Editorials 19 February 2010
The NZ Herald thinks the Government is timid:
We need to build opportunities for people to invest and to invest safely, said Justice Minister Simon Power in his response to the Capital Market Development Taskforce report. That was a statement of the obvious, given the shortage of high-quality investment opportunities, which, among other things, has promoted an unhealthy zeal for the housing market. The Government should, therefore, be seizing every chance to ensure such investments are available. Regrettably, it has chosen, instead, to replicate the timidity evident in its recent tax reform proposals.
A core taskforce recommendation was that the Government should sell off minority stakes in state-owned enterprises. This would provide mum-and-dad investors with the sort of investment that proved hugely popular when the likes of Vector, Contact Energy and Auckland International Airport were fully or partly floated. It would also provide a major boost to the New Zealand stock exchange, which has suffered from a large number of delistings over the past few years.
I am a big fan of selling off minority stakes. National’s 2008 election policy prohibits this for their first term, but I will be disappointed if they do not have a more flexible policy for their second term.
The Dominion Post wants an end to taxpayer funded electioneering:
Mr Power, or the select committee considering his proposals, should insert in the new law a clause banning the use of public funds for implicit as well as explicit political purposes. Politicians are entitled to research policy and to communicate with constituents, but they should not be allowed to use public money for electioneering.
I think the Dominion Post is being impractical here. I am all for banning taxpayer funded publications during an election campaign, but the Dominion Post’s proposal would make almost all parliamentary communications illegal. If the Opposition proposes an alternative budget to the Government, that has an implicit political purpose. 99% of what Parliament does has an implicit political purpose. Minority reports of Select Committees for example.
The Press considers the safety of attending the Commonwealth Games:
Our Government is considering what security it would provide in New Delhi in October but ultimately this is India’s responsibility and therein lies a problem. Despite reassurances about athlete safety, there remain major doubts about security services there.
They could not prevent the Mumbai attacks, even though the two opulent hotels targeted should have had tight security, given previous attacks in the city.
And the delays in gaining accreditation to our New Delhi high commission of a police liaison officer, as revealed by government papers which showed top-level concerns over safety, do not inspire confidence that security is an absolute priority.
Besides, even if security has been tightened it is difficult to provide protection against determined suicide bombers.
Indian authorities do not like to be embarrassed by foreign criticism of their security services. But it would be far more embarrassing if nations or individual athletes refused to compete there or, even more humiliating, if a prestigious event such as the Commonwealth Games were shifted elsewhere.
I have visions of athletes running the 1500m in bullet proof vests!
The ODT talks wildlife smuggling:
Hopefully, the incident where Manfred Bachmann was caught in Christchurch this week with 16 rare jewelled geckos inside plastic pipes in his backpack is itself a rare case of wildlife smuggling.
Hopefully, the New Zealand leg of the several-billion-dollars-a-year trade in protected and endangered species is minuscule.
And hopefully New Zealand authorities can stamp out any incipient trafficking.
It will be interesting to see what sentence he gets.