Stuff reports:

Kim Dotcom’s fight against extradition to the United States looks set to go to the Supreme Court after losing his latest legal battle.

The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision that ordered the disclosure of the documents that are the basis of the case against Dotcom.

The court said extradition hearings were not trials and the full protections and procedures for criminal trials did not apply.

US authorities want to extradite the German-born internet entrepreneur to stand trial on criminal charges alleging copyright piracy and racketeering.

Dotcom’s lawyer, Paul Davison, QC, said his legal team would seek to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court will need to give leave to appeal, as this would be the third appeal. The original ruling was in the District Court.  The first appeal was to the High Court and the second appeal to the Court of Appeal.

David Cunliffe blogs at Red Alert:

Resolve is building to save our trees

Resolve is really building in West Auckland to stop National’s chainsaw massacre in the Waitakere Ranges.

Te Atatū Labour MP Phil Twyford, Labour’s Environment spokesperson Maryan Street, Councillors, Local Board representatives and ratepayers groups are all backing the community’s determination to save our trees – which together we surely will.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again every time this misinformation is promulgated.

THEY’RE NOT YOUR FUCKING TREES.

There has been absolutely no change in laws around trees on public or Council land.

The law change is around whether a home owner can trim or fell a tree that they own on their property.

And the law still allows Councils to protect individual trees of high value. What the law change does is stop Councils from doing blanket protection orders.

The misinformation and misleading language used on this issue is deliberate. The vast majority of the public don’t want to have to pay hundreds of dollars to Councils just for permission to trim their own trees.

I’ve just updated at Curiablog the full poll results from the One News Colmar Brunton poll and one of the issues they polled on was a four year term. The question they asked was:

“The current term of Government in New Zealand is three years, after which a general election is held.
Recently some politicians have suggested increasing the term from three to four years. Do you support
increasing the term of Government to four years?”

The results were:

• 56% yes
• 40% no

That is a welcome sign that a referendum in 2014 on the issue could succeed. I think it would be important that any change would not come into effect immediately but after the 2017 (or even 2020) election. That way it is not a poll on an extra year for the current Government.

The Parliamentary Library has also just published a research paper on parliamentary terms.

If you are in Wellington next Friday, there is a comedy night at the Grand to raise funds for a team doing the Oxfam Trailwalker.

Further details are on this Facebook page.

Catherine Delahunty blogs:

A quiet road outside Hamilton, the Hukanui Marae car park is full of journalists. Hone Harawira, David Clendon, I and a few others are welcomed on by Ngāti Wairere. This is Tame Iti’s mother’s marae so on the first day of freedom he comes here to start his journey home. Tame is in the wharekai with his sons, mokopuna, sister and other whanau and his lawyer. He is looking great, very calm and tranquil but there is something in his eyes, this strange new morning without bars.

It’s nice a couple of Green MPs have the time to welcome a convicted criminal upon his release from prison.

The Press editorial:

Getting a clear and accurate picture of the housing market in Christchurch since the earthquakes is not easy.

Anecdotal accounts of a shortage of houses available to rent or buy and of rocketing prices abound, but there have been few hard figures about the wider reality.

The problem with this is that alarmist talk risks generating its own reality and will certainly spread unnecessary despondency.

That would be a pity for an investigation, published by The Press this week, shows that in fact, while the housing market in Christchurch has become more competitive and rents and prices have risen affecting low-income families in particular, talk of a general “housing crisis” is not borne out. …

The suggestion by some that a few desperate cases of hardship represented a wider crisis was not accurate.

The best way to help with the rental challenges is to get more houses built.

The Press reports:

The Heart Foundation is suggesting to low-income parents that they send their kids off to school each morning with cottage cheese pita pockets, celery and hummus, sushi, couscous, leftover chop suey, and chickpea curry.

If any parents actually try sending their kids off to school with that for lunch, I predict a rise in paternal and maternal homicides!

Ryan Boswell from Sky News tweeted:

Asset sales protest outside Parliament. Labour, the Greens and Mana were invited but a no show. pic.twitter.com/bR4S1kLX9O

Anyone have a count for how many turned up?

The Dom Post editorial:

The Government now has the authority to sell a 49 per cent share in the power company. To those who say the public are opposed to the process, Prime Minister John Key and his ministers can offer a simple rejoinder: “We said we were going to do it before the last election; if you really didn’t like it you shouldn’t have elected us.”

It’s a difficult argument to counter and the referendum the Green Party and Labour are promoting will change nothing. Nor should it. Whatever the pros and cons of selling state assets, governments are elected to govern. If governments were only able to do things that had popular support at the time they were done, New Zealand might never have given women the vote, decriminalised homosexuality or made the wearing of seatbelts compulsory.

The referendum is an abuse of what is meant to be a law to allow citizens to petition Parliament to get a referendum. It has been hijacked by the parties that lost an election to try and over-turn the election result.

Kay Blundell at Stuff reports:

Jetstar refused to shift a booking for the mother of shark victim Adam Strange to fly to Auckland after his death.

Jeanette Strange, of Paraparaumu, had already booked return flights from Wellington to visit her son next week.

But after police broke the news to her on Wednesday of her son’s death at Muriwai Beach, her sister rang Jetstar to transfer the booking, telling the airline about the horrific reasons for the change.

“They put me on hold for 10 minutes to talk to a supervisor, then said they were very sorry but could not transfer the booking. She would have to pay $321 for a new ticket,” sister Kay Cresswell said yesterday.

I really don’t know what is wrong with the management of Jetstar. Some of the issues with their service are hard to fix, such as the lack of backup capacity. That is a consequence of being budget. Fair enough.

But not having a system in place where someone can have delegated authority to make decisions that are no brainers will just keep on resulting in these horror stories.

She then contacted Air New Zealand, and was told there were two seats left on a flight to Auckland.

When they arrived at Wellington Airport the flight was full, but police had already notified the airline of their arrival, and it gave Mrs Strange a discounted seat.

She was escorted to the Koru lounge, given refreshments, a diabetic food package for the flight, and was escorted to the plane.

A nice contrast.

Chris Trotter writes in the Taranaki Daily News:

 I’m told there were six of them, and that they hunted as a pack. Their prey?

Delegates who had voted the wrong way.

Moving through the excited crowds at the Ellerslie Conference Centre last November, an angry group of Labour MPs was seen taking dissidents aside and telling them, in no uncertain terms, which way was up.

Leading the pack was Labour’s employment relations spokeswoman, Darien Fenton, and her grim lieutenant, Dunedin South MP Clare Curran.

No surprises there. Ms Fenton and Ms Curran were among the caucus members most alarmed by the Labour Party rank-and-files’ sudden outbreak of democratic distemper. The other members of the pack, however, came as a surprise.

I had never thought of Jacinda Ardern, Megan Woods, Kris Faafoi or Phil Twyford as attack dogs, but my sources assure me that they were there – chewing people out. So what?

The fact that Chris has enough information to name the six “pack” members shows how many people in Labour must be spilling details of their internal conflicts.

It was Chris Hipkins who drew me aside long before the dramatic conference floor fight to murmur conspiratorially: “Our problems aren’t external – they’re internal.”

The “enemy within” that Chauvel referred to.

Even from the media table, the animosity directed towards caucus members who spoke in favour of the rank- and-file’s resolutions (the most effective of whom, by far, was Leanne Dalziel) was unmistakable.

Dalziel has now been dumped from the shadow Cabinet.

The first thing all politicians learn how to do is count and the people backing Mr Shearer were fearful that a democratised party (with sufficient support in caucus) might decide to wrest the power of choosing the party leader from their hands.

They were terrified that they would then be saddled with the rank-and-file’s choice of December 2011: David Cunliffe. And it wasn’t Mr Shearer’s faction alone, who were counting heads.

Labour’s deputy leader, Grant Robertson, had as much to fear from the leadership question being decided early, by the party, as his boss.

Absolutely.

On November 20, Mr Cunliffe is demoted and his faction isolated. On February 4, Mr Shearer manages – just – to secure the backing of 60 per cent-plus-one of his caucus colleagues. On February 19, six days before the long- awaited shadow cabinet reshuffle, Charles Chauvel, a supporter of Mr Cunliffe, quits Parliament.

On February 25, Mr Shearer’s new lineup is announced. The Pack are well rewarded. Ms Fenton and Ms Curran both rise two places in the pecking order, while Mr Twyford goes up three to take a seat on the front bench.

Megan Woods enters the top 20 – a backbencher no longer.

Mr Little rises with her.

Mr Shearer’s chief swordsman, Mr Hipkins, climbs five places to claim the shadow portfolio of education from Mr Cunliffe’s running- mate, Nanaia Mahuta.

Ms Dalziel’s eloquence on behalf of rank-and-file democracy is rewarded with demotion to the back benches.

Mr Cunliffe remains outside the magic circle. In Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express all the suspects wielded the fatal knife.

Labour’s MPs seem equally impressed by the advantages of collectivised bloodletting.

Long may it continue.

Some people are saying that The Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill, as reported back by the Select Committee will remove husband and wife from the Marriage Act and people will just legally be spouses.

This is incorrect.

The Marriage Act 1955 currently refers to husbands and wives in two main sections, and both are unaffected by the Bill. The first is S31(3) which says:

During the solemnisation of every such marriage each party must say to the other—

• (a)“I AB, take you CD, to be my legal wife or husband”; or

• (b)words to similar effect; or

• (c)in the case of the solemnisation of a marriage in accordance with the rules and procedures of a specified body that require different words to be used as a marriage vow than those set out in paragraph (a), those words.

Again, this section is totally unchanged by the bill. The requirement to refer wife or husband (or similiar words) is unchanged.

The other section is s33(2) which is about marriages before the Registrar.

During the solemnisation of every such marriage each party to it shall declare:

I solemnly declare that I do not know of any impediment to this marriage between me AB and CD, And shall say to the other party: I call on the people present here to witness that I, AB, take you, CD, to be my legal wife (or husband), or words to similar effect.

This section is also unchanged.

In a section to the Act on forbidden marriages, there is a schedule of people whom a man can not marry and a schedule of people whom a woman can not marry. The two separate lists are now combined into one, so rather than saying you can not marry your wife’s mother or husband’s father it now says your spouse’s parent.  No big deal. This change is only to the schedule of forbidden marriages and is not a change to the main Act which still refers to husband and wife.

The Bill does make what is called consequential amendments to 15 other acts, which for the sake of convenience the term spouse is used.

The term husband is actually used in a total of 67 Acts of Parliament. It remains in the Marriage Act, and remains in the vast majority of Acts. It is not being removed from the Marriage Act, and it is not being removed from the law books. All that is happening in in a few Acts the term spouse is being used because it is more convenient.

And you know what – the term “spouse” is already used in 136 Acts of Parliament!

So no the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill does not remove the term “husband and wife” from the law books. It doesn’t remove it from the Marriage Act. It doesn’t introduce the term spouse into the law as a replacement – the term is already used in 136 Acts of Parliament. This issue is a red herring.

I’ve blogged the latest Roy Morgan poll at Curiablog.

The centre-left have dropped 6%.

As I blogged yesterday resigning Labour List MP Charles Chauvel called for those responsible for the 2011 election loss to exit Parliament. This was a few seconds after he he said Labour should stop trying to locate the enemy within!

Calling for a purge seems a bit inconsistent with a call for unity!

I said that I can only presume Chauvel was calling for Goff, King, Mallard and Robertson to go. It seems Trevor sees it that way also as he tweeted during the speech:

My decision to seek Hutt South nomination just reinforced

Pete George has details of how well this has gone down on The Standard.

It is obvious that Labour has massive internal tensions. If they manage to form a Government after 2014, the tensions will be fascinating. With the Greens, NZ First and Mana all thrown in with a party that is at war with itself – well stable Government isn’t the phrase that comes to mind.

Stuff reports:

Their supporters call them heroes. The Japanese government calls them terrorists.

Now the United States’ largest federal court has declared them pirates.

Which they are. You can be against whaling, yet also against Sea Shepherd who a dangerous bunch of liars.

In doing so, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals castigated Paul Watson and members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society he founded for the tactics used in their relentless campaign to disrupt the annual whale hunt off the dangerous waters of Antarctica.

“You don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel.

Kozinski is a brilliant judge.

“When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be.”

So very true. They have a long record and history of violence, including ramming ships and mining ships to sink them.

Now the Supreme Court has cleared the sale of Mighty River Power, I expect the taxpayer funded gathering of petition signatures will be presented to Parliament, and Labour and Greens will call for no partial sales to occur until after the referendum.

The response to that should be when will Labour and Greens vote to repeal or amend the anti-smacking law, which 85%  of New Zealanders rejected in a referendum? You can’t claim referenda should triumph over election results in one case, but not in another.

Anyway what is the possible timing of the waste of money that Labour and Greens have forced on us. It is appalling that the Greens used taxpayer funding to hire peopel to collect signatures. CIRs are meant to be about citizens petitioning Parliament, not parliamentary parties using taxpayer funding to re litigate election results.

The Clerk of the House has two months to audit the petition, estimate duplicate or invalid signatures and certify if it has made the 10% threshold. It will of course make it, as the taxpayer funded collectors make it easy to do. If presented in March 2013, then expect certification in May 2013.

If for some reason they do fall short, then they have two further months to collect more signatures and repeat the process. So resubmission would be by July 2013 and certification by September 2013.

If it is certified in May 2013, the Speaker announces it to the House and the Government has one month to decide when the referendum will be held. The referendum must be held within 12 months of the Speaker’s announcement so no later than May 2014.

75% of Parliament could delay the referendum beyond 12 months.

The referendum would almost certainly be a postal referendum, which will mean a three week voting period starting and finishing on a Friday.

Isaac Davidson at NZ Herald reports:

Each district in New Zealand will have to come up with a single planning document for development with an agreed list of definitions under proposed resource management reforms to be released this morning. …

At present, New Zealand’s 78 authorities have more than 170 planning documents for 2272 different zones or management areas. Officials noted as a comparison that Scotland, with a population of 5.2 million people, had a just 37 planning documents.

A very good comparison.

The announcement by Adams is here.

Under the current system, consenting requirements are often out of proportion- especially for those activities that have reasonably minor effects.

The proposals in the discussion document would introduce a simple 10-working-day time limit for processing straight-forward, non-notified consents accompanied by a proposed national requirement for some types of application to be processed without notification.

Good.

Oral Questions 2.00 pm -3.00 pm

Questions to Ministers.

A fun survey at Truth.

You can vote on what to call Annette King’s return to the Labour front bench, whether Hayley Holt or Oscar Pistorious should open for the Black Caps (with photo of Hayley) and how much do you want to pay for a convention centre.

Paul Easton at the Dom Post writes:

Just a few days after getting a promotion, Labour MP Chris Hipkins has received the chop from his leader David Shearer.

Mr Hipkins was shorn of his red locks this morning to raise money for a cancer charity.

David should have left it hard down. Then Chippie would look the part to be MP for Rimutaka 🙂

Looking like a younger Trevor Mallard 🙂

While the general consensus was positive, Mr Hipkins was not so sure when shown the results.

”Oh my goodness, it’s really short. What have I done?” he said.

Mr Shearer also had concerns.

”I just hope I can get the red hair off my suit,” he said.

Heh, he may need decontamination.

Mr Shearer revealed he had pledged to have one Labour MP a year shave their head for the cause, Leukaemia and Blood Cancer New Zealand.

He hoped to line up a woman MP for next year, he said.

”I had a word to Annette King last night, but she wasn’t too impressed.”

Labour MP Jacinda Ardern, who watched on from the sidelines this morning, also seemed less than keen on the idea.

If Jacinda takes the place of Chris next year, I’m pledging $1,000 in advance to the cancer charity! 🙂

The fatal shark attack yesterday at Muriwai reminds me of my one and only shark encounter.

A couple of years ago I was holidaying at a pacific island. Was staying in a bungalow on the beach and got there a day before FOD (Friend of DPF). The sea looked lovely so I went in for a swim.

Had a lovely half hour enjoying the warm ocean, swimming around.

The following day was joined by FOD and we decided to go swimming. I’d found that the coral reef around 20 metres out was shallow enough that you almost scraped yourself swimming over it, so suggested we dive off the end of the wharf, around 75 metres out.

I dove in first and the water was beautiful. The whole sea was warm but at the end of the wharf was an especially warm spot. You were surrounded by tropical fish. It was like being in a movie set.

I encouraged FOD to dive in also but she said she was concerned about sharks. I laughed and said that I was out swimming yesterday and didn’t see any sharks and not to be so silly and to come in.

She again said she was worried, and how could I know that there were no sharks. I pointed out that there was a second coral reef around half a km out and I doubted sharks could even get in past it.

Frustratingly she still expressed concern and her shark phobia was getting annoying. Now by chance I had been reading that very morning the book Superfreakonomics. One of the chapters of this excellent book was on shark attacks and on how the Jaws movie had terrified the world about sharks, but in fact fatal shark attacks are very rare.

So I quoted Superfreakonomics to FOD, and cited the passage that on average there are only four fatal shark attacks a year and 200 fatal elephant attacks so 50 times as many people die from elephants (and I suspect people spend more time in oceans than they do near elephants).

Now around 10 seconds after I finished citing the incredibly low probability of shark attacks to FOD, she then yelled out “David there’s a shark behind you“.

Now naturally I laughed. I’m not that gullible. I responded that I’m not going to fall for such an obvious joke and remained where I was in the water, facing the wharf and the shore.

FOD then yelled out “No I’m serious, there is a shark behind you, get out“. I paused briefly and considered that this may not be a practical joke. It is the sort of practical joke I would play on someone else, but not the sort of joke FOD would play. So I responded with a challenge and said if she was having me on I would make it my mission to throw her in the water until an actual shark does turn up.

FOD then yells out “Get the fuck out now”. It dawns on me that she is actually serious and there is a shark approaching me from behind. I immediately start swimming very very very quickly towards the wharf and haul myself out of the water as quickly as possible. Adrenaline is flowing and the heart beat elevated.

Once up on the wharf I start looking for this alleged shark and I’m still a tiny bit skeptical that there really was a shark behind me. After around 20 seconds no sign of a shark and I am threatening to throw FOD in the water. But then I see a shark swim in front of the wharf. It is around 5 feet in length and I turn slightly pale. It has enough of a jaw on it that it would be highly unpleasant (to say the least) to have it on your leg or arm.

I gracefully concede to FOD that there was a shark, and I may owe her my thanks. She remarks though that she doesn’t think that is the shark she saw. I say of course it would be. Then a few seconds later an approx 11 foot shark swims by, and she exclaims “That’s what I saw“.  I turn an even more pale shade of pale as this shark is definitely big enough to make a meal of you. Then two more sharks turn up and I am watching four sharks swim about the exact spot I was in less than a minute earlier. I begin mentally cursing the authors of Superfreakonomics!

It occurs to me that we should warn someone that there are now four sharks in the water. I locate the resort manager and tell him about the four sharks. He exclaims “Oh yes, they come around every day“. He then offers me the chance to see him feed them at 5 pm. The time was 4 pm.

A thought occurs to me, and I ask “Where exactly do you feed them?” and he said “Off the end of the wharf“.

The remaining blood in my circulation freezes as I consider not only was I in the water with four sharks, I was swimming in their dining room!

Needless to say there was no more beach swimming on that holiday.

Tracy Watkins at Stuff reports:

Rules aimed at taking some of the heat out of the housing market and providing greater financial stability could be agreed as early as the middle of the year, Finance Minister Bill English says.

Those rules are likely to include requiring home buyers to have bigger deposits.

Good for landlords as tenants will stay tenants for longer as they save for a deposit!

In a speech to a business audience in Auckland today, English said the Reserve Bank would consult over the next few weeks on proposals giving it a greater ability to influence the amount of lending done by banks and other financial institutions.

These might include requiring lenders to:

* Restrict high-loan-to-value ration lending in the housing sector.

* Hold additional capital on their balance sheet as a buffer during an economy wide credit boom.

* Hold additional capital against loans in specific sectors if risks emerge in those sectors

All well motivated, but my concern is unforeseen consequences.

ANZ chief economist Cameron Bagrie said the mid-year target date suggested “there’s been a lot more thought gone into getting monetary policy a few more mates”.

He was not a fan of rules on the loan-to-value ratio of mortgages, saying it was “akin to throwing a rock into a creek.

“You will find the water gets around the rock.”

Indeed.

Bagrie cautioned against action that might restrict the flow of credit, and said the criteria for using the instruments being proposed needed to be very clear.

He described the housing market as “frothy”, and doubted it was heading into bubble territory.

While some action was needed on the demand side if there was a desire to take heat out of the property market, action also needed to be taken on the supply side given the shortage of houses.

Absolutely. The supply side is key.