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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.

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.

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."

* * *

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.

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.