Paycation beats staycation

National’s proposal to allow workers to trade their fourth weeks holiday for cash has attracted criticism from the usual suspects.

But our holdiay provision is generous – four weeks leave plus 11 statutory days which add up to another couple of working weeks away from work. 

That means a business employing five people has someone on holiday for more than half a year. Some businesses shut down completely so everyone has their holidays together, but that’s not possible for most. Some end up needing another person to cover those on holiday and if that’s not possible or practical other staff have to carry the load when workmates are on leave.

Another point critics of National’s policy don’t take into account is that not everyone wants all that time off. Time away from work is important for mental and physical helath, but four weeks holidays plus the 11 stat days is more than some people want or can afford.

Some people actually like going to work – a director of an agrcultural supply company told me that one of their long-serving employees was owed more than a year in holdiays and in spite of persuasion from the CEO he didn’t want to use them.

And some people don’t want a fourth week because it’s expensive – they live from pay day to pay day and can’t afford to leave home for a holiday so they’re forced to stay at home. There’s nothing wrong with holidaying at home by choice but if you do it from financial necessity it’s not so much a vacation as a staycation.

These people will benefit if National’s proposal is enacted because they’ll get an extra week’s pay – so they’ll have a paycation.

No-one will be forced to take the money rather than the holiday – the whole point of this policy is choice. Those who want a break can still have it and those who don’t can take the money- there is nothing for workers to fear in that.

Stats confirm agriculture still important

NZIER economist Chris Nixon was speaking to the converted when he explained the importance of agriculture at the AGMARDT breakfast during the National Bank Young Farmer Contest.

He said that although agriculture contributes only about 5% of GDP at the farm gate that is only part of the story.

Agriculture has a major impact on downstream and upstream activities. The impact of these industries suggests that roughly 20% of GDP is directly affected by on-farm agricultural activity. These include businesses that service the farming community (downstream) and those that turn farm produce into consumer products – transport and logistics, processing, and marketing activities.

Furthermore, agriculture has a major impact on exports. Land and sea based exports are roughly 42% of exports.

 

The importance of agriculture to our economy is confirmed by a Statistics New Zealand report prepared for Fontera which showed dairy products accounted for 27% of exports earnings for the year to May and all but 2% of that was from Fonterra.

Fonterra is the world’s largest dairy exporter, fifth largest dairy company globally and trades in 140 countries. Chairman Henry van der Heyden said much of the increase had been driven by record commodity prices.

“If we hadn’t had the drought, which saw our milk production drop by around 4 per cent, the figure could have been even higher,” he said.

World economic growth and demand from emerging markets – along with reduced supply, drought in Australia and biofuel production driving up the costs of feedstock – helped drive up dairy commodity prices.

The ANZ Commodity Price Index for dairy products hit 291.9 in November, having risen for 15 consecutive months from 127.6 in August 2006. The dairy index has since fallen in all but one month to reach 256.7 in June.

“We’re seeing continued investment from farmers and in our processing capacity. That’s a huge boost, particularly for regions like Southland with a lot of new jobs and benefits flowing through,” van der Heyden said.

“It’s great that dairying is able to make such a positive and timely contribution to the New Zealand economy at a time when the broader economy is facing increasing pressure.”

It is indeed, although the best may still be ahead of us. Nixon said it takes roughly 18 months for export performance to filter through to the domestic economy so the impact of the good prices farmers are getting now won’t show up beyond the farm gate until the end of next year.

June quarter trade deficit up

The seasonally adjusted trade deficit  increased to $1.9 billion for the three months to June, up from $861 million in the March quarter.

Statistics NZ says this is similar to the deficit in the June quarter last year.

Major contributers to the deficit were siginificant increase in imports of one-off capital goods (particularly oil-related) and petroleum and products, combined with a large seasonally adjusted drop in dairy exports.

The seasonally adjusted value of merchandise imports rose 8.5 percent in the June 2008 quarter (to $12.1 billion) following a flat March quarter. One-off capital imports (an oil platform, oil production vessel, and two large aircraft) were the largest contributors to this increase, added to by the highest ever quarterly value of petroleum and products imports.

The seasonally adjusted value of merchandise exports was down 0.5 percent in the June 2008 quarter (to $10.3 billion) following a 2.4 percent decrease in the March quarter. Although lower, June 2008 still has the third highest quarterly exports value on record. The latest small decrease in total exports comes despite increases in most commodity groups and is primarily the result of a large drop in dairy product exports, following on from the recent drought. Crude oil showed the most significant increase, up 56.6 percent (largely due to price rises).

In the month of June 2008, merchandise imports were valued at $3.8 billion, the highest value for a June month, up 16.9 percent from June 2007. This increase was led by crude oil with the price of crude up substantially since June 2007.

Merchandise exports were valued at $3.6 billion in June 2008, up 30.9 percent from June 2007. This is the largest percentage increase from the same month of the previous year since January 2001. The increase in exports was dominated by crude oil and milk powder, butter and cheese.  

You can fool some of the people

This survey which asks do you believe Winston Peters? isn’t scientific, which is a good thing because 14.9% or respondents said yes.

It’s a self-selecting on-line survey which began on Friday – 74.3% said no and the rest were don’t knows.

Two types of women three types of blokes

I thought the world could be divided into two types – those who can learn from other people’s mistakes and the other people. But if Oswald Bastable  is right perhaps my categories only apply to women because he’s found three categories for men:

There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.”

Ouch.

Hat tip: Oswald Bastable.

Banks to Shadbolt – keep hands off Auckland

Tim Shadbolt says that if Auckland becomes a super city it would need a celebrity to lead it but John Banks isn’t impressed.

When pigs could fly and muttonbirds took up roost in Auckland would be the day Tim Shadbolt became mayor of New Zealand’s biggest city, Auckland Mayor John Banks said.

 The Sunday Star Times reported yesterday that Mr Shadbolt was regularly pressured to be Auckland’s mayor and he was not ruling it out. But the statement was met with a defiant retort from Mr Banks.

“I think the chances of Mr Shadbolt becoming the mayor of a super city in Auckland are about as much chance as pigs flying — and I love pigs,” Mr Banks said.

“And the problem also for Mayor Shadbolt is here in Auckland it’s not cold enough for muttonbirds.” Mr Shadbolt was ideally suited to the polar region of the country and not so well suited to the fifth best city in the world, Mr Banks said.

The second-time-around Auckland mayor said he had been elected back because he was the one to promote and execute a move to the city becoming a super city.

Auckland finds out in December whether its seven city and district councils and one regional council will be rejigged — potentially into a single local authority or an amalgamation of several existing councils — when the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Auckland Governance releases its recommendations.

Mr Shadbolt said Mr Bank’s comments were born out of insecurities.

“I used to find his comments insulting but now I’ve sort of acclimatised and know they’re born out of insecurities.”

Whether Auckland needs Tim is a moot point, but why would he want to leave Invercargill which is growing on the back of the rural upturn for Auckland which is facing recession?

He helped racing, racing helped him

Tony Wall’s Sunday Star Times feature explains how Winston Peters helped the racing industry and how racing people helped him.

You can read the full story here  but this summary is not on line:

What Racing Has Done For Winston:

* Vela family, with interests in NZ Bloodstock at Karaka and Pencarrow Stud in the Waikato, reportedly donated at least $150,000 in amounts under $10,000 between 1999 and 2003 to NZ First.

* Wealthy breeder Sir Patrick Hogan, of Cambridge Stud, launched his own campaign to get NZ First back into parliament, spending thousands of his own money on newspaper advertsiements. The racing industry also backed the party through its Fair Tax campaign.

* Billionaire expat Owen Glenn, a racehorse owner, donated $100,000 to NZ First’s electoral challenge of the 2005 result in Tauranga.

What Winston Has Done For Racing:

* Reduced totalisator duty to 4% from a headline rate of 20%, pumping around $32 million a year into the industry.

* Decreased the tax write-down period for stallions and broodmares, encouraging more people to buy racehorses for tax advantages and potentially benefitting breeders by millions.

*This year’s Budget allocated a further $19m for a co-sponsorship scheme over a three-year period to enable “substantially higher prize money offered by the creme de la creme of New Zealand races.”

I don’t have a problem with people donating to political parties providing they are decalred as required by electoral law. But New Zealand First has declared few donations while the party and its leader have been staunch critics of the influence of big business and anonymous donors in politics.

The more we learn the more it looks like gross hypocrisy

Welfare for Families to stay

National will not change Welfare for Families if it’s in government.

John Key said the decision was made to give some certainty to those receiving assistance.

“A large number of New Zealand families get Working for Families.  National understands this. I know it is particularly tough out there for families with kids. These are families with mums and dads who are working long hours, trying to get by on a modest wage in the absence of tax cuts under this Labour Government. We don’t want to make life more difficult for them.

“While National has long been concerned about how far up the income scale Working for Families stretches, a careful analysis of possible changes at the higher income levels showed that it was not worthwhile making them.

“I have long held concerns, in addition, about high effective marginal tax rates acting as a disincentive to people under WFF, but we are confident that this issue will be addressed by our tax package.

“As I have always said, I am interested in what works.  National acknowledges that Working for Families payments are an important part of the income of many families.

“Despite concerns we hold about the system, I consider that offering people certainty is much more important in these tough economic times.”

I don’t like the idea of middle and upper income people receiving welfare but philosophical purity doesn’t win elections. And the comment about high marginal tax rates being addressed by National’s tax package gives me some hope because families keeping more of what they earn won’t need extra by way of a benefit.

Feliz cumpleaños Kiwiblog

Feliz cumpleaños to Kiwiblog which turns five today.

• 10,702 posts
• 342,229 comments
• 1,424 unique tags
• 2,972 registered commenters
• Approx 9,500,000 visits
• Over 2.5 TB of data downloaded

The numbers are impressive – but it’s not just the quantity of posts, it’s the quality which is remarkable. In the blogosphere where blogs come and go, and some are no more than vehicles for incoherent and/or bigotted rants; Kiwiblog is consistently rational and reasoned.

Labour preparing to lose

What is the significance of the rash of Labour appointments in the last month?

Gerry Brownlee listed 96 since June 20 in a press release last weekend, and The Herald had a story yesterday about Labour stacking the NZ Transport Agency with political allies.

It could be normal business, but it might also signal they’ve accpeted they’re going to lose the election so they’re doing what they can for their friends while they can.

Bill Ralston  points to another sign they’re preparing for a loss:

Labour strategists have become dangerously obsessed with trying to demolish Key personally and portray his party as having a secret agenda to sell everything and return us all to some kind of capitalist serfdom.

It is role-reversal. Labour has adopted the negative approach usually taken by opposition parties, allowing National to take a more publicly palatable positive approach to the country’s future.

It is like Labour has looked six months ahead and has already decided it’s the opposition – and maybe it is right.

Fingers crossed.

Only a fool would pick a fight with Bob

If Winston Peters has any personal insight he’ll already be regretting picking a fight with Sir Bob Jones who has said he will write to Wayne Peters asking what happened to the $25,000 he wrote for the Spencer Trust in 2005.

Peters has said he has “no involvement with that trust” administered by his brother, but former NZ First staff member Rex Widerstrom told the Herald on Sunday he was prepared to swear an affidavit stating the trust was set up around the time of the Winebox Inquiry to funnel anonymous donations from people who wanted to support Peters’ various legal battles.

Peters might also ask himself why he questioned Sir Bob’s memory:

Despite Peters’ claims of a failing memory, Sir Robert said that he recalled the background to the donation very clearly.

“There was a lot of drinking and when we got round to the subject [of the donation] there was a tremendous argument and I said ‘Winston, I’m not giving you anything’. Finally to get him off my back I said ‘you can have $25,000 on the basis of friendship’,” Sir Robert said.

Asked if he believed it was plausible Peters knew nothing of the Spencer Trust, he added: “Of course he [Peters] did… [But] there was no bloody mention of the Spencer Trust. The money was to go to his party.

“I don’t tell bloody lies. Why am I in the firing line for an act of benevolence? I won’t tolerate it.”

It would be difficult to find any reasons why Sir Bob and his staff would lie. There are plenty of reasons why Peters might – starting with a political career based in part on his attacks on big business involvement and anonymous donations to political parties.

Rice visit sideshow to Peters’ circus

Tracy Watkins concludes her comments on Condoleezza Rice’s visit with these observations:

Peters might have hoped he would not be asked about it today in front of Rice – well, that was never going to happen after the farce played out yesterday at a press conference at which Mr Peters was supposed to clear up the issues around a donation by millionaire Sir Bob Jones.

Peters blustered and obfuscated for 40 minutes, giving journalists no alternative but to put the issue to him today. To do otherwise would have looked like we accepted Peters’ position yesterday.

Silly man, the more he blusters the deeper the hole he’s digging for himself.

It will be interesting to see now whether the PM fronts up to reporters after her press conference with Rice, as has tended to be her practice.

Given the constraints on our ability to ask questions of her and Rice at their formal press conference – media are allowed just four questions in total, two to foreign journalists and two to New Zealand media – you would expect her to come down after and give us a separate briefing. It’s something she has often done in the past after all.

If she refuses then we will be entitled to draw our own conclusions; that she is still weighing up the fall out from the Peters presser yesterday and isn’t ready to rush out yet in fulsome support.

The only rush should be for a full, independent inquiry.

Deans 1 – Henry 0

Oh dear:  Wallabies 34 – All Blacks 19.

Meetings you’d want to miss

North & South challenged readers to suggest a speaker and topic guaranteed to attract a smaller crowd than the 36 people who attended one of Michael Cullen’s public pre-Budget briefings.

The magazine appreciated Jill Sinden’s offering: Helen Clark Presents Eight Countries, 15 Days, One Trouser Suit – How to Dress Up and Down with Style and Panache.

But the prize went to Megan McPherson with a Winter Lecture Series: Painting for Charity – an interactive workshop with the Rt Hon Helen Clark; Macro-economic Trends in Western Migration with Mary Anne Thompson; and Tagging – Legitimate Post-Modern Form of Self-Expression by Artistically repressed Urban Youth… Cindy Kiro Explains.

To these I’d add: Food You Should Fear from Sue Kedgley; Disciplined Discipline – a joint presentation by Sue Bradford and David Benson-Pope; and The Fourth Estate – Their Part in my Downfall by Winston Peters.

Zapped by shocking power bill

Garston cafe owner Tony Corbett got a shock when he saw his latest power bill. Contact Energy charged him  $1100 when his normal monthly power bill is about $200.

His sister Tess Corbett had a similar problem in Kaiwaka – her bill from Meridian Energy is usually about $34 a month but the last one was $394.

The cause of the problem appears to be the meter readers’ inability to read the meters. They’d given a six-figure killowatt reading instead of a five-figure. The sixth digit on the meter is a unit counter and was read as a unit of kilowatt power so Mr Corbett’s 177 kilowatts had been recorded as 1770.

Memo to staff trainers: meter readers need to know which numbers they are supposed to read and record.

Testing times

Conflicting loyalties over tonight’s rugy test have been summed up in today’s ODT by Garrick Tremain with a cartoon which is sadly not on-line.

It shows a bloke garling at the television and his wife saying: “I’ve never known him so uptight about a test match… He so wants the ABs to win and Graham Henry to come second.”

Shorter blustering peterus facing extinction?

The zoological community is finding increasing evidence that the shorter blustering peterus may be facing extinction.  

        

Characterised by its immaculate pinstriped plumage and animal cunning, the peterus has defied previous predictions of its imminent demise because of its chameleon-like propensity for taking on the characteristics of former enemies when coalescing with other species.

 

Experts put this ability down to a lust for power which blinds the peterus to the contradictions in its easy assimilation into communities on which it has previously poured scorn.

 

The peterus has a parasitic relationship with the taxpayer which is aggravatged by a predisposition to pork barrel politics. It has several natural enemies including the media and anyone who thinks. It likes to give the appearance of integrity but has a weakness for baubles and while it would strongly deny this, it also has a history of hypocrisy.

 

Experts have not been able to explain the contradiction in the peterus’s predilection for gazing at its own image and its total lack of personal insight but many put it down to an unfortunate belief in its own superiority.

 

The species is semi nocturnal. Its natural habitat is late night bars but the peterus can also be found braying in the chamber. While it has a tendency towards ranging alone, the peterus can be charming and appears to be comfortable in crowds of sycophants like those found at Grey Power meetings.

 

It preys on the fears and prejudices of the insecure and the bewildered and has a symbiotic relationship with the blue-rinsed sub species of voter.

 

Scientists admit to several gaps in their knowledge of the species because of the difficulty in pinning it down and its inability to give a straight answer. They also display some wariness in approaching it because of its predisposition to rabid attacks when cornered.

 

The peterus has often displayed irrational behaviour and has been noticed recently digging furiously in a hole of its own making. Long time observers of the species admit to a grudging admiration for its ability to get out of tight spots in the past but believe that it may be too difficult for the peterus to extricate itself from this hole when it is so deep and becoming increasingly muddy.

Who do we believe?

TV1 news showed Winston Peters at the press conference at which he said he’d never asked Sir Robert Jones for money.

Sir Bob has just been on Closeup saying Peters asked him for money – in his words “hit me up for 50 grand” and that Roger McLay from Peters’ office came to pick up the cheque.

Over at Keeping Stock Inventroy 2 was watching Campbell Live on TV3 where Peters said the cheque was given to the Spencer Trust, not his party, followed by Sir Bob saying that the donation was to New Zealand First.

Allegations unsubstantiated rubbish – Peters

He didn’t have a sign saying “no” this time, but Winston Peters   didn’t have many straight answers either.

He labelled allegations over donations to New Zealand first as unsubstantiated rubbish and attacked the media.

No surprises there, but as Julian Robins said on Checkpoint (not yet on line) there are still a lot of questions to which answers have yet to be given.

Update: Checkpoint is now on line here.

Aussie farmers get ETS advantage

Australia’s Emissions Trading Scheme will not include agriculture at its 2010 start date though it might be phased in after 2015.

The Australian Government says it does not consider it practical to include agriculture from the start, but hopes to have all major polluting industries covered by 2015.

New Zealand was the first country to feature the primary sector in an ETS, which will be introduced from 2013, with 90% free allocations to be phased out from 2018.

Australian National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) president David Crombie welcomed the news the sector would not be included from the start of the scheme and says farmers will be willing to play their part in meeting the climate change challenge.

‘No country in the world has yet found a way to equitably include its agricultural production in an ETS,’ Crombie says. ‘That is, with the exception of New Zealand, where farmers are now looking at margins reducing by up to 160% as a result.’

And can anyone explain why we’re doing that whent he cost is so high for little or no environmental benefit?

Crombie says the Government’s Green Paper takes into account the three key issues for farmers. These are the impracticalities of measuring, monitoring and verifying agricultural emissions; the need to fully grasp agriculture’s life cycle to account for carbon stored in soil, crops and pastures; and the need to challenge the international Kyoto rules to reflect Australia’s particular circumstances.

One of New Zealand agriculture’s major arguments against being the first country to include the sector has been the fear of losing a competitive advantage.

It has also called for delays until further research can deliver better measurement and mitigation techniques.

Both accurate measurement and effective mitigation are essential if the scheme is to have any validity and benefit.

The Australian Government recognises a joint effort with the industry is required before agriculture is included, and a final decision will be made in 2013.

The National Party refuses to support the New Zealand Government’s ETS on the grounds the policy has been rushed, arguing we should instead follow Australia’s moves.

An issue this important ought to have broad cross-party support. Labour’s approach doesn’t which means a sensible approach depends on them not being able to push the Emissions Trading Bill through parliament before the election.