No good reason to vote for Labour

Anyone tuning into Q+A yesterday in the hope of finding a good reason to vote for Labour would do would have been disappointed after listening to David Shearer.

Shearer said:

” Well, what we had been saying before is a whole programme of economic development, capital gains tax, and in the short term-

. . . Well, what I’m saying is that what we need to do is to grow the economy in a way that it’s not growing at the moment, and we’ll be talking about Tiwai Point in a little while…one of the big problems about – no, no, let me finish – one of the biggest problems about that is that the exchange rate is so low that we’re seeing many of our businesses actually going out of business because they’re not being able to succeed. We’re not putting our money in the profitable sector; it’s going into the property market because we don’t have a capital gains tax that will help us direct money into those areas. And if you’re wanting to raise money, then at least put money into businesses- invest in businesses through the incentives of capital gains, and that brings, obviously, money into the government as well.

The low exchange rate was a slip of the tongue. The capital gains tax wasn’t and increasing tax is not going to help economic growth.

Wood’s final question was was what Labour would do for a 26 year-old woman living in Auckland earning $65,000 a year, paying off a student loan and renting.

To which he replied:

Well, two things – first of all, we would have a healthy home guarantee to make sure that where she’s living, in the rental accommodation that she’s living in, is actually up to scratch; it’s both heated and it’s insulated. The second thing that we would do is we’re building 10,000 houses, affordable homes, a year, and that would enable her to have an opportunity to get on to the housing ladder. So there are two specific things that I believe that would help that case.

That’s at best underwhelming and would be even less attractive with a capital gains tax which has done nothing to stop house prices rising steeply anywhere else.

Not in the same league

Quote of the day:

SUSAN          So you’re not a rich prick?

DAVID            I’m- Obviously, as a New Zealander, I’m fortunate, but I’m not in the same league as our prime minster, no.

That comes from David Shearer on Q+A  yesterday.

Not in the same league as the Prime Minister, David Shearer isn’t in the same league as John Key, and not just in terms of personal wealth.

Is his money our business?

Susan Woods pressed David Shearer to reveal on Q+A yesterday how much money is in the account he omitted to declare in his register of pecuniary interest.

SUSAN          Much made this week of the Prime Minister’s memory loss. You, of course, have had your own memory loss over that $50,000 US or more, how much was it?

DAVID            I’m not going to say. It’s my family business. I don’t talk about my savings online, but I do-

SUSAN          Tony Ryall said in the house it was a couple of hundred thousand dollars US. Is that correct, or is it more than that?

DAVID            I’m not going to say. It’s my family business.

SUSAN          Didn’t you lose your right for privacy around it when you forgot to declare it? When you broke the rules and did not declare it?

DAVID            No, I absolutely did not. I said that I made an error. I myself came forward and corrected that error. I took it on the chin and said ‘here it is’. And I expect that to be the standard by which all politicians operate if they do make a mistake.

SUSAN          That’s what John Key did this week. He said he’d made a mistake and he fessed up. Exactly the same scenario.

DAVID            I think what John Key was doing this week-

SUSAN          He came forward.

DAVID            No-

SUSAN          Yes, he did. He came forward and he said, ‘Actually, I’ve checked by records and I did call Ian Fletcher.’ He came forward.

DAVID            What he was doing this week was that he was deliberately trying to move opinion away from and deflect opinion away from his friendship and relationship with Fletcher.

SUSAN          Is your problem with this money- Is your problem with this more than $50,000 US in the bank, is your problem that there is so much money there that it would not resonate? You would not resonate? I mean, Michael Cullen very famously called John Key a ‘rich prick’. Are you, Mr Shearer, a rich prick?

DAVID            Look, I worked for my money working for the United Nations in Iraq. I put it in the bank. It’s my family’s savings. I didn’t put it on my pecuniary interest. I declared that and I came forward and I was honest about it.

SUSAN          And you were very well paid in that job, sometimes up to half a million Kiwi dollars a year.

DAVID            No, I think you need to do your research on that, quite frankly, Susan. But, look, working in Iraq, where we lost 25 people, there was a- people do get paid hazard money in those situations.

SUSAN          What’s the money sitting there for?

DAVID            Look, it’s my family- Look, people put money in the bank for any- Look, this is my private savings, my family’s savings. Do you ask John Key what he does with $50 million when he comes on to your show?

SUSAN          John Key actually does have scrutiny over his money all the time. There are reports about how much money he has; he’s on the NBR Rich List – all those sorts of things. So, yes, he does have the same sort of scrutiny.

DAVID            Well, I haven’t heard you asking the same sorts of questions-

SUSAN          I haven’t had him on the programme yet, but when I do, I will ask him. So, are reports that it’s around $1 million correct or incorrect?

DAVID            Look, I am not going to put a figure on it, and I resent the fact that you are asking me to reveal how much is in my bank account. Nobody needs to do that. I have done-

SUSAN          You do need to.

DAVID            I have done what I was obliged to do under parliamentary rules, which is to declare any account that had more than $50,000 in it. I did do that. I regret, obviously, not putting that on my pecuniary interests, and that’s where it stops.

In the normal course of events it is none of our business exactly how much money MPs have.

They have to declare anything more than $50,000 and Shearer didn’t.

That he could forget he had that much when filling in his register of pecuniary interest although his memory didn’t fail him when filling in his tax return is peculiar.

Even if the account has $50,000.01 which requires it to be declared, it is more than a great many people would ever have saved and a lot more than most would ever forget they owned.

Shearer has opened himself up to questions. Many people will be very interested in exactly how much is in the account he forgot about. The greater the amount, the stranger his memory lapse, but is it in the public interest to know the total?

Woods says she’s going to ask the PM the same questions but Shearer’s memory lapse and refusal to divulge the amount in the forgotten account doesn’t give her any reason to dig into anyone else’s personal finances.

Providing it was made legally and anything that has to be declared is, how much an MP has, is not our business.

Drought “kind of snuck up on us”

It’s only Monday but it would be difficult to beat this from Dr Raymond Miller on Q+A yesterday for the stupidest comment of the week:

Admittedly, the drought kind of snuck up on us, to a certain extent, and I think the fact that the minister responsible for agriculture happened to be in Latin America for nearly two weeks when farmers were crying out for help suggests that the government may not have anticipated what was happening.

Droughts don’t sneak up.

Farmers, their advocacy groups, weather watchers, local, central government politicians and all the people who’ve noticed just how good summer has been for recreation and those with even a passing interest in current events are only too aware that there hasn’t been nearly enough rain for months.

As for the comment about the government and the Minister.

The government will be getting constant updates on the weather and will be in no doubt about its impacts on farmers and the people who service and supply them directly; provincial towns and cities and the economy as a whole.

He knew how dry it was before he went and that it was likely to get worse while he was away. He would have been only too well aware of what was happening – or when it comes to rain – not happening back in New Zealand and ensuring anything the Ministry of Primary Industries could have been doing was being done.

Jamie Mackay asked Barry Soper on the Farming Show whether the Minister should have stayed home.

He said he was far better occupied opening doors and making the most of opportunities in South America, that he was on top of what was happening in New Zealand bud didn’t need to be here.

Is anything of note happening here?

Many years ago a British TV programme lampooned New Zealand television for the items carried in the news.

I’m a little vague on the details but I think something to do with the theft of a few sheep had been a leading story at the time.

The implication was we were just a quaint little country where nothing of note happened.

Anyone whose been looking for serious current affairs on television could be forgiven for thinking this still applies.

Seven Sharp didn’t promise to be serious and has failed anyway.

I’d hoped for much better from TV3′s 3rd Degree. It promised much but delivered so little I stopped watching after a very few minutes.

I take it from several reviews, including One Guy too Many from Cactus Kate and why TV3 should hang its head in shame over ’3rd Degree’ and why I suspect Duncan Garner and Guyon Espiner would agree with me from Brian Edwards, that I was wise to do so.

There’s one last chance for television this morning. Q & A starts at 9am.

A media release from TVNZ says:

We speak to the Government’s Mr Fix It, Steven Joyce, about the deals with Novopay and SkyCity, and question how committed the government is to creating new jobs.

Also on the programme, should marriage be solely between a man and woman; we hear from a gay couple who question why they’re being treated as second class citizens. We debate the same-sex marriage bill with Labour MP Louisa Wall and Conservative Party Leader Colin Craig, and ask if gay couples should be able to adopt.

On the panel this week is political scientist Dr Raymond Miller, publisher Ian Wishart, and former Labour party candidate Josie Pagani.

Join host Susan Wood and political editor Corin Dann on Q+A at 9am this Sunday on TV One.

I probably won’t be. I have other things on my agenda this morning – as do most other people at 9am on Sunday. But I will try to catch up with what happened on MySky later in the hope that maybe one little corner of television thinks there is something happening in New Zealand which people ought to know about.

Longer would be better

Why can’t we have longer parliamentary terms?

That was the question put by Mainfreight Managing Director Don Braid on Q & A yesterday.

Three years is too long with a government with which you disagree and not long enough for one you support, but a longer term would give us better governance.

Shorter parliamentary terms lead to short term thinking and short term policies.

In the first year in power a government is finding its feet and beginning to implement policy. In the second it starts making progress (or not depending on your point of view) then everything slows down for election year.

This is frustrating for anyone who has to deal with government and the public service.

It’s not just businesses which find the stop-start-stop of the three year cycle frustrating.

The CE of a charitable trust which gets contracts with a ministry said it is very, very difficult to do much in election year, especially in the last few months of the term.

A four-year term would also reduce costs – every 12 years there would be one fewer election to finance.

That would be good for taxpayers and for the volunteers who fund raise for political parties.

It would also help ratepayers because if parliament went to a four-year term then local government would too.

The idea of a four-year term has not in the past found majority support from the public. I think that is at least in part due to a suspicion of politicians.

But it is one of the matters under discussion the constitutional review which is taking place.

If that group of non-politicians recommended it, the idea might gain traction.

What have they learned?

The world’s still in a very uncertain financial state and New Zealand is still too deeply in debt.

So what have the politicians learned?

Labour MPs are already planning to spend money we haven’t yet got which shows they’ve learned nothing.

Bill English showed on Q&A yesterday that National has learned the importance of decreasing debt and carefully directing spending where it will do most good:

Look, we have to be determined.  We are one of the most indebted countries in the world.  If you want the future of this nation subject to Labour and the Greens trying to buy votes with lolly scrambles, then we will get in a lot of trouble.  So we’re using the veto so we’re clear—  . . .

. . .   We’ve looked at the most vulnerable mothers and babies in New Zealand, and that is the young mothers under the age of 18.  There’s 2600 of them, and at the moment, they up until recently, they’re just left to sink or swim.  Children having children with no— not necessarily any support.  Some have it; most don’t.  Subject to all sorts of pressures, creating all sorts of intergenerational problems.  Now, the Prime Minister announced in August last year and then we put in the detail this year a package of measures to help those mothers and babies because we believe they’re the most vulnerable members of our society.  If we’re going to crack the cycles of dependency, that’s where we need to crack it.  . .

. . .We haven’t sent the wrong signal.  What we’re demonstrating is that we’re balancing the determination to get New Zealand out of its significant debt problem, because if we don’t do that, everyone’s entitlements are at risk.  Look around the world, seeing what’s happened to the entitlements of those countries where they don’t have their debt under control, they’re all being cut. . .

. . .We’re spending considerable money on it, but every time we make those decisions, we have to find the money somewhere else, and that’s the weakness in the Labour bill.  They want to be able to spend the money, but they don’t want to take responsibility for where the money comes from.  . . .

. . . Well, if the economy picks up and we get back to surplus sooner, then of course there’s room for discussion about all those things that people want us to have more of, but fundamentally we need a growing economy with less debt.  We’re achieving those things at the same time as supporting our families by increasing their Working for Families payments, increasing their early-childhood education and maintaining the paid parental leave.  I think we’ve got the balance about right. . .

. . . But I think the point here, Paul, is the government finances will get in a mess if we allow Parliament to go around spending up large with no responsibility for how to manage where the money comes from— . . .

Spending too much contributed to the debt we’ve got.

National understands that and is doing its best to get public spending under control and direct spending from the unproductive sector to the productive one, without scaring the horses too much.

Labour is still showing it’s the party that is still putting more thought into spending money than working out where it will come from.

Oh for some science on Crafar farms sale

When the Prime Minister announced the mental health package last week his chief science advisor Sir Peter Gluckman explained how it had been based on science.

If only a similar process could be applied to foreign ownership of land, in particular the sale of the Crafar farms.

In yesterday’s Q&A interview by Shane Taurima of Land Corp chair Jim Sutton tried to give the facts but Russel Norman mostly used emotion.

RUSSEL         Well, we certainly don’t need this foreign investment. I mean, all it’s doing in this case is driving up the price of rural land, because they’re paying a very large price for it in order to pay off an Australian owned bank who are the ones who are exposed because they leant too much money to Crafar.

The banks will get their money before anyone else. Those who miss out will be the unsecured creditors, most if not all of which, will be small, locally owned businesses. Each day the sale is delayed the costs increase, eating in to what will be left for creditors.

So we don’t need this money.

No? It’s better for us to have more foreign debt than equity?

This farm was going to be developed one way or another. It would be producing food one way or another. The key thing for New Zealand is we have this tremendously valuable strategic asset, which is arable land with access to water, food-producing land. That food-producing land will only become more important as time passes, and for us to hang on to that strategic asset is critical to our economic future.

It’s not one farm but many. If they’re not developed by a foreign owner they might be developed by a local one, or ones, but there will be no oversight of that nor recourse if they’re not. And if the development is undertaken it will be funded by borrowing from foreign lenders.

SHANE           Mr Sutton, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, he says that if the deal goes ahead, it will mean Landcorp will end up paying about $18 million a year to the landowner. In other words, he says a New Zealand SOE will end up being a tenant of a foreign company here in New Zealand. Is that true?

JIM                 No, that is not true, and I think what is important to realise is we as a sovereign nation are perfectly entitled to make rules for foreign people wishing to buy farmland in New Zealand, and if we want to do that and have more restrictive rules than we have got, let’s do it, let’s make it clear what they are, and let’s apply them without fear or favour to everybody who comes from overseas and wants to buy a farm in New Zealand.

Exactly, we should make the rules and apply them fairly.

SHANE           Can I just clarify – so Landcorp won’t be paying any rent at all?  

JIM                 No, we won’t be paying rent. We’ll be a share-farmer. A share-milker. SHANE           Mr Norman?  

RUSSEL         Clearly, what a share-milker does is they hand over a proportion of the production to the owner of the land in lieu of rent. It’s a kind of rent. So without mixing words, clearly they’ll be paying rent. They’ll be a tenant in the land, which is effectively what a share-milker does.

By Norman’s reasoning, the land owner is paying rent for the cows, machinery, animal health products and other inputs the share-milker funds.

SHANE           Mr Norman, don’t you have to be careful that you’re not encouraging an anti-Chinese feeling? After all, we’ve had a number of other nationalities buy land without the same reaction. Don’t you have to be careful?

RUSSEL         Yeah, I think that’s a fair comment. Um, the Greens have had a very consistent approach. I mean, we think that New Zealand land should stay in New Zealand ownership, um, and we don’t care the nationality of the person applying – whether they’re Australian, American or European or Chinese.

Just a teeny bit of irony when this is said in an Australian accent.

JIM  . . .  If I were Chinese looking at this and wondering whether New Zealand really had its heart in building the economic partnership with China, I would wonder why Canadians, Americans, Italians, Germans, Australians, Brits, can come into parts of New Zealand, buy farm after farm after farm after farm and nobody in Wellington blinks an eyelid. But when the first Chinese…

RUSSEL         The Greens do.  

JIM                 …company comes along for this, all of a sudden it becomes a threat to our sovereignty, and I just think,‘How would I feel about that if I were Chinese?’ And I know what I would feel about it. 

We know how the Chinese feel about it from another Q&A interview with David Mahon, managing director of Mahon China Investment Management who has lived in China for 25 years.

SHANE      Do we run the risk of having that reputation being tarnished if the deal doesn’t go through?  

DAVID       We do. Certainly this would be something that not just in China, but throughout Asia with our major trading partners and these sizeable economies – India, Indonesia – would look upon this as being New Zealand as a narrow country after all, that New Zealand actually is racist in terms of its view of who it would like to be its business partners, which I think would be a sad misreading of New Zealand, because I don’t believe that New Zealand is actually racist. I think that this particular Crafar deal has triggered some unfortunate debate in lesser media, and I think it has become politically useful to some in New Zealand, given the fact that, um, you know, we have a very dynamic democracy. And so, in a sense, the real issues, I think, have been lost. But if this doesn’t go through, New Zealand will have a lot of repairing to do across Asia and certainly in China.

There wasn’t a whisper when a controlling interest in Turners and Growers was sold to a German company, even though it owns the iconic ENZA brand.

There was some, but not nearly as much, murmuring about land sales to people from Germany and the United States. But there has been much more about this particular deal and it appears to be not just because the buyers are foreign but because they are Chinese.

I wrote last month about our visit to farms owned by a Swedish family which showed the good it can do.

If we shut the door completely on foreign ownership, we will be the poorer for it.

The rules on foreign ownership were tightened recently. If there is a need for further tightening, let them be tightened but base any change on sound reasoning not emotion and definitely not on xenophobia.

No new spending

Political tragics have been exercised by sideshows in the past week but the government is concentrating on what matters.

On Q&A yesterday Prime Minister John Key said there is unlikely to be any new spending in this year’s Budget:

 It’ll be either a zero budget or very close to zero. What that means is we will spend more money in health and education, but all other ministries will be expected to save money. Why are we doing that? Well, because we need to get NZ back into surplus so we’re not racking up more debts and more deficit so that future generations aren’t continuing to pay for debts that we would be racking up today. So in the four years we will have delivered budgets, we will have spent about $2 billion worth of new money over that four-year period, effectively, of new expenditure through the budget process. Michael Cullen and Helen Clark will have spent $12 billion at the same time. That’s $10 billion of taxes you’re not having-

Individuals, households and businesses which have got the message that spending less and saving more is a priority will be encouraged that the government is continuing to swallow its own medicine.

Performance-based pay good for teachers and pupils

Who hasn’t had experience of teachers across the performance spectrum?

I can remember a few excellent teachers, a mercifully small number of really bad ones and a lot spread between the two extremes.

This is of course a subjective view. Finding an objective system of measuring teacher performance is no easy matter, but it is vital if we want to improve teaching standards and pupils’ performance as Education Minister Hekia Parata said on Q&A:

I think the single biggest challenge we have is to raise achievement, and improving teacher quality is going to directly contribute to that.  . .

. . . I think the first thing that has to be on the table is having a robust and reliable appraisal system that allows us to make those kinds of differentiations. If we want to raise teacher quality, we have to identify who is delivering successful practice and make that common practice. We have to identify where we need to improve the professional learning and development so that teachers can engage with students successfully and our students’ achievement is raised. . .

. . . And the point of an appraisal system is not to punish or blame but to identify where the best practice is occurring, how we get that happening across all schools and where improvement needs to occur and how we get support in. . .

Once a good appraisal system is found, performance based pay is a logical next step. The Minister is neither ruling it in nor out but she does identify a problem with the current system of pay for teachers:

Well, at the moment the starting salary for teachers is, I think, just over $50,000, and it can range through to over $200,000 for principals, so there is a broad range, but what I think the workforce taskforce reported last year was that we needed to look at the structure of the career pathways so that excellent teachers aren’t forced to become leaders or managers – in other words taken out of the classroom situation – because that would be the only way they could get a pay increase. So we have to look at that. We have to look at what the structure of career progression is and how we pay that.

The best way for teachers to improve their pay under the current system is to get out of the classroom and into administration.

That means that really good teachers aren’t paid what they deserve if they keep on teaching and not-so-good teachers get paid the same as better ones.

That isn’t good for the profession or the pupils.

Poor quality teaching is one of the contributing factors to the long tail of under-achievers in our education system, paying good teachers more could be part of the solution.

Prisons aren’t designed to create jobs

The announcement that some prisons are to be closed ought to be good news.

In an interview on Q&A yesterday Finance Minister Bill English said:

  BILL       Well, look, we’d be better not having to lock more people up, but the fact is there are bad people out there who should be locked up. There are also very old prisons that we can’t continue to use because they’re not effective and they’re, in some cases, inhumane. So it’s an expenditure we have to have. The good news is that where we were told a couple of years ago we’d need two or three new prisons, there’s going to be one, and that’ll be it.

SHANE  We’re told you’re going to close down two prisons to build a new one.

BILL        Well, there’s a number of prisons that should be closed because they’re so old and they don’t work to help with dealing with recidivism and just humane treatment of prisoners.

SHANE  But can you confirm to us this morning that there will be two prisons closed down?

BILL       Uh, no, I can’t confirm that. There’s work going on now. What I can say is there are likely to be the closures of some prisons.

I take it from this transcript that old, inhumane prisons which aren’t effective are to be replaced by something better; and that instead of the three that were forecast now only one is needed.

But what makes the headlines in the news: prison closures could lead to job losses.

Prisons aren’t there to provide jobs. They are there to punish people who’ve committed crimes. protect us from them and rehabilitate them.

The possibility of job losses will be upsetting for those effected but it isn’t an argument for keeping prisons which either aren’t needed or are no longer fit for purpose.

 

There’s good reasons for returning to parliament . . .

. . . but the opportunity to deliver a valedictory speech and wanting to stick it up David Farrar and Cameron Slater  aren’t among them.

She might just take up the seat, she said. She would rather like the chance of a dignified retirement and to make a valedictory speech. . .

. . . So she says she has reasons to return: unfinished business, the salary, supporting colleagues in their first opposition election, offering institutional knowledge and support. Acting as camp mother, essentially.

Those reasons … and to “stick it up them”.

Stick it up who? Phil Goff?

“I was actually thinking of David Farrar and Cameron Slater, et al. I wasn’t thinking about my former colleagues,” she says. “I don’t think it’s a particularly worthy thing to say, but I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t.”

Having no good reasons for going to parliament hasn’t stopped people before but to Judith Tizard’s credit she’s just announced on Q&A that she will not take up the list seat vacated by Darren Hughes.

Her interview with Guyon Espiner will be on the link above later and if you missed the broadcast it is worth a look.

Her comments are definitely not a vote of confidence in Phil Goff, Andrew Little or the Labour Party hierachy.

More political tragics needed for strong democracy

The good news is that The Nation and Q&A are going to be funded to broadcast next year.

The bad news is they will probably screen at inconvenient times as they did this year.

Do few people watch these programmes because they’re broadcast at unpopular times, or do they get those time slots because few people watch them?

An ABC interview of  Dr Sally Young, senior lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne,  by Mark Colvin might have the answer:

 Sally Young:  . . . Who is the political news audience?  . . . basically the people who are really political news tragics – people who watch Parliament Question Time or subscribe to Crikey, for example, or watch Sky News press conferences and so on live – that’s about 0.5 per cent of the Australian population. So they’re your real political tragics and it’s a very small percentage.

MARK COLVIN: And so politicians have a real dilemma there. I mean, they’re speaking on two levels and if they engage too much with the Twitterarti etc, then they’re in danger of ignoring the vast majority of the population.

SALLY YOUNG: Mm, that’s right and I mean, even just broadening it out. When I looked at the percentage of people who buy a broadsheet in Australia, it’s about 2 per cent of the adult population. So, you know, it broadens out to things like, if you count people who watch ABC or SBS news and current affairs that’s about 10 per cent, or 12 per cent might listen to ABC Local Radio. So it’s somewhere between 0.5 to 12 per cent. That’s the core audience you think are interested in detailed information about politics, that sort of public affairs.

MARK COLVIN: So you’re left with 80 to 90 per cent who get everything they know about politics from the first couple of minutes of one of the commercial channels’ news bulletins.

SALLY YOUNG: Exactly. That’s right. And one of the findings I was looking at in the book as well is that those people who are reliant, as you say, particularly on commercial television news programs, those news programs will devote possibly two minutes a night to the election…

If it’s only political tragics like you and me who watch, read and listen to serious political analysis, what do politicians do?

MARK COLVIN: Alright so put yourself in a politician’s shoes. Or let’s say, the communications director of one of the major parties. How do you deal with this?

SALLY YOUNG: Well you can see one of the ways they deal with it is that they try to, if they’re brave enough, that the politicians will go on some of the more popular news programs as with Kevin Rudd going on Rove, for example. You know, that they’ll try and engage that audience and reach that audience that isn’t the hardcore political news junkies. They’ll try and get to them through the media they actually use. So that’s one of the ways.

MARK COLVIN: As a professional journalist, we tend to see that as “Oh, they’re trying to avoid the hard questioning”. But you’re saying that it’s just a logical reaction to what’s going on.

SALLY YOUNG: And it would be anti-democratic if they didn’t try to engage those people who don’t access that sort of hard news media, really. I mean, I know that journalists do – especially in those elite media, if you want to call them that – don’t like it when politicians avoid them to go on popular media like FM radio or comedy shows or whatever it is.

This explains a lot about why politics has become much more about personalities and why election campaigns are much more presidential with so much resting on the leader.

But it doesn’t mean there isn’t still a place for hard news journalism and political analysis. The problem is, if not many people are interested in it, advertisers won’t be keen to pay of it which is why New Zealand On Air is helping to fund both The Nation and Q&A.

 Hat Tip: Larvatus Prodeo   who got it from Trevor Cook who concludes:

Twitter, Facebook etc are only going to be important when they break stories. Sure they are entertaining, but they are not journalism . . .

To paraphrase Colvin, I think we will be left with 80 to 90 per cent of the population getting their political news from the first two minutes of the evening bulletin unless Mark Scott, or some other saviour, can turn some of that social media into (research-driven) journalism, rather than turning journalism into social media.

The challenge isn’t just how to fund serious  media, it’s also how to turn more people into political tragics. That will not only ensure a bigger audience for political news and analysis it will engender more participation in the political process and membership of political parties.

Both are important parts of a strong democracy.

Conspiracy theory

Labour’s conference was a chance for the party and its leader to give the public reasons to vote for them.

Q & A interviewed Phil Goff who looked like he was trying, and failing, to defend the indefensible.

The Nation chose to interview Russel Norman and do a feature on Winston Peters.

If I was trying to draw up a list of reasons to vote for a Labour-led government neither Norman nor Peters would be on it.

Mayoral fund for people not property

Christchurch mayor Bob Parker said that the mayoral fund won’t be used to help people whose properties weren’t insured.

Speaking to Guyon Espiner on Q&A yesterday he said:

No, I think that we can’t replace insurance.  We have to be really clear about that, and the money that we’ve got in that fund, we’ve said that’s for people, not for property.  We’re using that money to help citizens, help families that are in difficult times, and that’s going to be needed for a long time ahead, Guyon, we’re going to need that for another 18 months or so as we work through these problems.  I don’t think we can solve all of the problems for everybody if you don’t have insurance.  Really, that’s the decision you’ve made.  There will be some cases of hardship, and we are the kind of community that will try to help, and work with people to solve those problems.

He’s right.

It may sound tough but it’s also fair. People who weren’t insured took a gamble and lost.

If they received compensation from the mayoral fund or central government it would send a message to people that they don’t need to worry about insurance.

What I said, what I meant

In the Bloggerheads spot on Q&A this morning I said:

It’s not a taxpayer bail out. It’s not north saving  south, urban paying rural.

People who lent to and borrowed from South Canterbury Finance came from all over the country. Only those covered by the Deposit Guarantee scheme will get their money back.

Receivership will enable an orderly sale of assets to minimise the eventual cost and damage to the wider economy.

 The government made the right decision over a business that went badly wrong.

 When I said it’s not a tax payer bailout I meant that the company wasn’t being bailed out.

But the depositors are and the taxpayer will end up paying under the Deposit Guarantee Scheme.

Fees – taken from the big banks not finance companies - will cover some of the cost. The return on the sale of the company assets – as a whole or n pieces – will recoup a lot of money but no-one is expecting that to cover all that’s owing.

John Armstrong asks:

Was it fair that finance companies were included when the scheme was rushed into existence in October 2008 during the darkest hours of the global banking crisis and the last days of the Labour Administration?

Was it fair that finance companies still afloat then got protection while investors in those that had already crashed got nothing? Was it fair that some people had subsequently invested money in finance companies to exploit the Government guarantee?

Possibly not to the first question and definitely not to the second.

The exposure of flaws in the deposit guarantee scheme provoked demands they be called to account for failing to rectify them. . . .

While much has been made of the approval of that extension, it is essentially irrelevant. The Government was obliged to pay out the $1.6 billion to depositors because South Canterbury Finance is still covered by the original two-year scheme which has run from October 2008.

The Crown could have withdrawn its guarantee earlier if it considered there was misconduct on the part of the company or a material change in its financial position for the worse.

But the Government would still have had to pay out investors after the company inevitably defaulted as a result of the guarantee being withdrawn. Some money would have been saved. However, the Government gambled on the appointment of restructuring guru Sandy Maier as chief executive to get large portions of the company back on a sound footing. The gamble failed. But it was surely worth a go.

The simple truth is that once South Canterbury Finance was under the umbrella of the deposit guarantee scheme, the taxpayer liability was there for as long as the scheme was in place.

There are grounds for arguing the scheme has been in place too long. But that is from the benefit of hindsight.

. . . Both main parties – Labour in setting up the scheme and National this week in seeking to minimise both the cost to the taxpayer and the economic fallout – have sought to act in the national interest.

Yet, no one – apart from those who creamed it on the back of the Government guarantee – is happy. The Government is the convenient whipping boy.

It is and that’s why people accusing National of acting in the interests of supporters is tosh.

People who get their money back not only come from all around New Zealand they’ll have a variety of political persuasions and they are far fewer in number than the rest of the populace who are aggrieved. 

There are far more votes to be lost than gained from this.

But when you’re in government you don’t get to pick your fights. You have to deal with what comes up and make decisions based on the best information available.

Sometimes that will be politically popular, much of the time it won’t and this one definitely isn’t.

Q&A earthquake special

TV One is planning to broadcast an extra half hour of Q&A tomorrow to cover this morning’s earthquake.

The bloggerhead segment is still on the schedule:

TV ONE will feature an extended Q+A tomorrow from 9am – 10:30am looking at the issues arising from the Canterbury Earthquake.

 Paul Holmes will interview Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker live from the earthquake devastated central city.

 Prime Minister, John Key will join us in the Auckland studio to talk through the national issues arising from the worst earthquake to hit NZ since 1931.

 It’s been a tragic week for Canterbury – Guyon Espiner talks to Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard about South Canterbury Finance and his new book, Crisis: One Central Bank Governor & the Global Financial Collapse and his battle to save our finance sector during the worldwide meltdown. Was the deposit guarantee scheme that saved SCF this week well conceived? Did anyone see this coming? And what does he really think of the government’s efforts to counter the crisis?

 Dr Therese Arseneau is joined on the panel by 2025 Taskforce head, the former Reserve Bank Governor and National Party leader, Dr Don Brash and Waitakere mayor Bob Harvey, who’s soon to take over development of the Auckland waterfront.

 @ Bloggerheads, are Keith Ng from Public Address and Ele Ludemann from Homepaddock.

HP on TV

Q&A’s bloggerhead slot aims to give two different positions on the issue of the week.

Tomorrow it’s Keith Ng from Public Address, chosen because he’s young, urban and financially literate and me because I’m not so young, rural and . . . ?

The media release says:

On Q + A this Sunday:                                                                                                         

Paul Holmes interviews former South Canterbury Finance Chief Executive Sandy Maier about what went wrong and what chance taxpayers have of recovering the losses.

South Canterbury Finance’s collapse has its origins in the global financial crisis. Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard joins Guyon Espiner to talk about his new book, Crisis: One Central Bank Governor & the Global Financial Collapse and his battle to save our finance sector during the worldwide meltdown. Was the deposit guarantee scheme that saved SCF this week well conceived? Did anyone see this coming? And what does he really think of the government’s efforts to counter the crisis?

Paul and Martin Sneddon talk rugby.  One year from RWC kick-off, are we ready? Or are the critics right to be sceptical?

Dr Therese Arseneau is joined on the panel by 2025 Taskforce head, the former Reserve Bank Governor and National Party leader, Dr Don Brash and Waitakere mayor Bob Harvey, who’s soon to take over development of the Auckland waterfront.

@ Bloggerheads, are Keith Ng from Public Address and Ele Ludemann from Homepaddock.

Q + A is broadcast live 9-10am Sunday on TV ONE and repeated at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays on TVNZ 7. 

 (TVNZ 7 screens on Freeview Channel 7 and Sky TV Channel 97). 

Shouldn’t that be former?

Dr Therese Arseneau is joined on the panel by ACT leader and cabinet minister Richard Prebble . . .

The TVNZ media release on the Q&A panel for tomorrow shows one word can be very important, though as one of the world’s worst proof readers I can understand how it happened.

Euro-centric is comfortable but our future is in Aisia

Quote of the day:

We allow ourselves to take on an isolation of the mind . . .

. . .  We go to where we’re comfortable . . . Going to Australia is like going to the rich neighbours for lunch. Going to England is like going back to stay with your grandmother.

And it’s all very comfortable  and it’s all very within the  sort of Anglo-Saxon English speaking world but the future for New Zealand is Asia.

Already China is our number 2 trading partner soon to be our number one trading partner and we are still teaching Latin and French and German in our secondary schools. We should have a whole generation of New Zealanders already that speak Mandarin or even Bahasa so they can deal in Malaysia or Indonesia .

We are a Southern Asian nation economically but we still have a very Euro-centric mindset.

David Mahon, head of Mahon China Investment Management on Q&A.