The Electoral Commission has announced:

The Electoral Commission has declared Aaron Gilmore from Wellington to be elected to Parliament from the New Zealand National Party list.

The vacancy arises from the resignation from Parliament of Dr Lockwood Smith.

Lockwood was Auckland (or Rodney) based, and Aaron stood in Christchurch East last election. List vacancies can change the geographic distribution of Parliament slightly.

The next two candidates on National’s list are Paul Quinn and Paul Foster-Ball – both Wellington based.

Adam Bennett at the NZ Herald reports:

But he [Prosser] hit out at leaders of other political parties who said he shouldn’t be in Parliament.

“Anyone can throw that mud and frankly many of the people throwing it shouldn’t be. You look at the likes of Peter Dunne. He’s a man who campaigned on the basis of not supporting asset sales and now he’s supporting them and he’s not only in his own mind fit to be an MP but fit to be a Cabinet minister.

This is a lie. Peter Dunne explicitly said before the 2011 election:

In principle, UnitedFuture does not advocate selling state assets, but in the event National puts up its mixed ownership model for the electricity companies and Air New Zealand we would be prepared to support that, provided the maximum was 49%, with a cap of 15% on any indivudual’s holdings. We would never support the sale of Kiwibank, Radio New Zealand or control of water assets.

The unions and Labour campaigned against Peter Dunne on the basis that he was going to vote for asset sales. Everyone knew this. People just like to repeat a lie, to try and make it stick.

A desperate attempt to deflect.

I

I saw this photo on Jackson Wood’s blog. I’m not sure if it is legitimate, or a prank.

If it is legitimate, I hope all the Wogistanis (or are they Wogistanians?) of Aro Valley turn up in good numbers!

Simon Collins reports:

A senior Auckland unionist says the proposed “living wage” of $18.40 an hour is not enough in Auckland.

Service and Food Workers Union lead organiser Len Richards told a conference launching the living wage at AUT University yesterday that Aucklanders needed $24 an hour to pay higher rents and other costs.

Why stop there? How about $40 an hour? What nasty filthy Tory would argue against paying someone at McDonalds leess than $40 an hour?

However, Auckland’s $24.11 is not only 30 per cent higher than the proposed $18.40 national living wage, but is higher too than the national median wage of $20.86 an hour, so it would mean seeking higher wages for the lowest-paid Aucklanders than for more than half of all workers.

Details details.

It’s all so simple. All we need to do to close the wage gap with Australia is to have a minimum living wage of $40 an hour. This will cost the Government some more money, but then all we have to do is print more money to cover the wages.

Those two simple acts, will have closed the wage gap with Australia and eliminated the budget deficit. Our economy will be healthy – hoo rah, and NZ will be a paradise that people will flock to to be paid $40 an hour.

AP reports:

The scandal has uncovered the labyrinthine workings of the global food industry, where meat from a Romanian slaughterhouse can end up in British lasagna by way of companies in Luxembourg and France. …

The trail of illicit horsemeat stretching across Europe spread still further Thursday when Rangeland Foods, a processing factory in Ireland, said it had withdrawn some batches of burger products which contained beef supplied from Poland after it tested positive for up to 30 per cent horse meat.

Food Safety Authority of Ireland said the products had been sold to the catering and wholesale sectors and distributed to Ireland, Britain, Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Processed food containing horsemeat has also surfaced in Germany, where two national supermarkets have pulled frozen lasagna from their shelves.

I think there is a marketing opportunity here.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been eating horse meat and liking it. They should turn necessity into a virtue and do a campaign for horseburgers. They could use slogans such as “Tastier than you thought” and “An equine surprise”.

Stuff reports:

South African “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, has been charged with shooting dead his girlfriend at his home in Pretoria.

This will be the trial of the year.

I read elsewhere she was shot four times. This may make the defence claim of mistaking her for a burglar somewhat difficult.

Simon Plumb at Stuff reports the Halberg winners:

• Halberg Supreme Awards – Hamish Bond and Eric Murray
• Sports Team – Hamish Bond and Eric Murray
• Sportsman – Mahe Drsdale
• Sportswoman – Valerie Adams
• Disabled – Sophie Pascoe
• Coach – Richard Tonks
• Emerging Talent – Lydia Ko

The only one I would really dispute is the sportswoman award. I think Lydia Ko and Lisa Carrington were both higher up the achievement stakes – and Ko higher than Carrington. I would have had Adams third – and no disrespect to her – just a measure of the many great results in 2012.

Stuff reports:

A Coroner is calling for high-visibility clothing to be compulsory for cyclists after a top road safety cop was struck while cycling in Petone.

Superintendent Steve Fitzgerald – who served for five years as New Zealand’s top traffic officer – was killed in the Lower Hutt suburb while cycling home from work in Wellington to Eastbourne on June 19, 2008.

The truck driver who hit him, Desmond Wilson, was found guilty of careless driving causing death, ordered to pay $2000 reparations, and disqualified for nine months. 

Now, Wellington Regional Coroner Ian Smith is calling for high-visibility clothing to be as compulsory as helmets for cyclists, enhanced cyclist education, a one-metre gap between motorist and cyclist be added to the road code, and clear rules about when a cyclist must use designated lanes only. …

‘Turning to the issue of hi-vis clothing it is in my view a no-brainer. It should be complulsory for cyclists to wear at all times when riding in public.”

Sigh.

First of all, if you are cycling at night you are a special sort of moron if you do not wear hi-vis gear.

But do we want a country where it is illegal to ever ride a bike if you don’t have hi-vis clothing?

Even on a country lane on a bright sunny day?

And don’t even think about how many Police hours would be spent on checking if a cyclist has their hi-vis clothing on.

I recall the report about how the lack of a helmet law in the Netherlands has led to vastly more people cycling there, and overall health gains.

Imagine how many people would be put off cycling with such a daft law?

The suggestions on the one meter gap and the rules about using designated lanes seem worthwhile though.

Speculation is growing in Australia that Kevin Rudd will (again) challenge Julia Gillard for the Labor Party leadership in March.

The article linked to has some graphics and stats on their social media usage, which I have summarised below:

Kevin Rudd has an incredible number of followers. Around 1 in 20 Australians follow him (and a few Kiwis). But he doesn’t just broadcast – he engages all the time with people tweeting him. So does Tony Abbott it seems.

Hat Tip: Whale

Chris Hipkins has blogged:

The Green Party have announced today that they would seek to integrate any Charter Schools setup under National into the public education system. I don’t agree with that approach. Labour doesn’t see the need for Charter Schools. We have enough schools already. …

Labour’s message to anyone looking to setup a Charter School under National’s proposed legislation is to think very carefully. A future Labour government will not guarantee ongoing funding, we will not guarantee integration into the state school system. In short, we will not guarantee these schools a future.

This is like Labour on private prisons. We don’t care how successful you might be in improving outcomes for prisoners (or students) – we will close you down. In fact they are terrified that charter schools will be hugely popular in South Auckland, so they are trying to scare people off setting them up.

Truth is running three polls on its website. They are asking:

• Is Willie Jackson correct when he claims Khoder Nasser is a hero?
• Should Truth feature a page 3 girl?
• Should Kim Dotcom be put on a plane to the USA?

Their voting options are rather amusing 🙂

The NZ Herald reports:

Joel Loffley has been sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 19 years for the murder of baby JJ in Auckland.

The child was subjected to months of torture that included being forced to smoke cannabis, and died after being struck so hard in the stomach that his liver and pancreas split in half.

To me this seems a suitable case for life with no parole. 19 years non-parole is one of the longer non-parole minimums handed out. But it just still seems inadequate.

Claire Trevett at NZ Herald reports:

Labour MP Shane Jones has received a draft copy of the auditor-general’s report into his 2008 decision to grant Chinese billionaire William Yan citizenship, the report on which his political career hangs.

Neither Mr Jones nor MP David Cunliffe, who is also understood to have received a copy of the draft, will comment on the report.

However, sources suggested Mr Jones was optimistic that its contents were not damaging enough to harm his chances of a comeback to Labour’s front bench.

Stuff is reporting:

The Auditor General is reported to have cleared former immigration minister Shane Jones of any unlawful behaviour in his handling of an immigration case.

I would be very cautious of reports based on what Labour is leaking.

First of all, of course Jones will not be found to have acted unlawfully. No one has ever suggested he broke the law. That is not the issue.

The granting of citizenship has ministerial discretion. It is not unlawful to make a bad decision. It is not unlawful to ignore the fact that some one is a wanted criminal and has multiple aliases and is under investigation by four different agencies. But it is incredibly poor judgement.

I’ve never suggested that Jones personally benefited from his decision.  I think he was pressured to grant Liu citizenship to keep his mate and fellow MP Dover Samuels happy, and also the Labour Party fundraiser who had connections to his office and was being paid to “facilitate” the application.

Anyway I await the AG report with interest. What I am going to be interested in is the details. Did they find the mystery DIA official whom Jones claims told him Liu would be killed? Did they locate even one line of paperwork from Jones as to why he over-rode official advice? Did they locate any notes from Samuels disclosing that Liu was a donor?

UPDATE: Stuff is now reporting:

A report by the Auditor-General into Labour MP Shane Jones’ handling of an immigration case does not reach a ‘black and white’ conclusion, sources say.

Media today reported that Labour MP Shane Jones had been cleared by the probe. That would pave the way for his return to the front bench, from which he was demoted last year.

But a source, who had seen the report, warned the watchdogs conclusions were not straightforward in exonerating Jones.

“Those matters are a question of degree, and I would refrain from rushing to judgement…the arguments are quite complex.”

Another source agreed, saying the report is not “unequivocal.”

As I said, don’t fall for spin. Judge when the report is published.

Asher Moses reports:

Iran has been caught out in another Photoshop blunder in an effort to prove its purported stealth fighter jet is the real deal.

An Iranian state news agency released a new picture of the radar-dodging jet flying above snow-covered mountains.

But the picture was immediately suspected to be fake, with the lighting on the plane and its position similar to its appearance in pictures on the ground in Tehran at the unveiling earlier this month.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described it as “among the most advanced fighter jets in the world”, capable of hitting ground and air targets by stealth, but experts dismissed it as a “laughable fake” which looks like a toy or mock-up model.

Now the new picture has also been laughed off, after it was revealed by The Atlantic Wire that the background image of the mountain was taken from the stock image sitePickyWallpapers.com.

It scares me that such morons can be in charge of a country. I mean seriously it just wouldn’t happen in most countries. I could just imagine what would happen in say NZ if the PM suggested we just photoshop an image of a plane into a picture and claim it is a stealth fighter. There would be hundreds of people pointing out why it is the stupidest idea ever.

In 2008, news wire Agence France-Presse had to retract an official image of an Iran missile launch following revelations it was doctored to include an extra missile. The photo had appeared on the front pages of many media outlets including NYTimes.com and the front page of The Los Angeles Times.

In November last year Iran showed off a new drone design, but it was later revealed that the photographs it released were ripped off from a Japanese university and doctored.

Iran last month claimed to have successfully sent a monkey into space in a Pishgam rocket. That announcement was also accused of being faked as photographs of the monkey before and after showed two clearly different animals. Iran is sticking to its guns.

They’ve done it so often now, it is really becoming a bad joke. The Iranian Government seems to be the equivalent of the kid with the small penis who keeps stuffing tissue paper into his underpants to make his package look bigger.

My street, Hobson Street, has had crews working on it for the last few weeks. This is a good thing, as they are laying duct for fibre.

Generally this means that part of the road is one way for a couple of hundred metres. This means that two people are employed to hold up a go and stop sign to allow traffic to flow.

Everyday as I see this, it occurs to me there must be more efficient ways to do this, than have two people doing nothing but holding up a go and stop sign. Three ideas:

• Have a set of connected electronic stop and go signs which one person can control with a remote. That halves the operational cost, for what I presume is a modest capital cost.
• Have a set of connected electronic stop and go signs and just have them on a timer where they flip say every 45 seconds (with a 15 second break where both are red to allow traffic to clear inbetween). This means you need no people operating then. Would not work in all situations but definitely would for such a small road.
• Just make Hobson Street one way temporarily. No electronic signs or people needed. Not a major hassle as all you have to do is travel down Murphy Street 300 metres and then come up Hobson.

Any other ideas for productivity gains? Any flaws in my ideas?

I have to say I’ve been appalled by the fact that more than a trivial number of people (including commenters here – but also on media sites) have actually defended or agreed with what Richard Prosser said regarding banning anyone who is or looks like a Muslim from flying.

To be blunt, they are bigots. You can not defend what he said and not be a bigot. It really is as simple as that.

There is nothing bigoted about having a negative view of the Islamic religion – or in fact any religion. I have negatives views about several religions. But it is bigotry when you treat someone as a sub-human purely because they are a member of a religion – or worse “look like” someone who is a member of a religion.

Take the Mormon religion. I think it is a wacky religion, and Joseph Smith was an obvious con artist. However one of my friends is Mormon, and in fact was the local Bishop for a while. A lovely guy, and I would never treat him differently based on the fact he is Mormon. That is just a part of who he is. You treat people as individuals, not just as a member of a race, a religion, a gender, a sexual orientation etc.

The same goes from Scientology. I think it is a crackpot money making scheme. But do I think scientologists should be discriminated against? No.

Now when it comes to Islam, I am someone who has written at length about the flaws in this religion. It has a high proportion of extremists compared to other religions. It has no ability to modernise, and no central authority (the two are linked). There are huge problems in Europe with the lack of integration of some Muslim immigrants and many (not most) Islamic religious leaders do not denounce terrorism or even support it. These are all valid views to have and hold on the religion.

But when you get into bigotry is when you declare that because someone is a member of that religion, that have less rights than someone else and that being a member of that religion is more important than any other characteristics that they have.

This is the sort of views that led to the Jewish Holocaust. Because some Jews were unpopular for various reasons, it was decided all Jews were bad and must be wiped out.

Just as we have differing levels of piety and commitment amongst (say) Catholics, it is the same of course amongst Muslims. Some Catholics are absolutely devout and go to church every week, and their religion is a major defining part of their lives. but also we all know many Catholics who only go to church for Easter and Christmas, and their religious commitment is almost as much cultural as anything.

Well that also applies to Muslims (God forbid that I even have to spell this out). While your religious beliefs are a choice, the reality is that if you grow up in a Muslim family or community, you’re probably going to be Muslim. It is not that big a part of your life – it is just who you are – just like the kids who grow up in Catholic families are Catholics – even if they miss weekly confession. And bigots are unable to differentiate between extreme Islamists and other Muslims.

Some bigots claim there is no such thing as a non-extreme Muslim. Bullshit. This is the sort of view such as there are no Maori who are not crooks or on the dole. I find inevitably it comes from those with very sheltered closeted lives and non-diverse friends.

I’m lucky. I have travelled the world. I’ve been involved in international meetings in the political and Internet spheres where you meet and work with people from around the world. This includes Iranian Internet engineers (who are of course Muslim), the Secretary-General of the Arab Youth League (a young Syrian who was a lot of fun), Internet policy people from Malaysia (who happen to be Muslim) and so on.  It is hard to be bigoted when you deal with real people, rather than stereotypes. I think of those people I know when I recall what Richard Prosser wrote, and how denigrating it is of them.

How would you feel to have someone (let alone an MP) declare you should not be allowed to fly, and all the implications that you are a sub-human who can’t be trusted. And then have others agreeing with him?

We can and should debate the excesses of Islam, terrorism, and the like. But you do it in a way that doesn’t treat individuals as shit.

And don’t even get me started about calling people wogs and saying that even anyone who looks Muslim should be banned from flying. That is not even subtle code for fuck off if you are not white like me.

One can debate issues such as the fact Maori crime rate is higher than non-Maori, without denigrating Maori. One can also debate issues such as rape, without denigrating all men as potential rapists.

At the end of the day we should treat people as individuals. Anyone who proposes any sort of oppressive policy or law based on a group characteristic is bigoted – consciously or unconsciously.  It was wrong for FDR to intern Japanese-Americans in the 1940s for example.

And finally have some common decency. If you have bigoted thoughts, keep them to yourselves. try and have at least a modicum of empathy and decency and think about the impact on others if you rush into print, or online, and say “Oh yeah I think Muslims should be banned from traveling”. Think about the awful impact such prejudice and hatred has on those whom would be impacted by your words.  Just think.

Rant over.

Lockwood Smith gave his valedictory statement to Parliament yesterday, and it was a very interesting speech covering his time in Parliament. Very little was about his high profile role as Speaker – a lot was on policies and portfolios. The speech is in the draft Hansard. Some extracts:

By 1984 the economy was in a mess, and I hope history will record more positively the decisive actions of both the Lange-Douglas Labour Government and the Bolger-Richardson National Government that followed. The resilience of the New Zealand economy during the recent global downturn owes much to the courage of those Cabinets, at least in their early years, putting New Zealand’s very real needs ahead of political considerations in pursuing necessary reform.

I agree. Without those reforms, we would be truly stuffed.

Twenty-eight and a half years is quite a long time—long enough for me to see 288 members arrive in this place and 263 leave. So many things we rely on today did not even exist then. It is not just the iPads and smartphones; personal computers were in their infancy, as were, I must say, some of our current colleagues.

I think Jami-Lee wasn’t even born then!

Regrets that have lingered include my voting against the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1986. I faced the classic dilemma of voting according to my own judgment, or the opinion of those I had been elected to represent. As a new member I opted for the latter and I have always regretted it. Edmund Burke was right.

Edmund Burke’s quote on this issue  is one of my favourites.

Science and technology have been so crucial to the advancement of human well-being, yet scientists are a rare breed in politics. Internationally, there is something of a disconnect between the two. In politics, for example, green is the claimed colour of sustainability. Yet in science the very reason we perceive plants to be green is that they reflect green light. They cannot use it. It is red and blue light that sustain most of our living world. [Interruption] It is true!

Heh.

In 1987 my life was to change for ever. Jim Bolger appointed me National’s spokesperson on education, and the Minister was none other than Prime Minister David Lange. He was a formidable parliamentarian with a great sense of humour. I still remember the Tuesday when I came into this House after tripping and landing on my face when vaulting over a gate on the farm. Lots of skin was missing. David Lange called out across the House in his booming voice: “Huh! He’s been visiting kindergartens again.”

I can almost hear Lange’s tone saying it.

And, yes, I confess to being the architect of both the student loans scheme and means-tested student allowances. While the former, I would argue, was good policy—made less good by some later changes—the latter I was never happy with. It was so transparently unfair where students whose parents were unable to, shall we say, camouflage their incomes were pinged and all were means-tested up to an age when young people simply are not dependent on their parents at all.

Great to hear Lockwood say this because I agree. I have never supported means testing students based on parental income up to the age of 25.

I dreamed of a seamless education system where students could pursue their learning via a multitude of pathways, their hunger for greater theoretical knowledge driven from the challenges experienced in developing their skills in practical areas of interest. I think it is fair to say that the qualifications framework is now well embedded into our senior secondary, tertiary, and industry training systems. But to me it is only starting to deliver its full potential. With the explosion in knowledge I wanted to see motivated students well into their first tertiary qualification or part way through an apprenticeship-type programme before they completed their secondary years. And it is great that is starting to happen.

The qualifications framework is on of his biggest legacies.

Not many would know I put 7 years’ work into a project to redevelop New Zealand’s income tax, benefit, and tax credit systems. The work started on trying to find a way round the massive churning involved in employers deducting PAYE only for the Government to pay it all back to some employees in family tax credits.

I did some of this work with Lockwood, when I was an opposition staffer. We tried to find parabolic equations which could deliver a fair tax rate based on someone’s income and number of children, and not change net incomes greatly. Economically we were able to do so, but politically having a parabolic equation as the tax rate would have been rather difficult 🙂

My research unravelling that interface soon got into the challenging area of effective marginal tax rates. At the time a single parent with three dependent children seeking to work their way off the domestic purposes benefit and trying to get from $10,000 of earned income a year to $25,000 would have had to work an extra 20 hours a week at $15 an hour say. The problem was the effective tax on that extra $15,000 of earned income was about $13,300, meaning that even though the parent was paid $15 an hour, their take-home pay would have been little over $1.50 an hour. Things have improved somewhat since then, but high effective marginal tax rates still remain a significant disincentive for many people.

They do. I’d like to see lower or no tax rates on the first $10,000 or so of income, in return for lower welfare payments and hence less steep abatement rates.

Some commentators assess members on how successfully they play the political game. But to me what sets a member of Parliament apart is how much they care about the impact of the State on an ordinary person, and how far they are prepared to go in representing people whose lives can be so knocked around by the actions of the State.

This is a core role of an MP, in my opinion.

As I look to the future, this is something that troubles me. The introduction of MMP in 1996 changed this place. Some of it is for the better. There is no doubt we have a broader face of representation, and that is good. But like so many policy changes, it is the unexpected outcomes that need to be watched, and one of those outcomes has been a significant shift in the accountability of members. Obviously, list members are very much accountable to their political parties, as they owe their place on the list to their party. But the pervasive power of the party vote has meant that all members are now totally accountable to their parties. This House, in so many ways, has become a place of political parties rather than a House of Representatives. I am not for one moment trying to make a case for the old system, but I do believe there will come a time when we will need to re-examine that balance of accountabilities. Representation is enhanced when members have to help ordinary people in their local communities, many of whom may never have voted for them.

Well put, and it is an issue. The protection of the party list has insulated many MPs. This is one reason why I do not support dual candidacies.  Electorate MPs should stand or fall with their electorates.

But standing head and shoulders above them all despite her shortish stature is Beryl Bright. I stole Beryl from Merv Wellington almost 27 years ago—I am not sure he ever forgave me.

Merv often carried a grudge – including against me.

She was my executive assistant in the early years, my senior parliamentary secretary in my 9 years as Minister, and loyally stayed with me despite losing almost half her salary when I was back in Opposition, and has continued to look after me in my time as Speaker. Perhaps most special of all, though, Beryl helped shape the lives of so many young people who worked with me as a Minister. Young people like Simon Tucker, newly appointed High Commissioner designate to Canada; Ben King, now foreign affairs adviser to the Prime Minister, and Matthew Hooton, commentator and founder of Exceltium. For all Beryl did, thank you seems such an inadequate word, but I say it from the bottom of my heart. She was wise, witty, loyal, and tough. Even my wife, Alexandra, quickly realised she first had to win over Beryl.

Heh.

 And so, Alexandra, I likewise say thank you for sharing me with this place. Alexandra gave up so much of her own professional career that we might be together again. As a professional counsellor she taught me to find the good in all people. She made me a better person, which in turn enabled me to be a better Speaker. In recent years I have felt so guilty that she gave up her wonderful counselling job at King’s College to be with me and yet has had me only part time. From now on it is full time, I promise.

There are few other jobs that require so much from spouses.

I will miss having Lockwood as an MP. He is to some degree the reason I ended up involved in the National Party. In 1986 I was a first year at Otago University and I saw a poster advertising that he was speaking on campus. I was interested to hear and meet him, so went along. He gave a great speech and I joined the National Party that day.

Katie Chapman at Stuff reports:

Kiwis need to earn nearly $5 more than the minimum wage to meet the “basic necessities of life”, a new report has found.

Bzzt Wrong. Not the story – just the report.

The wage was calculated as the necessary income for a two-adult, two-child family and is based on both adults working, one full-time and one part-time.

This is not the majority of households or the majority of adult New Zealanders. Most workers either do not have children, or their children are adults.

It is silly and wrong to say you need to earn $18.40 an hour to meet the “basic necessities of life”, even if you accept the calculations of Rev Waldegrave as gospel. This is what has been calculated as necessary to support a four person family.

Now the report (which does not appear to be online, which means it is hard to check how robust it is) seems to ignore the existence of Working for Families which can pay up to $217 a week net.

Now there is an argument to be made that you should have wages at a level where people can have a family and not need Working for Families. That is a legitimate argument.

However I bet you that not a single proponent of the living wage campaign is saying that wages should be higher so the Government can scrap Working for Families. They want both.

And the reality is that economically it is daft to have a minimum wage based on the needs of 850,000 adults yet applying to all three million workers. Targeted assistance to those with children is more efficient and fairer than a one size fits all type living or minimum wage based on one particular family structure.

I would hope that most adults who are raising kids are in a job that pays $18.40 or more an hour. There are many jobs that pay that rate. But to advocate that every job in the economy should be at that rate is again daft and would kill off many jobs. A 16 year old living at home does not need $18.40 an hour to survive.  A couple with no kids doesn’t need that much. The partner of someone who is earning say $25 an hour doesn’t need $18.40 an hour. Individual circumstances vary greatly, and a campaign based on what is a minority living situation is no template for anything.

Stuff reports:

Mark Lundy has been granted a hearing in front of the Privy Council to appeal his conviction for murdering his wife and daughter.

The three-day hearing will begin in London on June 17, his lawyer David Hislop, QC, told RadioLive this morning.

Lundy is serving a life sentence with a non-parole period of 20 years after a jury found him guilty of killing his wife Christine and daughter Amber, 7, in a frenzied attack in their Palmerston North home in August 2000.

Two years later he was sentenced to a minimum of 17 years, but that was increased by the Court of Appeal after both Lundy and the prosecution appealed.

Everyone is innocent it seems. I wonder if the same totally unknown anonymous person managed to kill the Lundys, Ben & Olivia plus the Swedish tourists.

It is also understood that Lundy’s previous legal team of Wellington lawyer Christopher Stevenson and Keith Becker, now based in Sydney, were to have appealed on the basis of discrediting brain or spinal tissue found on one of Lundy’s shirts during the police investigation.

Having your dead wife and child’s brain tissue on your shirt was fairly damning evidence. That will be the key to the appeal.

Have just finished a short little book called “Relax – Say Goodbye to Anxiety and Panic” by Wellington GP Dr Pat McCarthy.

It is for people who suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. I don’t get either of those but I do have some issues in that general arena, so was interested to read the book. I learnt (or relearnt) a few facts:

• We have two nervous systems – our central nervous system and our autonomic nervous system. The former controls speaking, reading, movement and the latter heart rate, blood pressure and flow, breathing etc.
• The automonic nervous system has two types of fibres – sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic is like the accelerator and will increase heart rate, blood pressure, tighten muscles etc.
• Rapid sympathetic responses are known as fight or flight – the increased heart rate as you narrowly miss a car or how you become incensed at something. They occur quicker than waiting for the logic of the central nervous system
• Caffeine is a sympathomimetic drug that activates sympathetic nerve fibres
• Anxiety occurs when you have sympathetic over-activity.
• Switching on your parasympathetic nervous system relaxes you – you can not be anxious if if you in a state of parasympathetic predominance
• Medical self-hypnosis can use the imagination which creates anxiety to counter it by getting into a parasympathetic state.
• Trying not to think of something is like throwing petrol on fire. Thinking NOT just makes you visualise it more.Think of what you want, not what you don’t want
• Avoid the word try – it is associated with failing

I found the book very fascinating. It comes with a CD also. If you have anxiety issues, it could well be worth checking out.

The book is available from Huia or Amazon.