Let’s all pay by phone

Remember the last National Government’s stupid hospital outpatient fees back in the 1990s? The ones that were eventually scrapped because they often cost more to collect than the revenue raised.

Well, it seems the last Labour Government fell into similar folly with its toll charges on the Orewa-Puhoi motorway.

Brian Rudman reveals in the New Zealand Herald that it costs $1.29 in transaction costs to collect each $2.00 car toll.

And for people who pay the toll by phone, it costs $2.70 to collect each $2.00 toll.

If everyone who travels on the Orewa-Puhoi motorway were to pay by phone, the NZ Transport Agency would make a thumping great loss from its tolling regime. And raising the toll to cover the administration costs would be extremely unpopular – remember how Maurice Williamson was shut down so quickly by John Key and Bill English during the election campaign when he suggested a $5 toll on new roads. That statement probably cost Williamson a senior Cabinet position.

So isn’t it time for a bit of people power. Let’s all pay by phone if we use the Orewa-Puhoi motorway, and we’ll soon see the end of the tolling regime.

And let the Orewa-Puhoi motorway debacle be a lesson to the current National Government, who seem to think that tolling and PPPs are a great way to fund its “Roads of National Significance”.

 

A smack as part of good parental correction

The Otago Daily Times reports:

A daughter described her mother as “a monster” as she told the Dunedin District Court about seeing her mother beating her younger brothers with a belt and screaming abuse at them.

The adult sister said her 9-year-old brother begged her to let him stay with her and her husband, telling her “he promised he would be good and he wished that she [his mother] would die in a car accident”.

The woman was giving evidence yesterday on the second day of the trial of her 41-year-old Invercargill mother, who faces 14 charges of assault against three of her children, aged 3, 9 and 12.

The charges include assaults using a belt, jug cord, wooden spoon, fibreglass tent pole and a jandal as a weapon, and allegedly took place in Gisborne, Napier and Invercargill between April 2006 and March 2008.

The adult sister told the jury and Judge Stephen O’Driscoll she saw her mother “viciously” laying into two of her younger brothers with a belt, for at least 20 seconds, hitting one until he cried before turning on the other.

Thanks to Sue Bradford, this woman isn’t able to use the defence of “reasonable force for the purpose of correction”.

But at least some of her alleged assaults appear to be totally acceptable to Larry Baldock:

I’m not opposed to the wooden spoon or ruler because you can control things with that better than you can with an open hand.

 

Free non-Māori rugby

I’m loving the outrage at the likelihood that Māori TV might get rights to the Rugby World Cup.  It seems paying Sky to watch rugby was a bitter enough pill to swallow, but being forced to listen to a little bit of reo in among your rucks and mauls may be the straw that will break the TV sofa’s back.

I note most of the objections have centered around whether Māori TV has the capacity to broadcast to all NZ homes.  It’s interesting that this has never been a major public concern in the context of Māori TV’s te reo Māori programmes.

I don’t have  a TV aerial at my house, so most of the sport I watch these days is friends playing in local competitions. So, the bit I don’t get is that there are hundreds, if not thousands of free rugby games taking part on fields all over new Zealand – transmitted to all corners of the nation if you will. Those sort of games make great snippets on TV ads about heartland grassroots New Zealand, so why not watch them instead of the ABs.

And yet I’d be very surprised if these local rugby players in our clubs and schools are finding the rugby-deprived public are flocking to the sidelines to watch free rugby.  It seems to me that people are complaining about their non-existent right to watch the marketed and packaged commodity that is commercial rugby rather enforcing their existing right to watch the muddy, local, gritty version that involves people in our own communities.

 

Dipton International Airport – where the excavators roar

Stevedore posted this afternoon:

Dig up Fiordland for coal?
Why not? Afterall it seems to have helped Newcastle develop into the must-go tourist hotspot that it is today.

Seems that great minds think alike. Because I had an idea for a similar post. Except I had the graphic to the left lined up for mine.

Yes, Dipton. Given that you can’t really have lots of people living in a National Park, the ideal location for the administrative centre of operations would have to be Dipton. Dipton could become a real economic powerhouse.

Plenty of room for development. And just a short flight to get the miners to work.

Yes, a flight. From Dipton International Airport. The one that Bill English and the NZ Herald seem to think already exits:

Mr McCully liaised with Samoan and Tongan ministers yesterday while Mr English flew north from Dipton, in his Clutha-Southland electorate, back to Wellington.

Hey, and with an airport in Dipton, Bill could be home to his wife and kids within an hour and 15 minutes of leaving Parliament.

Oops, he already can. Walking to Karori!

BTW: The Dipton in the graphic is Dipton in Durham, United Kingdom – not Bill’s Dipton. But coal could be the common factor.

 

Dig up Fiordland for coal?

Why not? Afterall it seems to have helped Newcastle develop into the must-go tourist hotspot that it is today.

 

Lefties

Nandor Tanczos has an interesting and challenging blog over at Dread Times, where he assesses the impact that Sue Bradford’s departure will have on the Green Party.  I’m sad to see Sue go – I reckon she’s one of the best MPs we’ve ever had.  And I feel immensely sad and frustrated that we as a party couldn’t find a place for her.  Much as I felt when Nandor left too. In particular I worry that there is no one else in Parliament to speak for the community sector the same way Sue Bradford does. But I disagree with this comment:

Along with new MPs Kennedy Graham and Kevin Hague, David and Gareth signify a change in the Green Party’s political orientation and flavour… With this new influx, the Green Party is likely to become a more emphatically ‘green-wing’ party than has been possible in the past.

I come from that “old left element” of the party, and I’ve always thought the concept of ‘green-wing’ is fundamentally flawed.  While the left-right political spectrum is not the only political divide it is an important one that you cannot pretend doesn’t matter.  The most Green of issues – climate change, water quality, conservation etc – cannot be solved, to my mind without at least some decent left-wing state intervention.  Gareth Hughes might fit the stereotype of young, urban, tree-hugging Green better than Sue Bradford, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him out supporting Unite’s $15 minimum wage campaign and other ‘left wing’ causes – because that stuff is about core Green values. One potential new MP does not make for a change in direction – at least not one that I can discern.  I’m expecting the Greens to remain the only party in Parliament that consistently speaks up on the left-wing issues I care about. Sue Bradford has particular emphases that are different to those that Gareth will have as an MP but the values of the party are not, as far as I can see, going anywhere new.

 

Roll out the pork barrel

I’ve been puzzled ever since Transport Minister Steven Joyce announce the Government’s Roads of National Significance back in March as to why the Puhoi-Wellsford motorway was on the list.

The Puhoi-Wellsford motorway is far from a priority for the Auckland Regional Transport Authority. The existing road is only rarely congested. And with a price tag of $2.3 billion, the proposed motorway is enormously expensive.

The I read an opinion piece by Brian Rudman in the NZ Herald:

It will also do no harm to Mr Joyce’s reported desire to inherit Speaker Lockwood Smith’s Rodney electorate, through which the grand motorway will run.

And everything fell into place. Lockwood Smith is likely to retire at the next election. Steven Joyce, who lives in the Rodney electorate, wants to enhance his public standing by becoming an electorate MP. Rodney, his home electorate, would be the ideal place to stand.

And what better way to ensure he gets the National Party nomination for the electorate than give the movers and shakers there a brand spanking new motorway.

Pork barrel politics at its worst!

Meanwhile, I likely still won’t be able to catch a train between Henderson and New Lynn on a Sunday.

 

This one goes out to the Minister of Finance

Poor Bill English has been getting a hard time lately. So I thought I’d post a song for him. The first one I thought of was Wilko Johnson’s Doctor Dupree. It’s got the Double D alliteration in the title (as in Double Dipton) and some really appropriate lines like:

You better jump before the blast.

But try as I did, Bill, I couldn’t find a decent quality video of it. So this one, also by Wilko Johnson, will have to do.

It’s called Sneaking Suspicion. Also rather appropriate, in the circumstances. And has anyone, ever, heard a guitar played like a percussion instrument in the way Wilko does on this.

Play it for Bill, Wilko!

 

Who lives here?

There may be a small prize for anyone who can provide the correct answer. But you need to supply the evidence on the comments thread to verify it.

My decision as judge will be final, but I would suggest that some investigation is required, rather than supplying speculative answers.

Clue: I am disqualifying greenfly from participating, as he may be appointed the final arbiter on any decision.

 

It’s time to dump the ETS

The current public debate over the relative merits of Labour’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) and National’s scheme is not getting us anywhere. We’re arguing about the difference between quite useless and rather useless.

Because the fact is, as a means to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the ETS approach is wholly ineffective. And not only is it ineffective, it is unjust as well.

The climate crisis we face is of such a scale that we can’t afford to wait years for empirical data to show us that ETSs are fatally flawed. We have to break out of the ETS mindset right now. So, what I’ve done here is describe some of the problems with ETSs in the hope that it clears the space for another debate to begin – what approach will actually make real and just progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

There is a lot of analysis of the weaknesses of ETSs around the web and some of the best comes from Larry Lohmann (here).

Some of his observations are as follows:

1. Emissions markets do not encourage the development of low or zero emission technology. The market focus on economic efficiency dictates that the purchase of permits will be preferred to expenditure on research and development, structural shifts in public investment, redirection of subsidies away from fossil fuels, and other measures.

2. The science, technology and enforcement required for an extensive emissions trading scheme is not available, even in industrialized countries. That opens the way for Enron-level scams.

Underlining the potential for scams, Rachel Morris in June 2009’s Mother Jones magazine (here) describes the consequences of the US getting into carbon trading: within 5 years a $2 trillion derivatives market in which carbon credits will be “securitized, derivatized, and speculated by Wall Street like the mortgage-backed securities market.”

These incentives for profiteering will exacerbate the worst aspects of ETSs that are already visible in so-called offset projects.

In such projects, developing nations are becoming a ‘carbon dump’ for the industrialised world, as communal land is enclosed and converted to exotic forestry or occupied by windmills, and as rivers that have been used sustainably by local communities for generations are dammed for hydro schemes. See, for example, Tamra Gilbertson’s devastating photo essay here.

In May 2008, in response to the worsening injustices, 39 climate justice groups published a statement indicting carbon trading and offset schemes as the “false solutions” of “a new 21st century phase of colonialism” (here).

The conclusion is plain enough: we must stand in solidarity with the climate justice movement and oppose false solutions. It’s time to reject the ETS approach and lead the debate toward the real and just answers to climate change.