragged on for much longer than scheduled - rather than listening to the speakers.

Even more striking was a somewhat gladiatorial event known as "meet the money" whereby a few brave souls have three minutes to pitch their company to a board of venture capitalists. After a round of questions, the VCs give the thumbs up or down.

Here a huge cultural gulf appeared. Getting information in China, including the most basic, is still astonishingly difficult. Even with listed companies, potentially sensitive information is hidden away under random headings, while technical issues such as badly maintained websites compound the problem.

A culture of intellectual property theft makes people even more reserved (one doltish and obviously monolingual Chinese entrepreneur at the conference had dubbed his company Softbrain, in an attempt to piggyback off Son's Softbank). But, as a result, information is hoarded.

The Americans weren't used to this and the US-trained VCs were clearly outraged at the soft presentations and mushy videos provided by most of the candidates, about 90 per cent of whom they failed. It was easy to applaud the Americans' demands for more access to key information, however much it made the locals squirm.

The conference did highlight one of the paradoxes of China, namely that a developing country should have such a high-profile tech sector and attract the attention of magazines such as Red Herring. When I put this to some of the delegates, they put an interesting gloss on the phenomenon.

One told me that Chinese tech companies were not really intent on becoming "real" tech companies. Companies such as Hong Kong-listed Focus Media merely put LCD screens in office lobbies and sell advertising on them. Tom Online, also listed in Hong Kong, has a hugely successful mobile phone services operation, but mainly revolving around simple texting and downloads. But what the technology does is enable these companies to achieve the vast scale necessary to exploit China's gigantic and far-flung markets.

Overall, I thought the conference was a brave stab at a new market. One can only hope that the Chinese will ponder the advice for increased financial transparency, while the Americans might consider lowering their prices.

* Eye on China is a journalist based in Beijing.

Cameron Pitches: Projects hinge on price of oil

2006-05-02T05:07:00.000+09:30

A little over a year ago, when oil was US$56 ($88) a barrel, I wrote an article which concluded that New Zealand needed to diversify away from fossil fuels in order to survive and prosper.

One year on, and with oil now over US$75 per barrel, there has been no policy response at all from central Government.

Transport projects that would reduce our dependency on imported fossil fuels, such as electrification of the rail network, are being passed over in favour of completing "missing" links of the motorway network.

With the price of oil forecast to go much higher than the 25 per cent increase we have had in the past year, many fossil fuel-dependent projects simply will not be viable.

Fuel prices will continue to rise as they have done for over five years now. This is because demand continues to grow globally, while supply remains flat or even starts to decline.

Recent studies show that nine out of the top ten international oil companies have flat or declining production rates as a result of their oil fields maturing.

Why do fossil fuel-dependent transport projects continue to be funded in New Zealand? Mainly because the benefit cost ratio (BCR) framework used by Government agencies completely ignores the future price of fuel.

An example is the road pricing study being championed by the Ministry of Transport. I attended a briefing for this recently and I asked officials what the expected price of petrol will be in 2016, which is the purported time frame of the project.

After a bemused silence, the answer was that the price was irrelevant for the purpose of comparing different charging options, and so was benchmarked at today's prices.

Future fuel prices are also similarly ignored for billions of dollars worth of projects, such as the Manukau Harbour crossing and the State Highway 20 projects being promoted by Transit.

Under the BCR evaluation framework, therefore, fossil fuel dependent projects will still appear to be viable even if no one can afford the future price of petrol.

It shouldn't be like this. In 2003 the Government enacted the Land Transport Management Act. The aim of this act is to provide an "integrated, safe, responsive and sustainable land transport system".

The act established a funding process so approved organisations such as Transit, local and regional councils and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) could seek funds for transport projects from Land Transport New Zealand. Projects from different sources were supposed to be evaluated and prioritised according to the aims of the act.

Clearly the implementation of the Land Transport Management Act is failing. It is hard to see how the sustainability of transport projects can be evaluated if the price of oil is not considered. Also projects which are environmentally beneficial or reduce carbon dioxide emissions don't receive any greater weighting than ones that don't.

Further adding to the confusion is a recent Government directive that Treasury will now take over the funding of rail capital projects.

The Government went as far as supplying the Auckland Regional Council with a list of Auckland rail projects that Treasury is willing to fund.

These include established projects such as double tracking the western line, but don't include any plans for electrification or expansion of the rail network such as the Onehunga branch line.

ARTA, the agency tasked with planning Auckland's passenger transport, has wisely determined that Auckland needs electrification as the price of oil rockets through the US$70 a barrel mark, but it is unable to convince Treasury of this.

Our Government has funded alternative transport more so than any other in recent history. But now we are facing a new challenge. We must accept the reality of rising oil prices, start making intelligent decisions and fund the most appropriate transport projects.

It remains to be seen when the Government will finally start doing this. Perhaps, when petrol reaches $2 a litre, it may realise that the congestion charging initiative will be redundant.

Perhaps, when petrol reaches $3 a litre, it may suspend all uncommitted roading projects, and begin investment in an alternative fuels infrastructure instead.

We can only hope that whenever the Government does decide to act, that it will not be too late to catch up with the rest of the world.

* Cameron Pitches is a software consultant and the Convener of the Campaign for Better Transport.

Dov Bing: Fermenting of a dangerous brew

2006-05-02T05:05:00.000+09:30

To the surprise of many observers, Hamas won the recent elections on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It has formed a Government and replaced the secular Fatah party of Abu Mazen. The latter remains the President of the Palestinian Authority, thus creating a so-called co-habitation situation.

Almost immediately after the election of Hamas, the large sponsors of the Palestinian Authority cut their funding.

The United States, the European Union (25 states), Australia, Canada and Japan have indicated that as long as Hamas does not recognise Israel, does not renounce terrorism and does not recognise the Oslo Accords, no further funding will be forthcoming.

New Zealand, not having designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation, stands virtually alone among the Western countries.

The external funding of the PA amounted to some $1.5 billion a year. Iran and Syria have with much fanfare, but minimal amounts, announced they will now support Hamas and its policies.

Hope exists on the part of some of the erstwhile sponsors that Hamas will rewrite its charter and adopt more realistic policies now that it has accepted Government responsibility. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have strongly recommended that Hamas change its irredentist policies and its support for terrorism.

Unfortunately, statements by the Hamas Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs make it clear that Hamas has no intention of changing its policies.

During the Al Aqsa Intifada (2000-2005), Hamas was responsible for most of the suicide murders of civilians in Israel. Recent suicide murders in Israel, for which Islamic Jihad took responsibility, were condemned by Abu Mazen, but not by the Hamas Government, which condoned them.

What makes Hamas such an irredentist terrorist movement? The answer can be found in the Hamas Charter (1988).

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organisation banned in most Muslim countries.

According to Article 13 of the charter: "[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of Hamas ... there is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad."

Article 15 expands on this Jihad: "We must spread the spirit of Jihad among the Umma, clash with the enemies and join the ranks of the Jihad fighters ... we must imprint on the minds of generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a religious one, to be dealt with on this premise".

The second part of the charter reads more like Hitler's Mein Kampf. Article 32 informs us that "Zionist scheming has no end and after Palestine they [Israel] will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates. Their [Israel's] scheme has been laid out in The Protokols of the Elders of Zion".

And in Article 28 we are informed who will help the Israeli Zionists to fulfil their desires. "It [Israel] relies to a great extent, for its meddling and spying activities, on the clandestine organisations which it has established such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions and other spy associations. All those secret organisations ... strive to demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and wipe out Islam. It stands behind the diffusion of drugs and toxics of all kinds in order to facilitate its control and expansion."

In Article 17 of the charter Hamas makes it clear that "it will wipe out those organisations which are the enemy of humanity and Islam".

The Protokols of the Elders of Zion is the most notorious anti-Semitic fabrication of all time. It contains a so-called secret plan for world domination, and provided the ideological justification for the destruction of the Jewish people by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

But it is widely known that the Protokols were compiled by Russian anti-Semites in the office of the Tsarist Okbrana (Secret Police) at the end of the 19th century.

Elsewhere the Hamas Charter accuses the Jewish people of being responsible for the French Revolution, the Communist Revolutions and both World Wars. Article 22 of the charter claims: "There was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprint on it".

The combination of virulent European anti-Semitism with religiously motivated Jihad against Israel is a dangerous brew. The aim of Hamas is the destruction of Israel and that policy has been clear from its inception in 1988. Hamas now has the support of Iran to "wipe Israel off the map".

* Professor Dov Bing is on the staff of the Department of Political Science and Public Policy, University of Waikato.

Sideswipe

2006-05-01T04:52:00.000+09:30

This outstanding document was issued by the Government's Energy Safe Service.

By Ana Samways

Now this is where things get silly: A page from the NZ Electrical Code of Practice for Homeowner/Occupiers Electrical Wiring Work in Domestic Installations (above), spotted by a canny reader, who says, "I really didn't think electricity made any sort of cultural distinction, but apparently even the laws of physics are governed by the Treaty now ... "

* * *

A reader writes: "Our daughter Kya, who is approaching 5 years old, was being shown around her prospective school in preparation for enrolment. She was unable to meet with the principal, which seemed to affect her more than anticipated until she mentioned wishing she had met the "Prince of the pool".

* * *

Mark Bradman responds to CNN.com's list of worst songs ever. "Dated as these songs may now seem, and speaking as a person who is old enough to remember their release, you really had to have been there at the time. I wonder what people will be saying about the songs that are currently top of our charts (Beep by The Pussycat Dolls and T-Pain's I'm In Luv Wit A Stripper ) in 30 years' time?"

* * *

Petrus van der Schaaf from Auckland says tuna browser James Marris is overlooking the fact that Swedish rounding applies to the grand total and not to individual items. He therefore "has missed a golden opportunity to save significantly more than 1 per cent on his tuna purchases. If he buys three cans, he will be charged $2.97 which rounds down to $2.95 - a saving of 1.66 per cent and a 66 per cent improvement on what he gets when he buys one. Go James!"

* * *

Nurses have put posters of Brad Pitt and George Clooney on the ceiling of a hospital examination room to help women relax during gynaecological check-ups. Staff at Britain's Leigh Infirmary hope the heart-throbs will help patients' minds wander while procedures are carried out. They can also daydream about David Beckham and actor Jesse Metcalfe, the gardener in Desperate Housewives. (Source: Salon.com)

Editorial: Consensus needed over Iran

2006-05-01T04:51:00.000+09:30

The International Atomic Agency's latest report on Iran goes some way towards confirming what most people have long suspected: Tehran is intent on building its own nuclear weapons. The report shows how the Iranians defied a United Nations Security Council deadline to halt the enrichment of uranium, a necessary step in the process of producing fuel for either power stations or nuclear weapons.

In itself this does not prove the case but legitimate suspicion is hardened by their less-than-frank dealings with the agency's inspectors, who were not allowed to find out enough about Iran's enrichment process to conclude that it was for peaceful purposes only. "Because of this and other gaps in the agency's knowledge, including the role of the military in Iran's nuclear programme, the agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran," wrote the director-general, Mohammed El Baradei.

For three years Mr El Baradei and his team have been trying to get to the bottom of Iran's plans and the fact that they are being frustrated so effectively points to only one conclusion.

If this all seems depressingly familiar, then so is the reaction of the international community. Most agree that Iran should not be allowed the join the nuclear weapons club. However, there are deep divisions on how to prevent Tehran from achieving its dangerous objectives. The United States and Britain, as usual, want a firm policy; a resolution under the section of the UN charter that allows for sanctions and even the use of force.

But arrayed against them are two other Security Council members - China and Russia, who insist on diplomacy short of sanctions. Both of these countries have important economic links to Iran - the former buys oil from there and the latter is helping the Iranians to build a nuclear power plant. The importance of their role cannot be underestimated because, as permanent members of the council, both have the power to veto its resolutions.

The Iranians, of course, exploit the disagreements for all they are worth. Their leaders spout contradictory statements - on one hand insisting their intentions are purely peaceful, on the other loudly rattling their sabres - which play well at home, in the wider Muslim world and even in parts of the West.

However, if one thing is certain in this sorry mess it is that the United States must resist the urge to act unilaterally. There should be no pre-emptive strike - as was recently suggested - and there must be no attempt to bypass the United Nations. Rather than relying on its military muscle, the United States should bring its considerable economic and political influence to bear on both China and Russia so that a consensus can be forged and the world can speak with one voice to send a clear message to Tehran.

There are signs that the regime there would bend to such pressure. At the weekend, for instance, Iran appeared to be anxious to avoid having its case debated in the Security Council, despite the divisions between the members. In response to Mr El Barradei's report the Tehran regime offered to allow the resumption of snap inspections of its nuclear facilities. This, of course, was too little too late. Nothing less than the cessation of uranium enrichment should satisfy the international community.

Achieving that will be a difficult task made so much harder because the United States and Britain squandered so much political capital and goodwill by their conduct in Iraq.

Helen Bain: Terns take priority over new houses

2006-05-01T04:50:00.000+09:30

Fairy terns may be the most critically endangered birds in New Zealand, and perhaps even the world's rarest terns, new DNA evidence suggests.

But developers are proposing to build up to 2000 homes near Mangawhai Heads on the Northland coast at what the Department of Conservation describes as "the single most important breeding site in the world" for these birds.

Now new genetic research confirming the birds are unique to New Zealand means the threat posed to their survival is even more critical.

Research at Auckland University on DNA from New Zealand fairy terns has identified a unique genetic trait which shows they are a distinct population with characteristics different from Australian and New Caledonian populations.

The New Zealand fairy tern (Sterna nereis davisae) is already considered to be a separate subspecies of the Australian fairy tern (Sterna nereis) because of physical and behavioural differences, including a distinctive area of enlarged black feathering in front of the eye.

The Auckland University report recommends that New Zealand fairy terns should at least be considered a distinct population and that further research should be conducted to determine their species status.

The DNA research confirms the fairy terns are our most critically endangered birds, with only 35 adult birds left - less than half the number of kakapo, of which there are 86.

The IUCN (World Conservation Union) has produced a "Red List" of bird species threatened with extinction. It ranks the Chinese crested tern, with a population of 50, as critically endangered and the most endangered tern in the world.

If future research reveals that the New Zealand fairy tern is a separate species, it would overtake the Chinese crested tern for the dubious honour of being the most threatened species of tern in the world.

Either way, having thousands of new residents in the vicinity visiting the beach at Mangawhai would directly impact on the birds through disturbance or direct damage to their well-camouflaged eggs and nests.

Even brief disturbance of nesting parents leaves the eggs or chicks vulnerable to predation or over-heating by the sun.

The DoC report into the risks posed by the proposed development states that even the loss of one more tern as a result of human interference would be too much.

Given that New Zealand fairy terns breed only at four locations - Mangawhai Wildlife Refuge, Waipu Wildlife Refuge, Papakanui and Pakiri Beach - the proposed subdivision on the doorstep of their breeding grounds would pose a serious threat to their fragile existence.

And with only 10 breeding pairs left, the total population remains perilously close to extinction, even after a relatively successful breeding season during the summer, in which seven chicks were raised.

The last time such a healthy number of chicks were raised successfully was in 2002 when eight chicks survived to fledging. In 2004, only three chicks survived, and in 1984 numbers fell to just three pairs.

The terns nest between October and February and usually lay one or two eggs, which both parents take turns to incubate for between 22 and 24 days. The parents vigorously defend nests and chicks against human and bird intruders by dive-bombing and defecating on them - but even this interesting defence mechanism gives no protection against introduced predators.

Predator control is one factor behind this season's breeding success. Eight cats, seven weasels and five stoats have been trapped at Mangawhai Spit since October, and since the last feral cat was caught in December, no cat prints were seen for the rest of the season.

In 2004-2005, several chicks and a breeding adult fairy tern were eaten by a large ginger cat that evaded capture for the breeding season. As a result no chicks survived from the Mangawhai Wildlife Refuge that year.

The developers promise to ban cats and restrict dogs from the proposed subdivision, but these pledges are not enough to safeguard the terns from predation by these animals.

With up to 2000 houses planned, a ban on cat ownership and a requirement that dogs be kept on leashes, while well-intentioned, would be impossible to police.

Inevitably the regulations would be breached, either by the thousands of new residents or the increased number of visitors.

Human populations also attract feral cats, which are drawn to food sources and the presence of rats which are encouraged by human settlement.

Given the critically low number of fairy terns, just one extra cat or dog in the area would be enough to tip the balance and condemn these unique New Zealand birds to extinction.

* Helen Bain is Forest & Bird's Media Officer.

Brian Rudman: Don't change zoning so foreign sugar barons can grow rich

2006-05-01T04:49:00.000+09:30

If there is one lesson to emerge from the Long Bay debacle it's the importance of forward thinking - by the general public as well as by public authorities.

If only we'd all clamoured for the purchase of the land behind Long Bay for a great new regional park 20 or 30 years ago, before population creep priced the land out of public reach.

It's fortuitous timing, then, that the latest skirmish in the Long Bay battle coincides with the closing, this Friday, of the public-submission phase of the plan-change proposal for the Chelsea Estate in Birkenhead.

The owner, New Zealand Sugar Company, seeks the change to ensure that if sugar refining ends on the site, "an appropriate form of development is potentially viable ..."

By that it means having the zoning to add up to 528 residential units, up to four storeys high, to the protected industrial buildings already occupying a 15ha prime waterfront portion of the estate.

In a statement in March when announcing the plan change application, sugar company general manager Bernard Duignan said it "recognises the significance of the site to the Auckland public and wants to ensure that the amenity and ecological attributes of the land and the heritage value of the buildings will be preserved for lifetimes to come".

Rather contradictorily, he added that "if refinery operations were to be relocated at a future date, Chelsea Estate's owners wish to secure the value of the site ..."

And there, in a nutshell, is the issue. Chelsea Sugar wants to ensure, after more than 100 years in this prime location, that if its Australian masters suddenly decide it's cheaper to produce sugar in Fiji or Queensland, they can maximise their returns on departing this commercially zoned property. Against that is the public-interest wish to incorporate this wonderful 52ha headland into a magnificent inner-Auckland regional park joining together four contiguous areas of coastal forest: Chelsea Estate, Kauri Pt Centennial Park, Kauri Pt Domain and the large Defence Force munitions dump.

Just before Christmas, Chelsea announced plans to sell the 36.7ha of parkland and lakes that surround the refinery to the Chelsea Park Trust for $20 million. The trust, headed by retired High Court judge Sir David Tompkins, now has to raise the funds.

The plan change now being sought involves the factory and adjacent land, including the "horse paddock", which occupies the most valuable coastal land jutting into the harbour across from Herne Bay.

The main factory building, built in 1884, and adjacent manager's house and workers cottages are listed by the Historic Places Trust and are presumably safe whatever happens.

The landscaped gardens, with their mature exotic trees, and lakes are part of the land under sale agreement to the trust and also seem future-proofed, as long as Sir David and his colleagues manage to raise the asking price.

But what every Aucklander should be concerned about is the 15ha that the owners want to upgrade into intensive residential land use.

If the North Shore City Council agrees to this plan change, it will potentially be pricing itself and future generations of Aucklanders out of ever realising the Uruamo headland regional park dream.

The land's existing business 9 zoning is for historic reasons. Now the owners want to tag it for future high-density residential use as well - obviously because that will be the most lucrative future usage. But if it's to be rezoned residential then a more appropriate guideline is - as the Chelsea Regional Park Association suggests - the residential 2A bush areas zoning, which is the classification of the neighbouring parkland on offer to the Chelsea Park Trust. This allows one dwelling per 820sq m and protects the bushland.

Such a zoning would be appropriate for the area. It would also keep the land price at a level the public purse could afford if it came on the market.

The good thing about this exercise is that ratepayers don't have to rush to their piggybanks just yet. But the outcome of the application will determine the price future generations will face when the land does come on the market - either through compulsory acquisition or voluntary sale. The Long Bay battle highlights the pitfalls of not thinking ahead.

Public submissions close with the North Shore City Council on Friday. Details and forms for submissions are at northshorecity.govt.nz.

James Russell: Quarterlife crisis? Come on

2006-05-01T04:48:00.000+09:30

Is this some sort of joke? Can they really be serious? Apparently, the latest term to describe the agonising dilemma facing the 20-something throngs of layabouts incurring gi-normous debts and living with their parents is - wait for it - the 'quarterlife crisis'.

In a nutshell, the quarterlife crisis goes roughly along these lines: Teen leaves school, goes to university in order to defer making a decision regarding a direction for the rest of their life, graduates, goes back to study some more (see earlier reason), graduates again with a debilitating student loan, and goes out into the world. Suddenly, they are gripped with a inability to make decisions, decide on a career path or a clue how to even begin paying back their debts. They are firmly in the throes of the quarterlife crisis.

Author Douglas Coupland in his novel Generation X: Tales for an accelerated Culture defined 'mid twenties breakdown' as 'A period of mental collapse occuring in one's twenties, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments, coupled with a realisation of ones's essential aloneness in the world. Often marks induction into the ritual of pharmaceutical usage'.

TV3s John Campbell dubbed them 'the lost generation'; in Britain they have been called 'adultescents' and Dr Phil told them to 'grow up'.

According to the infamous Wikipedia, the term 'quarterlife crisis' was coined in 1965 by Canadian psychologist Elliot Jaques. However, Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, authors of Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your 20s, beg to differ. They claim they were the first to devise the phrase when examining the futility of their own 25-year-old lives. The success of the book has gone on to generate another book from Wilner - The Quarterlifer's Companion - and a website - www.quarterlifecrisis.com - where all the troubling aspects of life over 20 are mused over by tormented young bloggers.

David Trought, director, Auckland University Careers Centre, says that a crisis of sorts (which come under a number of different banners) is a very common occurance for graduating students. "There there is a good 18 months to two years before people really get themselves in a proper career after they graduate. They don't know what to do when they leave and they flounder around and try some jobs and because they have a lack of awareness of what they could do or what the skills are they just end up jumping into something because they need money."

Could the troubled students be setting themselves up for a fall even earlier by rushing into the first university course they can think of? "There are some that are on the conveyor belt who've gone through school, like a subject and go on to study it at university. That's not necessarily a bad thing. If you're going to spend three or four years studying something you've got to do something you've got a passion for. At the end of the day there a lots of jobs where just getting a degree is important - not necessarily what the degree is."

Financial pressure is arguably the largest source of stress for young people. Student debt now tops $7b, with 60 per cent of the borrowers under the age of 25. On average, each of these students borrows $6120 a year. In addition, the number of students eligible for student loans has dropped from 70,000 in 2001 to 56,806 in 2005, this despite the fact that more people are in tertiary education than ever before.

Says Trought: "The financial pressures are extremely significant and increasing. When I was a student I had it easy compared to what people are faced with now. The fact people are doing part-time jobs to survive is another pressure because they are doing so many hours it could be affecting their study.

Advice for those that can't see past the quarterlife? "I think if you're really unsure you should get help as soon as possible because what often happens is people think 'I don't know what I want to do so I can't go and see a careers consultant'. That's actually part of the issue to try and support them with that. That can easily be dealt with through a careers guidance interview, or we can use computer-aided guidance to generate ideas based on interests and aspirations, psychometric testing and various other tools. At least it will get them to the starting point where they have some ideas."

Trought says that the Careers Centre is being used more now than ever, prompting the University to increase staff numbers from 4 to 14 over the past two years. Graduating students are also supported up to three years after they have left university. "The careers service has traditionally been seen as a Cinderella service. I don't think you could say that anymore."

So it really is true then - our 20-year-olds are under pressure. They aren't just having a whinge. Dr Phil can grow up himself.

Gwynne Dyer: Killing fields looming unless change occurs

2006-05-01T04:47:00.000+09:30

The prophecy was almost right. It said that the Shah dynasty in Nepal would last for 12 generations, so King Gyanendra is pushing the edge of the envelope. His brother Birendra, whose murder in 2001 brought Gyanendra to the throne, was already the 12th generation. Even if Gyanendra was technically of the same generation, it already felt a bit like cheating.

It feels a lot more like cheating now. Three weeks of non-violent mass protests and 14 demonstrators' deaths have forced King Gyanendra to surrender the absolute powers he seized last year, and parliament has already been recalled.

Only fear of imminent overthrow forced him to make these concessions, but he is still trying to split the opposition - and he may succeed.

What forced Gyanendra to retreat was an alliance forged last November between the seven mainstream political parties and the Maoist rebels, who were the king's main excuse for seizing power and dismissing parliament in the first place.

But that alliance was a marriage of convenience and as soon as Gyanendra offered to reinstate parliament, the politicians fell over one another in their eagerness to say yes.

But the deal may play differently among the protesters, most of them under 30, who have no patience for the monarchy and no loyalty to the established parties.

It is certainly playing very differently with the Maoists, who promptly denounced the politicians as traitors to the anti-monarchical alliance the two sides had made.

"The minimum demand is a free election to a constituent assembly," said senior Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai last week. The Maoists said in a statement that the group would refrain from "offensive military action" for a three-month period, but would remain in an "active defensive position". Their 10-year guerrilla war has already killed 13,000 people and given them effective control of at least half the country's territory.

Taming the Maoists and bringing them inside the political system is the highest priority in Nepal, where the peasants are so downtrodden and desperate that a radically anti-urban, anti-foreign, anti-intellectual revolution like the one that devastated Cambodia 30 years ago is a real possibility.

There are alarming similarities of ideology and operational style between the Khmer Rouge of the early 1970s and the Nepalese Maoists today. Nepal needs change, but it does not need the killing fields.

Nobody knows how close the Maoists are to a military victory in Nepal, especially since India might well send in troops to prevent such a monster from emerging on its northern borders, but they have been making rapid progress.

They might ultimately win power in a democracy, too, for they have real support among the semi-educated rural young, but they would then be constrained by constitutional rules and democratic norms. (Surprisingly, the prize of democratic legitimacy often makes people behave better.)

If they won power through military victory, they could put even their most extreme political fantasies into practice.

The great virtue of Gyanendra's royal coup last year was that it enabled all of Nepal's other main political actors to unite behind the single cause of rolling back his take-over. The legal political parties never formally committed themselves to the overthrow of the monarchy, but that was implicit in their promise to create an interim assembly whose main job would be to draft a new constitution for Nepal.

The changes being considered were so radical they seemed likely to tempt the Maoists into giving up their revolt and entering normal democratic politics.

With parliament restored but no new republican constitution, the old-line politicos can resume their habitual games, whose principal function is to give each urban political party and faction a turn at looting the public purse. If their deal with a chastened king survives, the Maoists could go back to war and Nepal's future is grim.

The choice lies in the hands of the tens of thousands of young people who have been demonstrating in the streets of Kathmandu for the past three weeks. They wanted real change, a goal that they saw as linked to an end to the monarchy and a new constitution, although beyond that their ideas were not very clear.

If they press on, Nepal could end up with a more inclusive democratic system that brings the Maoists in from the cold. If they settle now for a return to the system that has failed Nepal for the past 15 years, the changes they may eventually face instead, after a Maoist military victory, would not be at all to their taste.

* Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Allan Barber: PPCS still faces hard climb over debt mountain

2006-05-01T04:43:00.000+09:30

The recent releases of half-yearly results by Affco and PPCS confirm what they had flagged. The first half is never as good as the second six months, especially for PPCS, whose financial year starts and ends one month later than the rest of the meat industry.

But the impact this season has been compounded by a series of factors that have conspired to make it a difficult period for processors, at the same time ensuring their suppliers felt totally unhappy at what they saw as deliberate misinformation from meat exporters and failure to take farmers' business concerns into account.

The exchange rate came down too late to have any beneficial impact on lamb prices, which had already hit a brick wall because of serious oversupply of heavy lambs. In addition, poor returns for wool, pelts and offals contributed to a taxing spring for farmers and meat companies.

Early in the season leading up to Christmas, after the heavy old season's lambs had been slaughtered, grass growth wasn't sufficient for decent volumes of lambs or cattle to fill the works. Then, after Christmas, the South Island's dry continued, while the North's weather was punctuated with infrequent, but sufficiently regular, downpours to allow farmers to hold stock on farm.

Meat companies starved, as shown by PPCS' half-year trading loss of $26.7 million and Affco's sharply reduced trading profit of $3.8 million. PPCS has suggested its balance date exaggerated its loss by $40 million; in other words, removing September's loss and adding its March profit would have produced a trading profit before tax and asset sales of $13 million.

How much a change of year end would have affected last year's profit is open to conjecture, but it would have produced a result barely above break-even after asset sales, but before pool payments to suppliers.

The March result bodes well for a good second half for PPCS, which is suggesting a positive trading profit for the full year. The combined impact of South Island lamb and venison and North Island cattle and lamb earnings is likely to produce for the first time some of the benefits expected from the Richmond acquisition.

Affco has performed well over the past two years, demonstrating the benefits of stable shareholding, capital expenditure and cost control. Shareholders now receive regular dividends and the share price is underpinned by Talleys' offer for a majority shareholding.

The big differences between Affco and PPCS are the ownership, size and geographic spread of each, and their respective levels of debt. PPCS is a national farmer co-op with 24 plants and a $2 billion turnover; Affco is a listed company with half the turnover and all but one of its plants in the North Island. However, each company has similar levels of equity but with total liabilities of $152.8 million and $694.5 million respectively.

Affco seems to have achieved a stability unknown during its 100 years and, while profits will expand and contract with seasonal variations, it only has to focus on plant efficiencies and cost structures to maintain a profitable performance. Union negotiations pose a threat.

PPCS, on the other hand, still has a mountain to climb to reduce debt and build its farmer shareholders' equity, so it can afford to maintain plant efficiencies and pay a competitive price for its livestock supply. It is projecting shareholders' funds in excess of $260 million, an improvement of $35 million, by year end, which will be a significant improvement on the present position, but will still entail debt of at least twice equity.

* Allan Barber is a freelance writer, business consultant and former chief operating officer at Affco.

Peter Griffin: Choice is solution to piracy

2006-04-30T11:39:00.000+09:30

It was a publicity stunt designed to highlight the battle against music and movie piracy. Thousands of counterfeit CDs and DVDs seized by customs were crushed last week in an Auckland ceremony organised by the New Zealand music and movie industries which have joined forces to fight piracy together.

Most people innately know it's wrong to burn CDs and DVDs for mates or download albums and movies from internet file sharing services without paying a cent. That's not the point.

People are sick and tired of paying high-street prices for full-length albums that only have a handful of decent songs on them. They're annoyed that music lovers overseas get a range of options to buy music and we continue to get taken for a ride.

The only way to cut down piracy is to give people no excuse to break copyright law. Give them decent value.

First, the music industry and Apple need to sort out their differences and get the New Zealand iTunes music download store up and running. A growing body of evidence overseas, iTunes' billion song downloads included, shows that legal download websites are making an impact on piracy.

The iTunes service is so far overdue here, I'm starting to wonder if Apple's policy of having a download service in every country it sells its iPod music player is genuine. Until iTunes is a fixture of the local music industry, I'll have little sympathy for the record labels. One thing's for sure, the lack of a download service to work with the iPod, the most popular music player on the market, isn't doing anything to dissuade people from taking the easy option of downloading songs for free.

The movie industry needs to shrink the time between when movies are released in the US and when they screen in cinemas here. Some releases are out on DVD and in many cases available for download free on the internet, before they make it into NZ theatres. DVDs also need to hit the shelves sooner following theatrical release.

The movie and TV industries should support online services such as Google Video, which offers US TV shows for viewing, streamed over the internet, for US$1.99 an episode. They should be lobbying Telecom and TelstraClear to set up video-on-demand services so that people can pay for content when they want it.

There seems to be little strategy to deal with the illegal-download threat.

But you can understand why the entertainment industry's first priority is disc-burning counterfeiters.

A dream run at the box office for Sione's Wedding was tainted when some scoundrel nicked a copy of the film and distributed it around South Auckland on DVD. Producer John Barnett estimated the movie's takings would take a $500,000 hit as a result.

But counterfeit discs are the tip of the iceberg compared to the Great Illicit Download that's going on 24 hours a day in this country.

The scale of it is only really known by the internet providers who can track the level of file sharing going on. It's for years been a sizeable percentage of internet traffic.

Increasingly, people are going online to get what they want for free. The DVD and CD peddlers are occasionally nabbed in high-profile cases, but the download-fest on the internet carries on unabated.

It's virtually unstoppable, the Bittorrent peer-to-peer file sharing system so pervasive and decentralised it's impossible to shut it down. As more people get high-speed internet connections it's becoming less of an effort to download albums and even full-length movies. Educating people about the ills of flouting copyright law isn't going to turn the tide. What we want is choice, better value and the chance to use the technology legitimately.

Paul Buchanan: What makes special forces soldiers so special?

2006-04-30T11:38:00.000+09:30

Special forces travel light, far, often out of uniform, and operate in small units using deception, stealth, speed and surprise to their tactical advantage. They can stay in the field for weeks and, being self-sufficient, can deliver surgical blows to an unsuspecting enemy at a time and place of their choosing - then escape to fight another day.

These forces are considered the best weapons in counter-insurgency campaigns.

To accomplish such missions takes a special type of soldier. They are drawn from the most intelligent and physically fit military men, undergo months of gruelling physical training and psychological stress tests. They face regular, rigorous tactical tests in the classroom and the field, and are constantly refreshed, reviewed and updated on their combat skills.

They are required to demonstrate expertise in several combat and non-combat disciplines, such as medics and foreign language intelligence gathering. They must also be complete team players.

Should they make the grade and gain entrance into Special Forces units, these troops are rotated frequently into a varied array of combat zones and spend more time in them in order to harden their mental resolve and hone combat skills.

These are soldiers whose headlights are always set on high beam. Due to their special skills, Special Forces troops like the New Zealand Special Air Services or US Green Berets and Navy SEALs take three times as long and cost 10 times as much to train and equip than the average soldier. In return, in most countries they tend to be better paid and receive bonuses and hazardous duty pay.

Because of their long-term and frequent deployments, there are often special benefits for their immediate families.

Their unique qualifications make special ops troops prized assets in the growing field of private security contracting. Demand for them is great precisely because they are not mercenaries but supreme professionals, dealing death while protecting lives.

The going rate for ex-special forces serving as private security contractors in Iraq is between US$800-1000 ($1200-1500) per day, plus expenses and large bonuses.

Faced by private sector competition, the US military is offering its special forces troops re-enlistment bonuses of up to US$150,000 ($235,000) to keep them in uniform.

All of this should factor into the Government's approach to the 200-300 SAS troops in New Zealand. They are among the world's best and shoulder a disproportionate amount of the combat burden of the country's foreign military commitments.

It is imperative that the Government ensure their retention and recruitment. Deployment of these troops sends powerful political messages to friend and foe alike. And that alone is worth the price.

Matt McCarten: Paying homage to our working heroes

2006-04-30T05:12:00.000+09:30

New Zealand workers have never been big participants in May Day celebrations of international worker solidarity like other countries.

May 1 is the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere but always seems to be wet and cold here. So it was probably a smart move to change our workers' day to October 25, when we're more likely to get a bit of sun.

But there's always a couple of hundred old stalwarts with a few hangers-on who turn out every May Day in the rain to wander up Queen St, make a few speeches acknowledging past workers' struggles and then nip down to the Maritime Club for a few beers.

The first time I saw a real May Day rally was in New York. The day started with an official breakfast attended by hundreds of union bosses and politicians and then we stood on Fifth Ave to watch the parade pass us by.

The most controversial dispute of the day was whether the police union or firefighters union would lead the procession. The cops won the right and more than 1000 led the way with their precinct banners.

The only time we see members of the police union on a march here is to keep on eye on us.

The New York mayoral campaign was on at the time and Rudy Giuliani somehow muscled his way in and got pride of place, despite being a Republican. My host noted my raised eyebrow and said New York was a union town and every politician knew they couldn't get elected without the worker's vote. After fours hours, the procession was still going, with every occupation imaginable represented.

Our union, Unite, has sent three of our leading organisers to wealthier parts of the world to raise money from other trade unions for our upcoming campaign to win a union employment agreement for McDonald's workers. One will go to Venezuela on the way to the United States as a guest of the organisers of a march in their capital city. They're expecting more than a million workers to march in their parade.

But New Zealand workers' leaders needn't hang their heads in shame this year. Sue Bradford's bill to end youth rates has mobilised youth and more than 1000 are marching with the unions after school tomorrow. In some ways, it's symbolic that the students are marching down from Aotea Square to meet up with the official trade union rally and then back up the street with them. It's a symbolic act of the torch being passed from one generation to the other.

The current generation of workers, particularly in the private sector, are slowly realising that they have to get their act together and organise themselves if they hope to get meaningful change in their circumstances. Apart from Unite's supersizemypay.com campaign for fast food workers, the Service and Food Workers' Union has three significant campaigns under way: Aged Care, Healthy Hospitals, for auxiliary staff in hospitals, and its international campaign, Clean Start, for office cleaners.

The National Distribution Union led by Laila Harre is soon to launch a supermarkets campaign. And our biggest union, the Engineers, Printers and Manufacturing Union, is embarking once again on its 5 per cent wage increase campaign. It's also heading up the campaign against Wayne Mapp's bill that would give bosses the right to sack new workers in their first three months on the job.

All this means that there is a deliberate and conscious decision by the trade union movement to promote a series of concerted mass campaigns to help the most vulnerable workers.

We haven't seen this sort of confidence in years. Workers are joining unions in bigger numbers than we've seen in a long time.

The emerging confidence and stroppiness of young people is adding momentum to these new mobilisations. It won't happen overnight but it's finally dawning on workers that unless they get off their butts, then they will stay at the bottom of the food chain.

Tomorrow's May Day march is a modest new start. But give it another year and workers will fill Queen St and pay proper homage to our working class ancestors.

* Matt McCarten is the national president of Unite.

Deborah Coddington: 'Gummint' can't fix everything

2006-04-30T05:11:00.000+09:30

Quality of life, according to a poll conducted by the Business Council for Sustainable Development, will determine which political party gets to be the Government after the next election.

Chief executive Peter Neilson said the survey results indicated "a stunningly loud message from 86 per cent of New Zealanders that they understand sustainable development to be important because they want to look after the things that are good about our country and make sure they're there for future generations".

Any survey will tell you what you want to know if you just frame the questions the right way. I doubt 86 per cent of New Zealanders would say they want to trash the country and ensure there's nothing left for future generations - no fresh water or electricity, old people dying in the gutter, scorched-earth environmental policies, and a drug-addled unemployed youth population.

Sustainable development sounds lovely, but what is it, exactly? Sustainable yield? And by whose standards is sustainability measured? An Auckland property developer who crams the maximum number of cheap houses on one piece of land? Or the alternative-lifestyler who builds a mud-brick house with composting loo, solar heating, wood-fired stove and organic gardens?

Most environmentally sensitive Kiwis would opt for somewhere in between, but I'm deeply suspicious of those urban liberals who dutifully recycle their chardonnay bottles and airfreighted New Statesman mags while shoving food scraps down the wastemaster. Whatever happened to composting?

The Business Council defines sustainability as "growing the economy and developing the country in a way which balances growth, protects the environment while also exercising social responsibility".

Weasel words - shallow, meaningless and trite. They look harmless but make perfect fodder for political parties wanting to mould us in their image of what constitutes the New Zealand Quality of Life.

"Social responsibility" - what's that when it's at home? Grabbing millions of dollars from the pay packets of the workers to spend on snails? Tax-paid MPs assuming celebrity status and stitching up exclusive media deals? A party that moans about US trade deals but is too scared to entertain a referendum on the nuclear-free issue?

There's not a huge difference between the two old parties - Labour and National - when it comes to government-speak. "Grow the economy" means "spend more taxpayers' money"; "develop the country" is licence to get involved in business ventures about which they have few clues - broadcasting, airlines, railways, venture finance. And "protect the environment" is an excuse to spend public millions on buying up private land which the taxpayers themselves are then excluded from using. Meanwhile, private property rights are breached with impunity.

Then they neglect to deliver on the basic necessities individuals need if they want a better standard of living. Learning to read, write and add up properly, for example, is now considered quaintly archaic. Some 18 per cent of New Zealand school leavers go into the world illiterate, yet we blithely continue to pretend this isn't happening; if they just go on to tertiary education and get some doozy qualification they'll be okay.

As someone who'd happily read books all day and night, I believe denying children skills to immerse themselves in a good book is nothing short of child abuse.

What did the slaves want most when they were freed after the American Civil War? To learn to read.

But increasingly our education system favours those with enough income or savings to be able to choose their children's school. If you're Mr and Mrs Low-to-Medium Income with five children and you don't fancy their chances at the local school - tough.

What's more, according to one female principal interviewed on TV3 recently about the NCEA and the Cambridge exams, those parents who want their children to sit the latter are snobs.

"It's like wanting a Mercedes car in the garage," she said.

Tell that to the uneducated family of the future who can't even afford a bicycle.

And speaking of transport, isn't the ability to get to work and back - fitting in the supermarket, picking up the kids, seeing the doctor - essential for a decent quality of life? So what's the point of having pristine beaches, clean and green pastures, preserved native forests, when our roads are too clogged for anyone to enjoy accessing the great outdoors?

Parks and recreational areas for city dwellers contribute to quality of life, but with a public transport system so seriously deficient and unreliable, where's the incentive to leave the car at home?

I hope political parties will dismiss this poll result as nothing more than a device to attract more companies to join the 51 members of this lobby group - and they should be congratulated for that.

But encouraging voters to look to gummint for the good life is a futile exercise. No one in their right mind would willingly assign their choice of car, design of house, style of dress, or gardening habits to their local MP.

To preserve the New Zealand Quality of Life, it's to ourselves we should look, not a bunch of representatives in one or another political party.

Kerre Woodham: Cops need to do more than run fast

2006-04-30T05:10:00.000+09:30

What do we want in this country? A police service that is representative of the community, comprising individuals with many and varied skills, or a force of buffed, young men and women who can run faster than speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings in a single bound - but who might not have the smarts or the empathy required to be a good officer.

A story out this week that hundreds of would-be police officers are being rejected because of their failure to pass the pre-entry fitness test is not new - there have been complaints about the toughness of the test for years. Men must run the 2.4km track in 10 minutes, 15 seconds; women 11 minutes, 15 seconds - with no allowances made for age.

Police recruiters reckon the high failure rate can be put down to the nation's growing problem with obesity and the fact that for many schools, physical education is not a priority.

Now the recruiters say they're going to have to relax the fitness test - bringing it into line with the test in Australia - and start recruiting younger people to meet the Government's target of 1000 extra police over the next three years.

National's police spokesman, Simon Power, says the fitness test should not be compromised as "only the best will do", but buffest doesn't always mean best. To be a good officer, you need intelligence, common sense, empathy, dedication, courage and good communication skills.

I would far rather be served by a flabby force of men and women with those attributes than a squad of super-fit 18-year-olds swaggering with testosterone and attitude. Besides, when was the last time a serving copper had to run 2.4km in 10 minutes? That's why Holdens were invented. So you don't have to run fast. And I've never seen a posse of Keystone Kops running down the streets in hot pursuit of the bad guy. Making use of modern technology, the police helicopter circles overhead until the vehicular reinforcements arrive.

Successful companies don't have a workforce of employees with exactly the same skills and abilities - they employ individuals who are able to complement one another, ensuring the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. By all means have a fitness test. Make it a tough one, and give extra marks to those people who fail initially and then have the willpower to do the work required to pass.

But it would be foolish to automatically write-off individuals who can't run 2.4km in 10 minutes. There's more to policing than that and police are doing themselves and the country a disservice by sticking rigidly to such an arbitrary rule.

Kerre Woodham: Hard to see how postponing inevitable can save us money

2006-04-30T05:07:00.000+09:30

Okay, so my degree wasn't in policy and planning. And I don't pretend to know the first thing about money. I don't even have signing rights to my own chequebook.

But could somebody please tell me how the decision by the Electricity Commission to turn down Transpower's controversial power pylon project is going to save us all money.

The commission chairman acknowledges that it's only delaying the inevitable - at some stage in the near future a new transmission line will have to be installed - but he says that "postponing the inevitable has enormous financial benefit to the country". Right. Like postponing upgrading the roading infrastructure has had enormous benefits for the country. Like delaying the construction of a half-way-decent public-transport system has had huge benefits for Auckland city.

Does the commission chairman think it's going to be easier to get people's support in the future? That no matter what option is chosen a few years down the track, it's going to be cheaper to build than it would be now? It's madness.

He also alluded to the fact that there are other alternatives. Presumably the more eco-friendly ones. But I wouldn't get too carried away with those options either. Look at the furore going on in Australia over the Bald Hills wind farm overlooking Victoria's Gippsland coastline.

The $260 million, 52-turbine farm has been vetoed because a greenie study concluded there was a risk that at least one endangered orange-bellied parrot a year would end up a feather duster thanks to a rotating turbine.

So on that basis the wind farm's been nixed. It's not going to be easy deciding which power generation option to go for.

And you can guarantee that although we don't have endangered orange-bellied parrots, we'll have some precious example of flora or fauna clinging precariously to existence that will need to be protected from whatever proposal is planned.

And wherever the project is sited, there will be hundreds of discontented New Zealanders who don't want it in their backyard.

But tough decisions have to be made. They should have been made years ago in relation to public transport and roading, and they need to be made now in relation to power to ensure Auckland and Northland's continuity of supply.

If not the pylons, then another option. We should be taking responsibility for our current and future needs rather than bludging off the work of our grandparents and expecting our children's generation to make the hard calls we were too selfish to make.

John Armstrong: All sizzle and little sausage

2006-04-29T06:21:00.000+09:30

Plenty of sausage, not enough sizzle. Mike Ward's analysis of what is wrong with the Greens will not alter his status as the rank outsider in the four-way tussle to fill Rod Donald's shoes as the party's male co-leader.

However, Ward's sausage analogy illustrates how the leadership election - now formally under way - has inevitably turned into something of a stocktake of the party's progress after nearly a decade in Parliament.

The Greens' sausage - definitely organic, quite possibly soya-bean to boot - is not to everyone's taste. But the Greens have to believe there is a bigger market for it than they are capturing.

In politics, you need the sizzle to sell the message. Ward says he is good at sizzle. But Ward may be all sizzle and little sausage.

If the flamboyant one-term MP was not the best-dressed male MP in the last Parliament, he was certainly the most sartorially expressive, topping that by winning Wellington's wearable arts award.

While in Parliament, he picked a seemingly unwinnable fight with the makers of disposable nappies. Nappies won. The Great Nappy Campaign was not a success. Ward spent much of the last election campaign riding around the North Island on a recumbent-type tricycle. He would be a very different co-leader. But not one that even the tolerant Greens could contemplate.

Ward's candidacy speaks of the time when the Greens played at politics. That time is over.

The buzzword within the party is "realism". It is a coded way of saying electing Ward or Nandor Tanczos as co-leader would send the wrong message to voters and cut across the party's bottom-line priority of growing its vote.

Tanczos, a far more serious prospect than Ward, has countered by seeking to reinvent himself as a more rounded politician than someone who has been seen as fixated with cannabis law reform. He is handicapped by lingering doubts about his commitment to being an MP, let alone co-leader. He has sought to answer that criticism by displaying huge energy and drive since returning to Parliament following Donald's death.

He has also been quick to turn the co-leadership contest into a debate about the party's future direction. He had to.

The acknowledged front-runner, Russel Norman, has manoeuvred behind the scenes to postpone such a major debate until after the party's Queen's Birthday weekend conference where the co-leader will be chosen. Norman argued that party direction should be driven by grassroots members rather than becoming hostage to the personalities and campaigning strategies of those fighting over Donald's job.

The 100 or so delegates who will determine the co-leader under the STV voting system favoured by the party arguably have enough on their plate in determining who would work best alongside Jeanette Fitzsimons. But not only that. The decision must take into account the likelihood that the next parliamentary term will be Fitzsimons' last and a replacement will have to be found.

Dual leadership - a nod to gender equality - could be a millstone around the party's neck. That was disguised by the chemistry between Fitzsimons and Donald - a chemistry which had Donald stepping back and allowing Fitzsimons to front as the face of the Greens when there was not room for both on a platform.

The order of seniority would be most obviously preserved by electing a non-MP - Norman or the remaining candidate, Unitech lecturer Dave Clendon.

Fitzsimons has already hinted that is her preference. She has complained the party membership has become too reliant on its MPs. Norman or Clendon - both having served in various backroom roles - could concentrate on rebuilding and reinvigorating the party organisation without the distraction of Parliament, while Fitzsimons could concentrate on parliamentary duties.

Squeezed out of the picture, Tanczos could hardly allow the election to be defined on terms favourable to Norman.

The Rastafarian has made a play for those who believe the party should retain a strong environmentalist thrust which should not be overshadowed by the increasing emphasis on "social justice" - the philosophical background from which Norman springs.

Tanczos has cleverly linked this argument to the other major question taxing members' minds - the party's relationship with Labour.

Tanczos is saying the party should avoid being constantly marooned to the left of Labour, which leaves it in a position of weakness when bargaining with Labour.

Worse, the Greens are vulnerable to the emergence of a true left-wing alternative to Labour or to Labour shifting leftwards - just as Act was steamrollered by National pushing to its right.

Staking out a more independent position on the political spectrum would also attract voters sympathetic to Green messages but who feel the party is too far to the left.

Tanczos is seeking to redefine the contest in his terms by offering a strategy which deals with the party's overriding priority: how to stop flirting with parliamentary extinction by hovering too close to the 5 per cent threshold and instead register closer to 10 per cent support, which would enable the Greens to exert far more pressure on Labour.

With the party's strongest support in the inner cities and enclaves around Nelson, the Coromandel and Waiheke Island - all home to alternative lifestylers - Norman has been talking of the Greens making the leap into the suburbs by picking up on mainstream issues such as higher petrol prices, lack of public transport and latent fears that global warming is escalating. That thinking is shared by Clendon.

Both candidates would knock on the doors of business and sector groups to extend the party's reach and to stop people automatically attaching the "whacky" label to everything the Greens do.

They will not be stating it directly but the implication of them saying they can best communicate the Green message is that Tanczos is too typecast to open doors so far closed to the party.

Their candidacies are all about the party making the next step up by looking much more professional and sounding much more focused.

It is something the Australian Greens have successfully taken to heart. Image matters in politics.

Tanczos' dreadlocks and Ward's dandyish suits simply get in the way of the message - as did Donald's braces.

If the Greens want credibility in the suburbs, they are being told they have to smarten up their act - literally. Otherwise, it is going to be fizzle rather than sizzle.

Editorial: Well-merited jolt for Transpower

2006-04-29T06:19:00.000+09:30

Transpower has much to think about after the draft ruling denying its plan to upgrade the power supply into Auckland. Before the Electricity Commission delivers a final verdict in July, the national grid owner and operator must either modify its proposal to erect a new 400kV transmission line from Whakamaru to Otahuhu or present a more compelling case for its acceptance. Either way, it should also assess its approach.

The perils of arrogance have rarely been so clearly shown as in Transpower's attitude to those who questioned its proposal. In some ways, this may even have contributed to its downfall. Transpower's view was always that there was no alternative to stringing 430 huge power pylons across the Waikato and South Auckland landscape. Never mind that many landowners were appalled by the risk to land use, land values and their health. Never mind that some reckoned the need for a more powerful national grid could be negated by building small power stations closer to the area of demand. Transpower, like a government department of old, was not for turning.

In such circumstances, the presence of an independent arbiter like the Electricity Commission is welcome. Its brief is to cut through the bluster and deliver a cogent assessment. In this instance, it found that Transpower was not convincing. The commission concluded that an investment of $140 million in the existing network, and perhaps the building of power stations near Auckland, would delay the need for a 400kV line until 2017. That is seven years after the deadline deemed essential by Transpower to avoid the risk of power cuts.

The commission chairman, Roy Hemmingway, also noted, however, that the Waikato farmers who opposed pylons going over their land needed to accept the inevitability of a new transmission line. That, unfortunately, has the effect of rendering the commission's case less than fully convincing. The seven-year delay may, as Mr Hemmingway suggests, save the country as much as $250 million. But why wait if that saving may come at a serious cost in terms of the robustness and reliability of Auckland's power supply? Certainly, there is nothing to say that the power stations near Auckland referred to by the commission will ever be built.

It is reasonable to ask whether there can be any justification for delaying what both the commission and Transpower agree is an inevitable response to Auckland's power demands. In that context, New Zealand's history of infrastructure development is extremely chequered. For every Think Big project that would never have got off the ground if the Government had exercised greater discretion, there is a gridlocked Auckland road that bears testimony to the perils of procrastination.

The commission could not say it, but there is, in fact, at least one reason for caution. That is the fate of Comalco's Tiwai Pt aluminium smelter, which gobbles up 14 per cent of the country's electricity. Its power supply contract, which runs out in 2012, is now being negotiated with Meridian Energy. If Comalco chose to close the aging smelter, it would open up a whole new scenario for electricity transmission, through a direct-current spine, to the north.

In the final analysis, Transpower is expected to ensure that Auckland has a guaranteed power supply. It will bear the odium if the lights go out. But it must acknowledge that the importance of that task no longer guarantees it unfettered sway. It will not always be able to make the investments it sees fit. The Electricity Commission's draft ruling should have convinced Transpower that a touch of humility would not go astray. And be the catalyst for a meeting of minds.