Stuff reports:

Not long ago North Shore lawyer Andrew Hooker had 150 people lined up to take on their financial advisers. The finance company implosions had ruined them and there seemed a good chance to prove the money men had failed.

Hooker barely got the chance. Only 20 or 30 people went ahead. The rest were too tired, too elderly or lacked the stomach, including some “unbelievably sad” cases, he says.

Undaunted, the insurance company lawyer is fronting a major case over bank fees which he hopes will show New Zealanders collective action can work.

He wants to change our attitudes to suing and, eventually, the legal system.

Hooker isn’t saying we should become like the United States where you can, and people often do, sue for almost anything. But he said Kiwis too often shrug their shoulders when shafted.

If I think my bank is shafting me on bank fees, I swap banks.

The case has been heralded as New Zealand’s biggest class action but it is not a class action in the sense that other countries use the term. A draft bill that would let lawyers act for a whole class of people, with individuals having a choice to opt out, has been stalled in Parliament since 2008.

This frustrates Hooker immensely.

I’m very unsure that we wish to head down the US route of class action lawsuits popping up everywhere. The biggest beneficiaries of these suits appear to be the lawyers, in my observations!

The case won’t make him rich, he says. The $3.5 million pay packet one newspaper attributed to him is actually the current budget for the whole case. Most of the money is going to the big boys, including a New Zealand QC, strategy advisers, and an Australian senior counsel.

Litigation funder Litigation Lending Services will take a quarter of any win. Hooker is working for $318 an hour, with a top-up to the equivalent of $425 an hour on completion of the case. Right now it’s eating up about 10 hours of his week, but it fluctuates.

That’s $200,000 a year for 10 hours work a week.  Not too shabby. Is there a percentage of any winnings also?

Whale blogs:

I was talking to Matthew Hooton this afternoon about his comments in the NBR about never being denied service. It was during this conversation that we came to the conclusion that the amounts of liquor involved in Aaron Gilmore’s explanation seemed…well…a little too light.

So we hatched a plan…one I want to share with readers. More of an experiment than a plan.

How does this sound.

Three of New Zealand’s most obnoxious bloggers/commentators/politicos have at it at a classy restaurant and eat and drink until service is refused. 

Myself, Matthew Hooton and Cactus Kate (if she can be convinced to pop down for the fun) attend a classy establishment, perhaps Antoines, and proceed to  enjoy ourselves until a waiter utters the words to refuse us service.

You can join in the fun …

One thing is guaranteed though, we will be raucous, rude and obnoxious…It would be interesting to see if we could ever get refused service though.

As an added bonus we could live tweet and blog the carnage. Perhaps we could auction the 4th seat off, to enjoy an evening of fine food, fine wine and cutting and witty repartee?

I’m thinking of starting a fund-raising effort for Trevor Mallard to be the 4th person 🙂

John Roughan writes in NZ Herald:

Investors in Mighty River Power should send the champagne next wnment!eek to Russel Norman, Green Party, Parliament Buildings, Wellington.

The stock looked a good buy even before he talked the Labour Party into threatening price control on electricity. It looks an even better one now.

Yep I reckon they saved me $600 or so.

Brokers and fund managers expect the bids from institutions to be at the bottom or even below the range the Government considers fair value. Taxpayers should send the Greens’ financial larrikin something else – a bill.

Brian Gaynor has estimated the likely cost to the public purse at $400 million.

And that’s just what they managed in opposition. Think what they can do in Government!

Shearer is a sensible man. To enact Norman’s scheme or Labour’s version of it, he would need to ignore all the economic advice available to him.

Electricity is the prime fuel of every modern economy. It is hard to think of a more important price.

The elaborate market that established a price every 30 minutes at numerous different points on the grid might not be perfect – none are – but it is bound to be better at matching supply and demand than a panel of public servants in Wellington.

That is they key point. California with its rolling black outs is an example of what happens when supply and demand get out of sync.

Incredibly – and I mean that – this omniscient agency would pay generating companies different prices based on what it reckoned their costs of production to be. That would leave the companies no reason to contain their costs and every reason to increase them.

Having the Government set the price of power will not lead to it being cheaper, just more expensive in the long run. And that’s not just my view – but the view of Labour’s David Parker when he was Minister of Energy!

The Dom Post editorial:

By any stretch of the imagination, the nearly $66,000 base salary paid to Wellington City councillors is not a pittance, especially when most have top-ups of $14,000 or more. For that sort of money, Wellington ratepayers have a right to expect their elected representatives would at least stay awake around the council table, make firm decisions on matters of vital importance to the city and keep informed about what is going on within the organisation they govern.

What Wellington has got is councillors who are unable to work together on key issues, and who at times appear to be woefully ignorant of vital aspects of the council’s operations. Ratepayers should be asking themselves whether this crop are worth their present salaries, let alone the $76,600, plus top-ups of up to 50 per cent that will kick in after the next election under changes announced by the Remuneration Authority.

There are some good Councillors, but there are also som who have been there far too long, and need to go.

Already this year, Mayor Celia Wade-Brown has revealed she had no idea that up to $350,000 had been budgeted to house her in temporary offices while the council chambers were earthquake-proofed. How did she and other councillors find out? They read about it on the front page of this newspaper.

That was a damning admission.

With this level of competence from a Green Mayor, imagine what fun we may have with six Green Cabinet Ministers?

Then there was the months of dithering over whether to support the proposed flyover for the Basin Reserve, a project some councillors still cannot bring themselves to accept as the best option for fixing the city’s transport problems, despite voting to pay $40,000 for a report that clearly stated just that.

Yes, they rejected the very advice they commissioned!

One of the rationales for paying councillors above-average salaries is to entice talented candidates who can offer something of real substance to local government. It is hoped that proves to be the case when ballot papers for October’s local-body elections are delivered to households later this year.

It is about time Wellington started getting value for money from its elected representatives.

Hear, hear.

Interesting data from Stats NZ.

• 20,521 marriages in 2012. The number of marriages has been fairly constant for the last 20 years
• The marriage rate per 1,000 non-married adults has fallen from 32 in 1977 to 11.8 in 2012.
• The median age of bridegrooms was 32.3 and brides 30.2
• In 1983 it was 26.5 and 23.9 respectively
• The divorce rate is 10.1 per 1,000 marriages. This has fallen in recent years from a high of 17.1 in 1982
• The median duration of a marriage that divorces is 13.7 years and the median age for divorcing is 45.7 for men and 43.2 for women
• There have been 2,981 civil unions since 2005. 592 were heterosexual couples, 1,033 were gay couples and 1,356 were lesbian couples

The Press has published its power list for Christchurch. As with all lists, they are just the opinions of the four people who compiled the list (two of whom are constant critics of the Government) but nevertheless an interesting list:

1. PM John Key
2. CERA Minister Gerry Brownlee
3. Ngai Tahu Chairman Mark Solomon
4. EQC CEO Ian Simpson
5. ECan Chair Dame Margaret Bazley
6. CERA CEO Roger Sutton
7. The Press Editor Joanna Norris
8. IAG CEO Jacki Johnson
9. Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce
10. Education Minister Hekia Parata
11. Fonterra CEO Theo Spierings
12. Cant Employers CEO Peter Townsend
13. Chch Central Dev Unit Director Warwick Isaacs
14. Civic Assurance CEO Tim Sole
15. Chch City Council CEO Tony Marryatt
16. Chch Mayor Bob Parker
17. Chch East MP Lianne Dalziel
18. SCIRT Chairman Mark Ford
19. The Gough Family
20. The Carter Family

As the Government is spending $15 billion of taxpayers money on rebuilding Christchurch, it should be little surprise that central Government figures are more influential than usual.

UPCOMING THIS WEEKEND 0930 SATURDAY – 0800 SUNDAY TV3

www.frontpage.co.nz has all our video and transcripts.
Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce on kickstarting the backblocks.
Far North Mayor, Wayne Brown; Wanganui District Council Mayor, Annette Main and CTU Secretary, Peter Conway on how to get growth and jobs.
Former Detective Rex Hawkins on the 33 year hunt for Rodney Tahu’s killer.
Colin James on the Ikaroa Rawhiti by-election

The Herald reports:

Free entry is being blamed for overcrowding so bad that disappointed swimmers are being turned away from Auckland pools.

This is no surprise.

The Herald must be very worried by the thought of Maurice winning, to devote an editorial to trying to scare him off. They say:

The policies and planks of Mayor Len Brown should be subjected to the challenge of a worthy rival in October. Only then will the advancement and assessment of alternative ideas, part of the fabric of a healthy democracy, take place. Unfortunately, such an opponent has not emerged. It is not John Minto, the Mana Party candidate for Manukau East at the last general election, who announced his bid yesterday. Nor is it the National Party’s long-standing Pakuranga MP, Maurice Williamson, who is considering running. In both cases, these are the wrong men wishing to be the mayor for the wrong reason.

I guess we know who the Herald is backing.

Vernon Small reports:

NZ Post has warned it is likely to need a subsidy from the Government if it cannot get approval to slash mail deliveries from six to three days a week.

It is also signalling a slow down in Kiwibank’s growth after the Government refused to stump up more capital in the near future to support the state-owned bank.

In a letter to Finance Minister Bill English and State Owned Enterprises Minister Tony Ryall, NZ Post chairman Sir Michael Cullen said the organisation’s social obligations, set out in a Deed of Understanding, were being met despite increasing distribution costs and rapidly falling mail volumes.

If proposed changes to the Deed did not go ahead “we will in all probability need to engage with the Crown to discuss funding mechanisms .. for satisfying the social obligations”, Sir Michael said.

The State Owned Enterprises Act states that if the Government wants an enterprise to provide goods or services to anyone, it must enter into an agreement and in return pay for all or part of the cost – in other words a subsidy.

I’d rather my taxes are spent on schools and hospitals than subsidising postal deliveries.

I only check my letter box around once a week anyway.

I suspect in a generation’s time, kids will ask “What was a post office?”.

The Press editorial:

The idea of providing breakfast and lunch for poor children in schools has a superficial appeal.

The thought that any child should be going to school hungry is an appalling one, particularly for a country that is not only relatively prosperous but is abundant in food, which it aspires to the rest of the world.

Common sense tells us that hungry children are restive and distracted. It is well known that hunger is a powerful disincentive to concentration and learning and that hungry children do measurably less well in class.

All this explains to some degree why the proposal in Hone Harawira’s Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes) in Schools Amendment Bill to provide fully state-funded breakfast and lunch programmes into all decile 1 and 2 schools in New Zealand has attracted some support.

The bill has still to be considered by the House but a new coalition of 24 church, union and community groups is lobbying hard for it.

After we have the state take over providing breakfasts for children, why not lunches and dinners also?

But while there may be a problem with undernourished children in schools, a programme to provide food for them there is not the answer to it.

Harawira has estimated that his proposal to provide free breakfast and lunch to children in decile 1 and 2 schools would cost $100 million. That money could be better spent on programmes that get to the root of the problem.

Maybe on more social workers going into households where kids are being sent to school hungry? I suspect in the majority (not all) of cases, the issue will be lack of parenting skills or the household income being spent on other priorities. Remember we already provide billions of dollars in welfare benefits to parents of children – to pay for the necessities of life for their children.

But the main difficulty with Harawira’s idea is that it tackles the issue from the wrong end. Hungry children in school are a just symptom of a root cause – inadequate, negligent parenting and decision-making.

For the state to take over providing something as fundamental as proper meals will, if anything, only aggravate that root cause.

The more dud parents become aware that their children will be fed if they fail to do so, the more they will be inclined to abdicate the responsibility.

The editorial is absolutely correct about addressing the problem, not the symptom.

Providing a decent breakfast and lunch for a child is hardly an onerous or expensive task. Eggs on toast or cereal for breakfast, and sandwiches with a nourishing filling for lunch, are within the capacity of every parent.

Given the level of State support for those with low incomes, or no income at all, there can be no valid excuse for any parent sending a child to school without breakfast and proper food for lunch.

I agree. Breakfasts are not hugely expensive. Cereal and milk costs around 70c a day. Eggs on toast is around 60 c a day.

Colin Espiner writes:

In politics, there are two golden rules all MPs must follow when they have behaved like complete and utter prats.

The first is to apologise. Not a qualified apology – you know, “I apologise if I caused offence,” or a Clayton’s apology, where you attempt to bring others into your circle of shame – “I guess we got a little boisterous” – but a full, no-holds-barred, unreserved, fling yourself-on-the-mercy-of-voters mea culpa. 

I agree. The form of the apology made things worse. I don’t know why some people have such a problem apologising. Hell, I’ve had to apologise many times for my various misdeeds. A statement along the lines of

“I apologise to the staff of the Heritage Hotel for my behaviour on Saturday Night. I regret it, and it will not happen again”.

would have seen the issue die.

There isn’t an awful lot Key can do to Gilmore in the short term, given he has no portfolios to be stripped of and no real responsibility for anything besides his account at Bellamy’s. The Heritage Hotel has said it is unlikely to file a complaint that could trigger disciplinary procedures against him.

But list MPs live or die by the party’s favour, and Gilmore shouldn’t expect a particularly high list ranking next year.

It wasn’t a very high ranking in 2011 either. I would be surprised if Aaron is on the party list in 2014.

Stuff reports:

Taxpayers across the country are about to pump an extra $3.1 million into the pay packets of their local politicians.

The Remuneration Authority, which sets the pay for city, district and regional councils, has increased the national pay pool by 8.9 per cent, meaning some councillors will pocket rises of up to $16,000 after this year’s elections.

By comparison, average workers’ pay packets are creeping up about 1.8 per cent a year.

Under the changes, published this week, Wellington City councillors are among the big winners, with their base salaries increasing nearly $11,000 to $76,600.

But other roles would take pay cuts of as much as $17,000. These would include Greater Wellington Regional Council chairwoman Fran Wilde and Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, if they are re-elected.

Local Government New Zealand chairman Lawrence Yule welcomed the new pay system, as elected officials were finding it increasingly difficult to hold down other employment, he said.

“If they’re to give up other career options, or significant family life, or significant other things they’re doing, then they do have to be properly remunerated.”

I think the most regrettable change in local body politics is that Councillors have become a near full-time role. They shouldn’t be. It should be a part-time governance role that people do on top of their normal jobs.

What this has led to is far too many Councillors who are full-time politicians. That is their sole job. So obviously their focus goes purely on politics.

Mayors should be well paid, and some are under-paid.

But being a Councillor should be around a 15 hour a week job. They should be focusing on governance and major policy decisions. Not sitting all day on endless council committees. The sole exception might be Auckland due to its size.

Stuff reports:

A British call centre has shipped staff to New Zealand so its phones can be manned 24/7.

The company, Moneypenny, came up with the idea after managers realised staff would rather leave the country than work night shifts,the Daily Mail reported.
 
Now based in Takapuna, Auckland, four staff members live temporarily in a rented house and work four days on-four days off, so they can travel.

When they are finished their stint in New Zealand, they will be replaced by another set of four employees. …

Moneypenny answers companies’ phones when their own staff can not get to them. When customers asked for a 24-hour service, Moneypenny asked their staff to work nights – but all were reluctant.

Of 280 staff, only four said they would work after hours, but 40 were prepared to relocate abroad.

Being in a distant time zone may be an advantage for once. We could become the official night shift call centre for Europe!

To remember all this week who have put their foot in “it”

It’s a Pied Stilt Heron from the Northern Territory of Australia.

Click for larger, higher res image

Rod Drury writes at NBR:

The New Zealand Government has recently agreed to spend $1.5 billion to redo the New Zealand tax system.

To anyone in IT this is an obscene amount of money to spend on an software project.

From the outside it seems like a slow moving train crash reminiscent of earlier Big Bang projects that always blow out if they are ever delivered.

It reeks of global consulting firms winning the business and then rapidly hiring a bunch of grads and putting them up in hotels for years.

It’s just not smart.

I’m unconvinced that any computer system should cost that much. I’m hoping that the $1.5b price tag is a worst case budget provision so they can come up well below budget.

We’re a market of 4 million  people and 400,000 businesses, so it’s just not that big. Many SaaS [software as a service] companies are already a good portion of those transaction levels at a fraction of the cost by using commodity, high performance, technologies.

Xero has spent around only $80 million getting to where it is today. Even if IRD was 10x Xero (it’s not) why isn’t $800 million a reasonable number?

And costs are not proportional.

But rather than just criticise here’s some practical suggestions I’d offer to to see if we can save $500 million to $1 billion in spend.

1. Start from the customer and work in, replacing the edges. Identify the key external interactions and publish those as web services.  Get the messages into a commodity systems and then connect these systems to the core FIRST servers. That will take load off, allow quick wins and lots of options.  As the core engine is surrounded it can be gradually replaced. A GST Return WebService would be an ideal place to start.

2. Don’t build the retail tax front end. Just publish the rules and invest in just the very core system. Let the private sector invest in the layer customers interact with. Certify providers that they met the requirements.  Payroll software pretty much works like that now. That offloads the investment to the private sector who are happy to build.

3. Go out to the NZ service companies and get them to stand up a consortium and carve up the opportunity themselves and put in place the appropriate governance structure. Give them the challenge to save $500 million on a fixed-fee basis and transfer project risk to the private consortium.

4. Appoint an independent board of systems experts to review the project and provide ongoing governance over it.

I’d start with recommendation 4 and appoint Rod to chair it!

Stuff reports:

The Mighty River share offer does not close until tomorrow but plans already underway to sell stakes in the other two state owned electricity generators.

It appears Treasury is keeping the option of selling stakes two more companies later this year.

The Wall Street Journal reported overnight that the Treasury has called for investment banks to tender for leading roles in the partial privatisation of Meridian Energy and Genesis Energy. The report said pitches for the work were due by the end of this month.

This morning a spokeswoman for Treasury confirmed the agency was ”undertaking preparatory steps for the next IPO/s, including selecting JLMs [joint lead managers].”

She added: ”Ministers have indicated publicly that they would like to see at least one more IPO [initial public offering] in 2013, subject to market conditions and the preparedness of the companies.

”No decisions have been made about which company will be next, or the timing of any offer.”

I am really looking forward to the Meridian float. Their strategy to date has impressed me, and I think they will do well in future. I wish they’d spin off Powershop so I could buy shares in them directly also!

Final day to buy MRP shares is today. I reckon whatever price they are at below $2.80 will be down to the Green/Labour sabotage tactic. So if buying 2,000 shares and they are at say $2.50, then Greens and Labour will have saved me $600. I’m tempted to donate my savings to National as a campaign donation 🙂

I’ve blogged at Curiablog the results of the latest Roy Morgan poll, which is a big mover. Note, it is often quite variable.

Not afraid of ruins blogs:

Last Saturday I went to the protest against asset sales organized by Aotearoa Not For Sale. I was marching with my friend Maia, discussing the latest episode of The Good Wife in between chants of ‘hey hey ho ho/John Key has got to go’.

Halfway up Willis St we overheard a guy behind us talking: ‘This is all because John Key is a money-hungry Jew.’ Maia immediately turned around and told him that he was being anti-Semitic and that it wasn’t ok (she’s great like that). The guy explained that she didn’t understand the historical context, that ‘they took over this country with their money’, before finally giving up and telling her ‘you must be Jewish’ (incidentally, she isn’t. Not that it’s relevant’).

By that point I’d already walked away. I was in no mood to hear about how I control the world’s money and am personally responsible for the economic recession.

This wasn’t the first time that anti-Jewish racism has cropped up at Aotearoa Not For Sale events. Last year a guy named Nathan Symington joined an anti-asset sales march in Auckland holding a skateboard with swastikas chalked on it. The same man was later charged with the racist vandalism of the Symonds St Jewish cemetery.

Now you can’t control who turns up to a protest march, but a good point is made by the author:

There were similar instances of anti-Jewish racism at Occupy spaces in 2011, and on the facebook pages of several of the Occupy groups as well. …

Aotearoa Not For Sale organisers can’t be held personally responsible for the actions of every single person who attends one of their protests. But they do need to take responsibility for ensuring that racism isn’t tolerated—or worse, nurtured.

One way to do that is to stop the nationalist rhetoric. Campaigns against privatization have a nasty habit of appealing to populist nationalism, because it’s an easy way of galvanizing support. That slope is both slippery and dangerous. Its logical conclusion is in racism and xenophobia. It’s essential that arguments against the privatization of public assets are based on an ethic of economic and social justice, not nationalism.

We see an ever growing level of populist nationalistic rhetoric. It is, as the author says, a very easy way of galvanizing support.

An open letter says:

On Thursday 18 April you jointly announced your respective parties’ electricity policy to take into the next election. We respect your right to announce new policy at any time. However, the timing and nature of the announcement has deeply troubled the New Zealand business community.

Business shares your concerns about constantly rising power prices and their impact on our global competitiveness. Businesses and consumers work hard every day to minimise their spending on electricity in order to stay in business and to make their household budgets stretch further.

However, we do not think that electricity policies based on subsidies and greater state control are the right answers. Such policies have been tried in the past and have been shown to be incapable of meeting the challenges of a modern economy with a complex, real-time electricity market.

Note that one of the ten signatories is the Major Electricity Users group. This is the group that represents the largest users of electricity in New Zealand, and who would benefit the most from policies that actually would work to sustainably reduce power prices.

MEUG’s aim is:

To add value to MEUG members’ management of electricity costs and risks through market intelligence, networking, facilitating solutions to improve competition, maintain reliability, promote efficient operations and regulate monopolies to achieve outcomes consistent with competitive markets for the long-term benefit of electricity consumers.

So be very clear – MEUG does support regulation to achieve better competition. But they rightfully say the regulation should be aimed at the monopoly aspects, not at the 14 generator companies.

Of particular concern with the policies announced is their chilling effect on investment across the entire economy. 

We are especially concerned at investment analyst reports noting the potential for $1.4 billion of shareholder value to be wiped off the books of the private power companies. A similar amount, if not more, will come off the value of the public power companies.

Capital destruction on such a scale will severely undermine business confidence. It sends signals to investors, on whom the New Zealand economy relies, that their wealth and the benefits it provides are not welcome. Investment plans and job creation opportunities are foregone.

Rather than remote and intangible, this dampening of investment intentions will have a direct and real economic impact on those of all walks of life who seek to accumulate wealth by working hard to save, invest and grow. It causes interest rates to rise, depletes retirement savings held in KiwiSaver accounts and means that other economic opportunities such as first homes are foregone and new business ventures as savings are unexpectedly reduced. Individuals are less well-off as a result.

No one at all believes this policy will be a one off. If Labour and Greens get to effectively nationalise 14 energy generators, then why would they stop there?

Investors are stunned by this policy from Labour. They expect it from the Greens, but most people thought that Muldoonist price controls were a relic of the 1970s and not a serious policy proposition 40 years later. But for some reason Labour seems determined to outflank the Greens on the far left.

Most businesses would love to have cheaper electricity. Who wouldn’t? But they know the way to achieve that is by improving competition, not abolishing it.

The Dom Post editorial:

What is known is that each year about 200,000 workers – one out of every 10 – make an ACC claim for a work-related injury or illness. Given that not all workers injured on the job make claims, the actual number of injuries will be even higher.

The total cost to New Zealand of this sorry state of affairs is estimated to be $3.5 billion a year. It is, as the task force notes, a price that is “appalling, unacceptable and unsustainable”.

Several factors are to blame for this intolerable situation. They include regulations that fail to make clear who is responsible for what, weak monitoring, enforcement and penalties and a lack of worker involvement.

The task force has proposed a series of sensible measures to address these issues. They include a recommendation, already accepted by the Government, that a stand-alone agency should be created to oversee safety in workplaces, provide information to workers and employers and collect data on accident, injury and death rates.

The task force has also proposed tougher legislation and penalties and a carrot-and-stick approach that will give incentives, such as lower ACC levies, to employers who reduce injury rates while punishing those who fail to act.

I am a big fan of ACC levies and premiums reflecting your accident record. I say this as an employer that (to the best of my knowledge) has never had a work related injury in nine years – yet pays a significant amount in premiums.

You need both carrot and stick when it comes to workplace safety. It is important that the focus go on the stick only.

Stuff reports:

New Zealanders could unknowingly be eating irradiated Australian tomatoes and capsicums from next month if labelling laws are not changed, says a New Zealand horticulture industry group.

Tomatoes New Zealand said today that Food Safety Minister Nikki Kaye would decide this month whether the irradiated tomatoes and capsicums could be imported from June.

They could go on sale in retail outlets, cafes and restaurants, and Tomatoes NZ wants consumers to know what they are getting.

“We are demanding compulsory labelling on all irradiated produce, loose or otherwise, be clear and enforced, so that Kiwi consumers can make an informed decision between Australian irradiated tomatoes and New Zealand tomatoes,” Tomatoes NZ chairman Alasdair MacLeod said today.

“Consumers have the right to know where their produce comes from and how it has been treated.

This is near hysterical anti-science protectionism trying to disguise it self as being about labelling.

Basically Tomatoes NZ are trying the same tactics as Australian apple growers used against NZ apple growers for many years – fear, uncertainity and doubt.

if you are worried about irradiation, I hope you never use a microwave to heat food.

“We label shoes and clothing with their country of origin. Why wouldn’t we label [all] food?”

MacLeod said that unlike Australia, New Zealand did not have compulsory labelling of fresh produce.

Actually there is labelling, but they don’t stick labels on every individual tomato or apple. No one is going to buy fresh fruit (including NZ produced fruit) if they are covered by huge sticky labels.

What I think may be the future is a smart-phone app that has full labelling and nutritional information on all common food products. So for those who do worry about country of origin, or even irradiation, they can just scan a bar code in and see all the details they want.

But this isn’t really about labelling. It is about protectionism, and trying to use science to scare people off a perfectly safe food – sadly the same tactics Australian apple growers used against NZ. I’d rather we don’t stoop to their tactics.