Nicholas Jones writes:

Charter school students outperform their public school peers in some areas, a new study shows, as the Government continues to work towards introducing the controversial schools in New Zealand.

Yet the opposition and their unions say that charter schools must not even be trialled in NZ.

My view is simple. Allow suitable applicants to establish charter schools, so long as no student is forced to attend one (they won’t be), and keep them going only so long as they match or exceed the performance of other schools.

The study by Stanford University researchers at the Center for Research on Education Outcomes examined the standardised test results of students enrolled in charter schools in 26 states and New York City.

Results were compared to those of students with the same demographics and academic profiles in public schools that the charter students would have otherwise attended.

The original study in 2009 found many students in charter schools were not performing as well as those in nearby public schools, and was widely cited by opponents of the publicly funded, privately-run schools.

However, the updated study shows that, overall, charter school students are now surpassing those in public schools in reading gains and keeping pace in maths.

This is a major finding. It reverses the earlier study that opponents were citing.

The improvement was helped by the closure of 8 per cent of schools included in the 2009 analysis because they were underperforming.

And this is key. You generally can not close a state school that is merely under-performing. Charter schools are more accountable as they can be closed for non-performance.

Parliament is in urgency today from 9 am until midnight. The items being considered are:

• the second reading of the Families Commission Amendment Bill (0900 – 1000)
• the second reading of the Financial Reporting Bill (1000 – 1200)
• the second reading of the Bail Amendment Bill (1300 – 1500)
• the second reading of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill (1500 – 1700)
• the second reading and committee stage of the Psychoactive Substances Bill (1700 onwards)
• the committee stage of the Legal Assistance Amendment Bill
• the committee stage of the State Sector and Public Finance Reform Bill
• the committee stage and third reading of the Plumbers, Gasfitters, and Drainlayers Amendment Bill and any bills into which it may be divided
• the committee stage of the Taxation (Livestock Valuation, Assets Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill
• the committee stage of the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill
• the committee stage of the Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill
• the committee stage of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (Covered Bonds) Amendment Bill, and
• the committee stage of the Medicines Amendment Bill.

The time estimates are mine. Very hard to predict how long all the different committee stages will take, but I’d say the House will be sitting well into Thursday, and probably beyond. However many of the bills are not very controversial, so committee stages may not take too long.

The latest Roy Morgan poll is at Curiablog.

Over the last two RM polls, National has gone up 5.5% and Labour down 3.5%.

Isaac Davidson at NZ Herald reports:

MPs will give way to New Zealand soldiers – including SAS troops – and their families this evening for a ceremony in Parliament’s debating chamber to mark the Defence Force’s service and losses in overseas conflict.

In a rare move, up to 200 people will be allowed on to the floor of the House during Parliament’s dinner break for the unveiling of three commemorative plaques which recognise New Zealanders wounded or killed in Afghanistan, Timor-Leste and on peace-keeping missions.

Defence Force officials, families of the soldiers, and elite troops will hear speeches by Speaker David Carter, Prime Minister John Key and Leader of the Opposition David Shearer.

The plaques are the first to be added to the debating chamber since the 1990s, when memorials for wars in Malaysia and Vietnam were put up.

I often look at those plaques, if I’m in the gallery.

Parliamentary tour notes say the wood-carved plaques were placed in the debating chamber “as solemn reminders of the gravity of decisions made by Parliamentarians to send men and women overseas on active service and operations, and to acknowledge the service and sacrifice of those men and women”.

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard referred to the plaques in a speech in the debating chamber in 2011, describing them as “snapshots of the shared and lasting bonds between our two nations”.

“Our ties were indelibly forged in hardship and mateship, from Gallipoli and the Somme to Tobruk, Korea and beyond … And wherever Australian and New Zealand blood has been shed, it remains sacred ground.”

Indeed. I hope to visit Gallipoli next April. It will be the 99th anniversary of Gallipoli. I’d like to go for the 100th but it will be too difficult to get in.

Audrey Young at NZ Herald reports:

Steven Joyce and Judith Collins may be involved in an unofficial leadership contest within National to take over when John Key finally leaves politics, but neither is seen as the best replacement were it to happen tomorrow, according to a New Zealand Herald DigiPoll survey.

Finance Minister Bill English is the preferred choice of general voters.

Mr English was favoured by 29.7 per cent, Mr Joyce by 25.4 per cent and Ms Collins by 13 per cent. Almost 20 per cent thought none of them.

Of course there is no vacancy, and the decision will be made by caucus, not public vote – or membership vote like in Labour.

Asked at his post-Cabinet press conference who he thinks would be best to replace him if he fell under a bus, he said initially “someone with a sense of humour”.

“We’ve got a very talented caucus and If I name one of them the other 58 … will be bitter and twisted.”

The worst thing can be to labeled a future leader at an early stage!

Helen Clark once nominated Trevor Mallard as her natural successor, early on in her prime ministership.

Might have happened!

Mr Key has previously indicated he would leave politics if he were voted out of office. The unofficial leadership battle between Ms Collins, the Justice Minister, and Mr Joyce, the Economic Development Minister, is realistically for Leader of the Opposition and would be determined by National MPs, not voters.

That’s not quite right. If National wins a third term, then it is possible John Key would not seek to go into a fourth election, and retire part-way through the third term.  National would want him to stay on, but he could well decide that eight years is enough.

Stuff reports:

A judge has held out hope two parents in a shocking case of child neglect could have their children returned to them.

The Lower Hutt couple’s four children, aged 4 and under, were taken into care in January after police found them living in squalor while their parents partied.

However, police and child experts cast doubt on whether the parents could learn from their past mistakes.

“This was not an issue of poverty for this family. These parents simply prioritised alcohol, drugs and parties ahead of the needs of their children,” Inspector Mike Hill said after the sentencing.

And the background to the parents is sad:

The mother was one of 18 children, had started binge-drinking aged about 13, and was expelled from school before having her first child at 17.

The father had been taken out of his alcoholic mother’s care as a baby and had never met his father. He started drinking heavily when he was about 15 and was introduced to gangs a year later.

So the grandparents were dysfunctional. The parents are dysfunctional and the kids may have already been so damaged that they will grow up dysfunctional.

Stopping the cycle of child abuse is incredibly hard. In this case though CYF should have intervened earlier. It was the Police responding to a noisy party that led to them losing the children. CYF had been involved for five years trying to help the parents. But some parents can’t be helped, sadly.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers. 2.00PM – 3.00 PM.

Mike Yardley writes in The Press:

The news ricocheted across the city yesterday morning, like a thunderclap.

Despite all the soothing tones of reassurance, despite all the varnished rhetoric that the big bad wolf of revocation would be kept from the council door, International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) has walked the talk and blown the house down.

The Christchurch City Council has incurred the unique and ignominious distinction of becoming the nation’s first consenting authority to be stripped of its accreditation.

On the day that the IANZ letter, outlining their intention to revoke, was brought to the public’s attention by the Earthquake Recovery Minister, the Christchurch mayor’s first reflex was to absolve the council of any blame or responsibility.

He slammed Gerry Brownlee for launching a ”media missile”, and he accused the Government of ”undermining public confidence in the council”. 

And that is something I doubt he will recover from. Up until the Govt made it public, the Council itself wasn’t aware they were on the verge of losing accreditation. And Parker attacked the Government for their transparency.

In the wake of such embellished bravado, the political fallout for Bob Parker is thunderous. Just three months out from election day, it’s a hell of a black eye. But beyond the political ramifications, this is a withering hammerblow to our sense of trust in the council. 

Would you trust them to be straight with you?

Late last week, the council’s senior management were trumpeting all of the progress they’d made to ward off and neutralise the compliance concerns IANZ had flagged.

But as the council brass back-slapped themselves into believing that all was well in the state of Denmark, ministers Gerry Brownlee and Maurice Williamson were busily deploying contingency plans, just in case the council was duly defrocked. 

Now that the nightmare scenario has become a reality, we should learn more about those plans tomorrow. But a show of accountability would also help clear the head. 

So, now that the good ship Christchurch has hit the rocks, stripped of its accreditation for one its most critical functions, who will resign?

I think the Chief Executive has to go. Consenting is a core function of Council, and losing accreditation is a management failure. This was not a surprise – IANZ had been warning for over a year.

The Herald reports:

 For Max Coyle, increases to his student loan repayments and KiwiSaver contributions have hurt his pay packet the most.

The 29-year-old media sales and marketing consultant, who rents a three-bedroom central Hamilton home with one other, said the increases wiped about $60 off his fortnightly pay.

Max Coyle. That name rings a bell. Surely not the same Max Coyle who also had the Waikato Times do a sob story on the exact same issue in 2011, but with his partner. They didn’t disclose to the Waikato Times that Max was a Green Party candidate.

He says the increase in tobacco prices means an occasional cigarette was a luxury so he’s switched to smoking a pipe “as it works out cheaper in the long run”.

Such crushing poverty – being forced to smoke a pipe instead of cigarettes.

In the earlier non-disclosure case, it was Coyle and his partner who didn’t disclose he was a Green Party candidate to the Waikato Times. But who is at fault this time? Did the NZ Herald know he was a Green Party candidate and activist and simply just decide not to tell us?

Well as Whale discloses, he is actually employed by APN. So surely they were aware he was a Green Party candidate.

So in summary the Herald interviewed one of their own staff members, so he could complain about his poor pay and conditions, yet blame it on the Government without disclosing his political affiliations.

I hope the Herald will correct their non-disclosure, as the Waikato Times did.

The Washington Post reports:

Before “sequestration” took effect, the Obama administration issued specific — and alarming — predictions about what it would bring. There would be one-hour waits at airport security. Four-hour waits at border crossings. Prison guards would be furloughed for 12 days. FBI agents, up to 14.

At the Pentagon, the military health program would be unable to pay its bills for service members. The mayhem would extend even into the pantries of the neediest Americans: Around the country, 600,000 low-income women and children would be denied federal food aid.

But none of those things happened.

Sequestration did hit, on March 1. And since then, the $85 billion budget cut has caused real reductions in many federal programs that people depend on. But it has not produced what the Obama administration predicted: widespread breakdowns in crucial government services.

The Washington Post recently checked 48 of those dire predictions about sequestration’s impact. Just 11 have come true, and some effects are worse than forecast. But 24 predictions have not come to pass. In 13 cases, agencies said it is too soon to know.

The good thing about this, is no one will believe those who resist spending cuts (or in fact cuts in the rate of increase) much in future, as their claims of impending doom have been found to be Chicken Little doomsdaying.

At the U.S. Geological Survey, for instance, officials had said they would have to shut off 350 gauges that provide crucial predictions of impending floods. They didn’t. The real number is less than 90. What was cut instead?

For one thing, $2.7 million in conference expenses have been chopped since February.

And that would never have been cut, without the sequester.

Targeted spending cuts wee definitely preferable, but as the US Government could not agree on them, then the sequester is a worthwhile backup tool which has started to force even a minimal level of fiscal discipline on the USG.

Last time, it sent 469 scientists. The attendance for this fall’s conference has not been set, but Bales guessed it would be more like 350, for a cost of $350,000. “We are not investing in the future,” Bales said.

I think the future will manage with only 350 people at the conference!

But sequestration has not become a daily hassle for most Americans, and its effects on the economy have been softened by a stronger job market and low interest rates.

“It was more the unquantified predictions of calamity by politicians that were wrong,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, a research firm.

But now, the Obama administration will seek to make the threat reappear. In October, when the new fiscal year begins, so will another round of sequestration. The administration expects a $109 billion cut.

But no one will listen this time, and the small steps towards fiscal sanity will get bigger.

Stuff reports:

Sharples is poised to stand down today as party leader though he will remain an MP until the next election.

The Maori Party confirmed last night Sharples would be holding a press conference this morning to announce his decision about the leadership, but would not say more.

Sharples has been under pressure for months to stand down after co-leader Tariana Turia made it clear she considered it was time for a change.

He reportedly plans to remain an MP until the next election and to retain his ministerial portfolios.

Key this morning said he was “totally comfortable” with Sharples remaining a minister, though he was waiting to hear from the Maori Party about what decisions they had made.

This is the right decision (if reported correctly) for the Maori Party, as it solves the leadership issue – at least for the male co-leader. Ikaroa-Rawhiti showed voters will not support a party with uncertain leadership.

As Sharples is retiring from Parliament also, his seat of Tamaki Makarau will become more vulnerable to Labour at the election. However Flavell becoming co-leader will help secure his seat and I expect Turia’s sucessor to retain her seat – at least in 2014 anyway.

Thomas Lumley at Stats Chat blogs a quote from Professor Doug Sellman:

The ethanol in alcohol is a group one carcinogen, like asbestos

Now I have to say I had no idea what a group one carcinogen is, but Prof Sellman makes it sound like something very very nasty and fatal.

Prof Lumley explains:

Many of the readers of this story won’t know what a “group one carcinogen” is.  Given the context, a reader might well assume that “group one carcinogens” are those that carry the largest risks of cancer, or cause the most serious cancers. In fact, all it means is that an additional hazard of cancer, whether high or low, has been definitely established, because that’s all the IARC review process tries to do.

So it is a fancy name for some risk, not high risk.

Some group 1 carcinogens, such as tobacco and hepatitis B, are responsible for large numbers of cancer deaths worldwide. Others, such as plutonium and diethylstilbestrol, are responsible only for small numbers of deaths. Some group 1 carcinogens cause aggressive, untreatable tumours; for others, such as human papillomavirus, disease is largely preventable by screening; still others, such as sunlight, sometimes cause serious disease but mostly cause relatively minor tumours.

The phrase “group one carcinogen” is only relevant in an argument over whether the risk is zero or non-zero. Its use in other contexts suggests that someone doesn’t know what it means, or perhaps hopes that you don’t.

I am sure Prof Sellman knows exactly what it means.

Telecom has announced:

Telecom today announced that from Monday 1 July it will extend the $10 flat daily rate for mobile data roaming to four new markets – Japan, Singapore, Korea and France – and confirmed that it will keep the $6 daily rate for data roaming in Australia in place, after an overwhelmingly positive response from Telecom roaming customers to the deals.

Excellent. This has really shaken up the market, and made roaming far less painful.

In the five months since the flat daily rates were introduced, Telecom customers travelling overseas used three times as much roaming data as they did in the same period in 2012, and Telecom has received very strong feedback on the simplicity and the value of the offer – particularly from business customers.

When I go to the US, I’ll be keeping my Telecom sim card in my phone – something I would have never done if facing per MB data rates.

When the Kitteridge report was first leaked, Green co-leader Russel Norman was outraged by the leak. He suspected it was a deliberate leak by the PMs Office or similar, and demanded the Govt take action.

On 9 April he said:

Dr Russel Norman: In light of the fact that the cover note on the report says that the appendices are legally privileged and highly classified, does he believe that the leaking of the full Kitteridge report is a serious offence? 

So he is calling it a serious offence, if the full report was leaked.

Dr Russel Norman: If it does turn out that the full report has been leaked by someone in his Government, what consequences should face the person who leaked this information, which the Government Communications Security Bureau describes as legally privileged and highly classified? What consequences should that person face? 

And he calls for serious consequences.

Dr Russel Norman: Given that so far the only member of his Government who, he has told us, has had access to this report is the office of the Prime Minister, did he or a member of his staff leak the report?

Which was a stupid allegation to make, as the leaking of it undermined the PM’s trip to China.

Dr Russel Norman: If he does not know who leaked the report, will he launch an inquiry to get to the bottom of it, given his previous support for an inquiry into a leak at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade over documents that were probably quite considerably less sensitive?

So he explicitly called for a leak inquiry. He said the leak may be a serious offence, and called for serious consequences.

But now today, he has changed tune and decided that the leak inquiry was draconian, and went too far.

The Prime Minister’s inquiry into the leaking of the Kitteridge report appears to have acted beyond the law by accessing Peter Dunne’s email account log without his permission, and the Green Party has lodged a complaint with the Ombudsmen on this issue, Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman said today.

Norman seems to be arguing that the Henry inquiry should have merely asked every Minister if they leaked the report, and when they said “no, it wasn’t me”, should have left it there.

If the Henry inquiry had done that, Norman would no doubt have been calling it a cover up.

The Press reports:

The Christchurch City Council has been stripped of its accreditation to issue building consents.

In a huge blow to the organisation International Accreditation New Zealand (Ianz) has followed through on its threat to revoke the council’s accreditation.

Christchurch City Council will be stripped of its right to issue consents from Monday.

Council’s general manager regulation and democracy services Peter Mitchell said in the last 14 days the council issued 632 consents with a combined value of $160 million.

Of the original backlog of 500 consents, 25 remained and these were expected to be cleared today.

He said the council could still lawfully receive, process and grant building consents and would continue with other aspects of the building consent process, including inspections and processing code compliance certificates.

Mitchell said he was confident the city council would regain its accreditation.

He explained the Ianz letter indicated that while the agency was satisfied progress was being made, it did not yet have confidence the council was operating in full compliance with its standards.

It had raised a number of issues that it had not raised in the May 30 letter which it now wanted more information on. …

Ianz chief executive Dr Llew Richards said stripping a council of its consenting powers was a “hugely unprecedented” move.

He said the organisation told the Christchurch City Council of its decision about 9am today.  “They have not been able to satisfy us,” Richards said.

He was unable to comment specifically on the problems but outlined the process for when issues arose.

”A core responsibility of a BCAs (Building Consent Authorities) is to ensure a sound audit process is in place and to provide Ianz with records of such technical reviews. Without such evidence, Ianz could not continue accreditation,” Richards said.

”A lot of publicity is given to the statutory deadline for issuing consents. Ianz uses this information as only one of the indicators of adequate resourcing.

“An improvement in the rate of consents issued still requires an assurance they comply with the Code and Act requirements.”

Note that IANZ is independent of the Government.

I’d say this delivers the mayoral election to Lianne Dalziel. Who wants to vote for incumbency, when the status quo is that you fail at your core functions?

Not that this is the fault of Bob Parker. The CEO Tony Maryatt needs to be held responsible for this outcome. Parker hasn’t helped though by denying there is a problem, and comparing the letter from IANZ to a parking ticket.

A spokesman for Brownlee said the council’s consenting crisis was scheduled to be discussed by Cabinet today. The Minister would make a comment after that.

City council planning committee chairwoman Cr Sue Wells said staff were gutted by the decision.

A consenting authority had never been stripped off its accreditation before so the council was now in uncharted waters, she said.

“We’re going to take a deep breath and sort this out,” she said.

Last November Ianz identified 17 areas of concern with the council’s processes and in May gave it formal notice of its intention to remove its consenting ability.

It is worth remembering that Lianne has spent three years claiming that the major problem in Christchurch was that the Government took away too much power from the Council. Considering the CCC has proven incompetent at even a core function such as consenting, imagine how much chaos there would have been if Labour had been in charge, and had CERA powers mainly resting with the Council?

The Herald reports:

A nephew of Hone Harawira has been jailed for chasing a boy into his home and beating him in his bedroom before stealing a whale bone necklace.

Mau Harawira – a son of anti-violence campaigner Hinewhare Harawira – was sentenced to three years and two months in jail when he appeared at the Auckland District Court today.

That’s a decent sentence.

The court heard how the 30-year-old had been drinking with a friend at an Auckland beach when the pair believed they had been offended by a 12-year-old playing nearby.

They chased him to his house and went inside, where they knocked him to the ground and kicked him.

They then dragged him onto a balcony and the beating stopped only when a passerby noticed the violence. …

Judge Harvey described Harawira as a “gutless cowardly thug”.

He said the boy was a small 12-year-old while Harawira and his friend were large, drunk men.

All violence is bad, but large men beating up a 12 year old boy is indeed gutless and cowardly.

Luke Malpass writes in the Dom Post:

To understand why Julia Gillard failed so miserably as prime minister, one must understand the shortcomings of Mr Rudd.

When he was elected prime minister in 2007, hubris quickly became apparent.

He considered himself a philosopher king, penning trite essays such as how Protestant theologian and Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have voted Labor, and a 7000-word tome on how it was his sacred duty to save capitalism from itself.

Only social democrats, he opined, could navigate Australia through the global financial crisis.

Sadly, philosopher kings are often difficult human beings, and so it was with Mr Rudd. It is well documented that members of his own party were waiting for the day when “the public hates Kevin as much as we do”.

He was poll-driven, prone to tantrums, horrendous to work for and with. Last year fellow Labor MP Steve Gibbons called him a “psychopath with a giant ego”, and his own treasurer, Wayne Swan, said he had a “deeply demeaning attitude towards other people including our caucus colleagues”.

In 2010, many were pleased to be rid of him.

However, it’s often overlooked that Mr Rudd was dumped in large part because many of his policies were either poor quality or unpopular and his administration inept.

Rudd is a deeply flawed human being, but as Luke Malpass writes, that is not why the public went off him. They didn’t know about this other stuff.

Climate change topped the list of Rudd policy failures. Despite bloviating that it was “the greatest economic, moral and social challenge of our time”, Mr Rudd quickly abandoned doing anything when it became unpopular.

An ineffective fiscal stimulus was still being spent in school halls years after the global financial crisis had passed, while a home-insulation disaster came complete with house fires, deaths, and a ruined industry.

He presided over an abandoned laptops-in-schools programme. He introduced an unworkable and punitive mining-super-profits tax.

He legislated the Fair Work Act, taking industrial relations back to the 1970s. He dismantled the “Pacific solution” for asylum seekers, helping restart the odious people-smuggling trade, and 100 boat people are now arriving daily.

Arguably, his biggest failure.

For this reason Mr Rudd’s elevation will probably make little difference. The policies are the same, and are still unpopular.

The basic conceit, under which Labor has operated since 2009, is that it is no good at “selling its message” – the notion that people might just not like the policies is never countenanced.

A lesson for more than Australian Labor.

A reader e-mails:

Not in the Chrustchurch Plan

By 1879, serving the population (13.500) of Christchurch were 60 grocer’s shops. 41 hotels, 14 churchs, 6 banks, five chemist shops, six breweries.30 priests and ministers of religion, 24 barristers and solicitors, 18 architects, 18 doctors and 5 dentists.

Christchurch needs to restore the balance between breweries/hotels and the general population and definitly the balance between breweries/hotels and the legal profession

A sentiment many would agree with!

This graphic from the BBC shows the spending cuts for the next financial year in the UK. This is what happens when you let the debt get out of control. Eventually, there is a reckoning.

Mind you, not sure why the only area getting more funding is international aid!

The Press editorial:

Shearer’s concerns are the more immediate. An opinion poll last week delivering a dismal ranking for both the party and Shearer personally was devastating to Labour. With National halfway into a less than easy second term, Labour was hoping that by now it would be shaping up much better. Shearer is not helped by his backers saying that if the poll results were converted to seats the party would be doing a little better than it had at the last election, because, as the critics point out, that election was a catastrophe for Labour.

Inspired by the brutal rolling of Julia Gillard across the Tasman, and keenly aware that the procedure here for Labour to remove its leader is much more drawn out and cumbersome, some in the party are saying that Shearer must start to do better by spring or be replaced.

We know this because one or more Labour MPs has spoken to both the One News and 3 News political editors. In fact it looks like more than one MP according to Q+A:

JESSICA Some of the MPs that we’ve been talking to behind the scenes this week have said two months is-

DAVID Well, nobody’s spoken to me about it, and I can tell you, I’d like to know who the MP is.

Not a good look to have to ask a reporter who is briefing against you!

JESSICA Is it hard not having the support completely of your caucus?

DAVID Look, I have the support of my caucus. I mean, the fact that you’ve spoken to one anonymous person, and I haven’t heard of any-

JESSICA I’ve actually spoken to several people.

That should ring some alarm bells. However I think Shearer will remain safe, so long as the ABC faction thinks there is a chance Cunliffe could win a ballot in case of a vacancy.

The Herald had a story about how opposition to the Sky City deal has increased since last year from 40% to 62%. But the print version includes this graphic which shows very different questions asked, in terms of options provided.

What would have been the results if the Herald asked the same question as last year, giving an option of approving if the number of machines across the city drops? I guess we’ll never know – which is a pity.