Oh dear. The oppositions manufactured crisis in manufacturing has been dealt another blow. Today saw the release of the latest BNZ/Business NZ Performance of Manufacturing Index. And what does it say:

The manufacturing sector recorded its highest level of activity for almost nine years, according to the latest BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI).

The seasonally adjusted PMI for May was 59.2 (a PMI reading above 50.0 indicates that manufacturing is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining). This is the highest level of overall expansion since June 2004. Compared with previous May results, the 2013 value was the highest since the survey began in 2002.

That’s a strange definition of crisis.

BNZ Economist Doug Steel said that PMI results do not get much bigger than this, even globally. 

“The pick-up is material. It puts upside risk to our manufacturing and overall economic growth forecasts over coming quarters. The strong result essentially gives us more confidence that the recent and forecast upswing in construction activity will flow through to manufacturing activity, with the usual lag.”

Russel Norman will be very upset.

That’s a pretty impressive crisis.

Oh dear. David Shearer is just making it worse for him and Labour.

First we have this interview in Stuff:

Today Shearer admitted that the MPs accepting the hospitality looked bad.

“I would have said, this is pretty unwise guys, given what we know,” Shearer said, adding that he believed the MPs had learned their lesson.

So Shearer is saying his office didn’t even know the MPs were attending?

But Shearer denied the situation undermined Labour’s arguments against the terms of the convention centre deal.

The invitation was “obviously a gift, on one level it is a perk of the job”, he said, adding that his MPs went to a large number of events which they would probably prefer not to.

Oh my God. Now he is arguing that the poor Labour MPs didn’t event want to attend. It was just their duty to go. How awful – getting to see an All Black test from a corporate box with free food and alcohol.

Shearer had gone into the box to speak to someone he knew was there, whom he declined to name. He would not explain how he knew the person was in the box.

He said he did not know his colleagues were being hosted by SkyCity until he got there. 

So Shearer was popping into the box to see some one else? And no one had told him Labour MPs were there. I think Shearer is fundamentally an honest person so is telling the truth. But it says volumes about their internal communications.

Also Whale has audio from Radio Live where David Shearer says, well listen to it yourself and try and work it out.

Words fail me, Hopefully not you, so make your comments below. As always captions should be funny, not nasty.

The Telegraph has a nifty tool where you put in your income and it tells you how much tax you pay over a 43 year career, and where it goes.

If you earn 50,000 pounds you pay over 43 years:

• 219,000 pounds for welfare
• 110,000 pounds for health
• 83,000 pounds for education
• 43,000 pounds for interest
• 36,000 pounds for defence

Would be good to see some lifetime figures for NZ.

Have heard from two separate sources that two very senior staff in David Shearer’s office are departing.

Have been wrong once before on this issue so not naming staff, but as I said have heard from two different people. No doubt will be confirmed one way or another this afternoon.

Nicole Mathewson at The Press reports:

Phillipstown School is seeking legal advice about whether it can challenge the Government’s decision to have it merge with Woolston School.

In a statement, the school’s Board of Trustees said it was “disappointed and concerned” by Education Minister Hekia Parata’s confirmation last month that she intended to combine the schools.

The pair are set to merge at Woolston in January 2014.

“We are concerned that the minister’s decision does not comply with the requirements of the Education Act, and have instructed public law experts Chen Palmer to urgently advise us on whether the minister’s decision is lawful,” board chairman Wayne West said.

Well there goes 80% of their operations grant for the year! 🙂

Any doubts over whether Hillary Clinton will run for President in 2016 are gone for me. She has joined Twitter, which is a first step for candidates. But her Twitter bio is what is attracting praise and attention:

Wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD…

A but of humour at her own expense with the pantsuit reference and the TBD a clear hint to watch this space.

Her first tweet also went down well:

Thanks for the inspiration @ASmith83 & @Sllambe – I’ll take it from here… #tweetsfromhillary

They ran the very funny Tweets from Hillary – so again she is trying to show she has a sense of humour.

I can’t see her not winning the nomination, if she stands. The Republicans will need a good candidate with strong appeal to beat her.

Rachel Glucina writes at the NZ Herald:

Ex-BBC consultant Michele Romaine, on contract with TVNZ’s news and current affairs department until the end of the month, has this week installed a rigid social media policy, dubbed “The Rules”, which has some journalists and presenters claiming it’s censorship gone too far.

TVNZ stars have been put on notice: follow The Rules or suffer the consequences.

So what are they?

But The Diary has obtained a leaked copy of the document in which staff are expressly forbidden from “expressing personal opinions that could compromise NCA’s [News and Current Affairs’] objectivity and independence”.

Online observations or anecdotes by reporters must be “confined to matters of intelligent insight”.

How silly. I like tweets from journalists that reveal a bit of their personality. It humanises them.

But Twitter should only be used for “newsgathering, showcasing our news and current affairs content, and promoting TVNZ and your own professional profile”. In other words: plug, plug, plug.

Boring!

However, former head of news and current affairs Ross Dagan, who left TVNZ in March, was in favour of reporters and presenters showing more depth and personality by sharing personal opinions on Twitter and conversing with One News viewers.

He told The Diary that Seven Sharp journo Heather Du Plessis-Allan had found the right mix – strong reporting on the issues and fun, personal revelations on Twitter.

Yep, Heather rocks. Her tweets are great.

Ruth Wynn-Williams was told off after filing personal holiday snaps from Rarotonga on her private Instagram page.

The striking blonde posted holiday pics, including bathing in a bikini and drinking cocktails with her boyfriend Matt Gibb, host of TVNZ’s U Live.

Ruth was disciplined for that? How disgraceful. As an indirect shareholder in TVNZ I protest!

“The use of profanities,” say The Rules, “are not acceptable”.

How about when trying to get Winston to agree to an interview? 🙂

UPDATE: Someone has a sense of humour at the Sunday Star-Times. The official SST twitter account tweeted (since deleted):

For clarification, the @SundayStarTimes twitter account operates outside The Rules #fucktherules

Heh.

We’re now on Day 7 of stories about Labour MPs accepting hospitality from Sky City at Eden Park, just weeks after campaigning that any agreement that gives them extra pokie machines is disgraceful and how gambling destroys people’s lives etc.

When I ran into Clayton Cosgrove leaving the Sky City box, I thought that I might be able to get a minor mention in the media for a day or two. I never thought Labour would be so politically incompetent that they would allow it to run for an entire week, ending up with an eventual confession from David Shearer that he was also there.

There’s four things Labour should have done, in order:

1. Decline the invite. Say that you’ll take it up at some future event, not not just a few weeks after you’ve been savaging the convention centre deal.
2. If you do attend, let the media know in advance that some MPs will be in attendance, and get your spin in first that the MPs wish to engage with Sky City as a major employer, but will be making their policy clear that they will pass a law repealing the convention centre deal. That way you get just one story on it, not a series of them.
3. Once rumbled, immediately front up with which MPs were in attendance, rather than have the press gallery pack hunt down each MP individually to question them.
4. Don’t do a partial denial about David Shearer being there. For two days they pushed the line that he was not a guest of Sky City, but eventually conceded that he did visit the box. Their claim he didn’t drink anything while there was correctly described by Steven Joyce as the “i did not inhale” defence.

This story could have been a one or two day wonder. Instead it was a major story again on 3 News last night, almost a week later.

I’m amazed that Labour’s political management was so lacking, that they didn’t front up to media requests on Sunday and Monday for a list of who was in attendance. Either the Labour whips and leader’s office didn’t know themselves – or worse they did know and thought it would be better to have the media drag the names out one by one all week.

And the partial denials over Shearer being there just made the media more determined to keep pursuing the story.

I blogged yesterday about the book Dirty Money: The Economics of Sex and Love.

I complained it was only available on UK Amazon. But the author has kindly e-mailed me to say:

Hello David,

I see that you have started a conversation about my book on your blog. I just wanted to let you know the book is available in NZ, it’s called Dollars and Sex, which is the original title. It was changed for the UK edition.

Thanks for the mention!

Marina

Very useful to know. And under that name I managed to order it for my Kindle from Amazon. Yay.

Nile Gardiner at the Telegraph gives his 10 reasons why Obama is in trouble:

1. The American public is losing trust in Obama
   
2. The Obama presidency is imperial in style and outlook
3. Most Americans are still worried about the economy
4. America’s level of debt is frightening
5. Obamacare is hugely expensive and increasingly unpopular
6. Independents are rapidly withdrawing support for Obama
7. The liberal media is less deferential to Obama in his second term
8. The Benghazi scandal has been extremely damaging
9. Obama’s national security strategy is weak and confusing
10. Obama is “leading from behind” on the world stage

Of course Obama doesn’t need to stand for election again, but what he is fighting for is his place in history – will it be as a good, bad or middling President?

Vernon Small at Stuff reports:

he Government is planning a three-pronged attack on employers who exploit migrant workers, including a move that could see them deported if they are recent arrivals.

Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse said under the present law, a recent resident who committed a crime could be liable for deportation.

“At the moment breaches of the Employment Relations Act are more civil than criminal. But I think there have been some examples of where there have been quite exploitative … employers and I certainly want to have a look at whether or not there should be other sanctions,” he said.

Asked if that could include deportation, he said: “I’m not ruling that out. That’s certainly something I’m looking at.”

That could be one of the most effective deterrents, and I think definitely worthwhile.

“I have a particular interest in the employers of those people. Many of the employers are themselves recent migrants and residents … and are very often the same nationality as those being exploited.

“I think employment law at the moment does not reflect the special nature of that sort of offence. I’m looking at whether or not further sanctions from an immigration perspective could be imposed on those found guilty of breaches of employment law against migrant workers.”

There are some truly horrible examples of exploitation, where the conditions are more akin to servitude. Of course such conditions are illegal. The problem is a monetary fine is not deterrent enough for some people.

The 2013 Global Peace Index finds:

• The world has become 5% less peaceful since 2008
• Europe is the most peaceful region, with 13 of the top 20 most peaceful countries
• War ravaged Afghanistan returns to the bottom of the index
• Syria’s GPI score has fallen by 70% sine 2008
• The total economic impact of containing violence is estimated to be US$9.46 trillion in 2012
• The top three most peaceful countries are Iceland, Denmark and New Zealand.
• With a newly elected government and a steady recovery from the 2011 turmoil, Libya had the biggest improvement in peace score since last year.
• The three least peaceful countries are Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria.
• Syria’s score dropped by the largest margin, with the biggest ever score deterioration in the history of the GPI.

So if we can just get Iceland and Demark to invade each other, we’ll be number one!

The top 10 are:

1. Iceland 1.16
2. Denmark 1.21
3. NZ 1.24
4. Austria 1.25
5. Switzerland 1.27
6. Japan 1.29
7. Finland 1.30
8. Canada 1.31
9. Sweden 1.32
10. Belgium 1.34

Australia is 16th=, UK 44th. The summary for NZ is:

The majority of the GPI’s measures of safety and security suggest that New Zealand society is broadly harmonious; violent demonstrations are highly unlikely, while homicides and terrorist acts are very rare. The jailed population dropped, but not sufficiently to have an impact on the country’s overall GPI score; at 194 per 100,000, it remains higher than that of most OECD countries, notably Japan (55) and Switzerland (76). New Zealand’s political scene remained stable, with support for the prime minister, John Key, and the ruling centre-right National Party holding up amid confidence over the government’s handling of the economy, which grew by 2.5% in 2012. New Zealand maintained harmonious relations with its neighbours in 2012; links with Australia are underpinned by the 1983 Closer Economic Relations (CER) agreement. The two governments are negotiating a protocol on a common border, pension portability and joint investment, all of which would move the countries closer to their goal of forming a single economic market

Rob Hosking responds to Russel Norman’s claims his figures were accurate:

Well, it seems we have an explanation for where Green Party co-leader got his “40,000 jobs lost in manufacturing” claim.

It is not a good explanation, but at least it is one.

The claim, made in a press release after the release of the latest manufacturing data on Monday, caused no little head scratching.

It came in a press released headed “Manufacturing languishes for four years under National” and went on to claim, “there’s no signs of clawing back any of the 40,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector since 2008”.

It did not seem an unreasonable inference that Dr Norman was talking of 40,000 jobs lost since the change of government. Indeed, that was clearly the inference he wanted people to draw.

The trouble is, none of the three measures of employment back this up, and NBR ONLINE took the time to explain why.

The NBR ONLINE story  prompted something of an online debate, especially on Twitter, where Dr Norman demanded an apology and then conceded he was taking his figures from March-June 2008.

As his earlier statement had carefully avoided saying this, NBR ONLINE does not really feel any apology is owed.

It’s pretty easy. Since 2008 doesn’t include half of 2008. Dr Norman could have said since June 2008 but chose not to. The reason is he wanted to deceive people that the 40,000 jobs lost had happened under National, rather than it being 20,000.

99 people out of 100 would take “Since 2008” to be since December 2008, not since June 2008.

Hosking also makes another useful point:

In principle, politicians really should stop talking New Zealand down. It is shallow, cheap and easy, and it is immensely destructive.

This also applies to politicians’ staff, and to economic and political commentators. New Zealand public discourse was dominated for much of the 1970s to 1990s by an all-encompassing and corrosively negative commentary about this country’s economic prospects.

It did a huge amount of damage to the nation’s morale and skills base. At least it was, at the time, based on a real economic crisis.

When such corrosive negativity is based, as this is, on claims of a bogus “crisis” it is particularly despicable.

It is one thing to point out that the manufacturing industry has had job losses. But for a couple of years now the opposition have been trying to literally manufacture a “crisis” in manufacturing.

As an aside, jobs have grown in manufacturing over the past six months by around 5000 – which means even Dr Norman’s claim of “no signs of any clawing back” of jobs lost is just not true. 

But the timing of that 2004 drop in employment is highly significant. It is also when New Zealand firms started picking up their capital investment, particularly in plant and machinery.

In short, a shift began towards more capital intensive and less labour intensive work.

Let’s burn all the machines, and we’ll have full employment!

I understand that the new CEO of Radio New Zealand is Paul Thompson. This has not yet been announced publicly.

Paul is currently the Group Executive Editor of Fairfax New Zealand. He has been a journalist basically all his adult life, starting as a cadet reporter at age 17. He has been Editor of both the Nelson Mail and The Press.

I predict the appointment of someone with such a strong media background will go down well with Radio New Zealand staff. My congratulations to him on the appointment.

Radio NZ, like most crown agencies, has been on a funding freeze for several years. They of course have been far better off than their commercial competitors who have had significant revenue drops.

This story from Greece shows how bad it could get, if the Government doesn’t balance it books:

Under pressure from its creditors to cut public employment, the Greek government said Tuesday that it was closing down its state-run television and radio broadcaster, idling 2,900 people — less than 1 percent of the public work force — and outraging the country’s powerful labor unions.

Describing the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, known as ERT, as a “haven of waste,” a government spokesman said ERT, which went off the air at 11 p.m. local time, would reopen soon as a “modern state organization” with a fraction of the current staff.

Now that is what you call a cut!

Tracy Watkins at Stuff reports:

Police Commissioner Peter Marshall is defending the closure of 10 offices during the past year.

Labour MP Phil Goff yesterday accused the Government of misleading the public and said Police Minister Anne Tolley had given a commitment a year ago that no police stations would close.

“You’ve closed 10 stations since September last year, eight of them in Auckland, and that’s probably not the full story because my local police station has had ‘temporarily closed’ on its door for the last four months,” Mr Goff, the MP for Mt Roskill, told Mrs Tolley during a law and order committee meeting at Parliament yesterday.

There was an angry outburst when Mrs Tolley told the committee there was a difference between police stations, and community stations and kiosks.

“Some of those are being closed and no-one’s ever denied that.”

Mr Marshall said he had been asked the same question last year and he had given an assurance no police stations would be closed for financial reasons.

“I stand by that statement. A number of bases – whether you call them kiosks or community bases and indeed a police station – have been closed purely for operational reasons because we have decided it does not fit the type of business and service we want to provide to a community at any given time.”

The offices closed by police included those in Orewa and downtown Auckland, the Porirua community constable base and Halswell Community Office.

Figures supplied by the police show a survey of community police centres in Petone, Naenae and Wainuiomata found that fewer than 1.5 visitors an hour called in to those offices and most were for meetings, contractors delivering goods, people reporting on bail and wanting general community information. Less than a third were reporting a crime or inquiring about lost property.

Labour at times appear to be ultra-conservative. They oppose any change from the status quo in the public sector – no matter what.

They think it is more important that the location and number of offices be never ever changed, than having the Police actually locate offices where they are most needed. Basically these three centres were on average each having only four people a day use them to report crime or lost property. Yet Labour is outraged that they are maintained.

This is very funny. The authors don’t mind so much that the NSA may be spying on them, but they critique how awful their powerpoint slides are, and suggest much better ones for them. Very good.

Chris Trotter writes:

Labour’s performance was equally demoralising. Listening to David Shearer’s opening speech, it soon became clear that he had requested the snap debate not for the purposes of elucidation, but solely for the purposes of persecution. Peter Dunne’s career is in tatters and his reputation is shot, but that is not enough for the Labour Party. Apparently, the party of the workers will not be content until Mr Dunne, like the traitors of old, is subjected to a prolonged, painful and very public execution. …

This cannot be achieved without revealing to the world the full contents of the e-mails exchanged between Mr Dunne and Ms Vance. 

Trotter notes:

Adam Bennett at NZ Herald reports:

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman has accused Prime Minister John Key of conspiring to establish a surveillance state in New Zealand by encouraging American data-mining company Palantir to set up shop here.

Well that is an 11 on a 0 to 10 hysteria scale.

The comments prompted a savage response from Rod Drury, a business associate of Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, with Mr Drury labelling the attack another example of economic vandalism.

The Greens – working to destroy jobs since 1999. Now actively campaigning against high tech companies being in New Zealand.

Dr Norman later tweeted: “When crony govt meets surveillance state – John Key appoints Peter Thiel’s Palantir to spy on NZers”.

That drew an angry response from Mr Drury who tweeted: “Don’t be w***ers”, and followed that up with “Hey Greens. Cheating NZ out of $200m on Mighty River Power now spinning this rubbish. Please put NZ ahead of yourselves.”

He said the Greens were “ruining relationships and/by insinuating cronyism is vandalism. Politics in NZ is getting nasty. Lift the game.”

Basically just another Muldoonist attack from Nasty Norman.

Suggesting Peter Thiel has ill-will against NZ, and is part of an operation to spy on us is churlish to say the least. He personally donated $1 million to the Christchurch earthquake appeal fund and has a long history of philanthropy – including the Committee to Protect Journalists which promotes the right of journalists to report news without fear of reprisal.

Jami-Lee Ross has had pulled from the ballot his Employment Relations (Continuity of Labour) Amendment Bill. The purpose of the bill is:

to repeal section 97 of the Employment Relations Act 2000. Section 97 prevents the use of volunteers, contractors, or other casual employees by an employer during a strike or lockout

His rationale:

Any employment legislation needs to provide a balance between employers and employees to be fair. Section 97 creates an imbalance by providing unions with a significant legislative advantage during negotiations. The restrictions placed on employers preventing them from engaging temporary replacement labour to maintain business continuity duringa strike or lockout even extends to family members, volunteers, and willing workers from associated companies that may wish to work within an organisation to maintain business continuity. Restricting the ability of employers to engage temporary replacement labour can have a considerable impact on the productivity and financial viability of an organisation. These restrictions particularly affect the primary production processing industries where production cannot cease without considerable loss to a business.

As far as I’m aware, employees on strike can engage in other work, so it seems only fair employers can do much the same, and use temporary labour to keep revenue flowing. Otherwise a union action can cripple them.

Prior to the enactment of the Employment Relations Act 2000, no equivalent provision existed in any New Zealand employment legislation.

I’ll be interested to see what the situation is in other countries.

I think it is fair to say the the Labour Party will fight this bill with all their might.

UPDATE: It will be interesting to see how parties vote at first reading. We can assume National and ACT will vote in favour, and Labour, Greens and Mana against.

NZ First had this to say when the ERA was passed in 2000:

Part 8 – Clauses 97-111 – Strikes and Lockouts
Under these clauses employees are allowed to strike for a collective agreement, to obtain a multi-employer collective contract, and on the grounds of safety and health.

It prohibits an employer from using replacement labour during a strike but does not prohibit striking workers taking up other employment. This has the potential for a few employees to, in some circumstances, hold the employer, the industry, and sometimes the country, to ransom until their demands are met.

On the basis of their 2000 statement, one would expect they would at least vote for the bill at first reading so it can be considered by a select committee.

Stuff reports on some Superman trivia:

The Nazi High Command hated Superman, so much so it took the trouble to write an almost ludicrous rebuttal of one of the hero’s adventures. In February 1940, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster wrote a patriotic Superman story for Look magazine titled How Would Superman End the War? In it Superman disables the Nazi war machine, arrests a gobsmacked Hitler and Stalin and hands them over to the League of Nations for some good old-fashioned Western justice. According to historian Randall Bytwerk, the Nazis took issue with the story two months later in the official newspaper of the SS, Das Schwarze Korps. Here a few highlights of the article, as translated by Bytwerk:

“Jerry Siegel, an intellectually and physically circumcised chap who has his headquarters in New York, is the inventor of a colourful figure with an impressive appearance, a powerful body, and a red swim suit who enjoys the ability to fly through the ether.

“The inventive Israelite named this pleasant guy with an overdeveloped body and underdeveloped mind Superman. He advertised widely Superman’s sense of justice, well-suited for imitation by the American youth. As you can see, there is nothing the Sadducees won’t do for money!

“… A triumphant final frame [of the story] shows Superman dropping in at the headquarters of the chatterboxes at the League of Nations in Geneva. Although the rules of the establishment probably prohibit people in bathing suits from participating in their deliberations, Superman ignores them as well as the other laws of physics, logic, and life in general.

I’m not sure what is funnier. The fact that Nazis felt threatened by a comic book, or the fact they thought the way to respond to it is to say it was unrealistic that Superman would get to address the League of Nations because he didn’t meet their dress code!