Brian Fallow writes at NZ Herald:

The New Zealand dollar has hit 76 on the Reserve Bank’s trade-weighted index, its highest level since at least 1990.

Surely that means manufacturers have a point when they plead for a defensive response from policymakers at the bank or in the Beehive?

Only up to a point.

The TWI is highly unlikely to reflect the exchange rates relevant to any particular manufacturer, either exporting or competing with imports.

For many the US dollar will be much more significant than its 30 per cent weighting in the TWI.

For others the Australian dollar is far more important than its 22 per cent index weighting.

And remarkably, the TWI, whose composition was last revised in 1999, does not include the renminbi even though China is now New Zealand’s second-largest export market and largest source of imports.

I’d say time to reweight the TWI. However as the Chinese currency is not a floating one, there may be issues with including it.

Helpfully, though, the ASB Bank economists have compiled two alternative exchange rate indices, weighted by manufacturing import and export flows.

They define manufacturing narrowly, excluding the output of dairy factories and meat works, so as to reflect the position of more value-added, or in the jargon of statisticians “elaborately transformed”, manufactured goods. Such goods represent about 19 per cent of exports and 51 per cent of imports.

Like the official index, it includes five currencies, but with the renminbi replacing sterling.

During the last cycle – from the recession at the start of the millennium to the more recent one – the three indices tracked each other quiet closely.

But since 2009 they have diverged.

All three have appreciated, but the index reflecting manufactured imports less so than the official TWI, and the index for manufactured exports less still.

The result is that the ASB exchange rate indices for both manufactured exports and imports, and especially the former, are even now at levels lower than they were during the boom years of the mid-2000s.

I wasn’t aware of the ASB indices. It makes more sense to use them when referring to the impact on manufacturing than just the US dollar or even the TWI.

ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley says the fact that the manufacturing-relevant exchange rates have not climbed as much as the official TWI highlights a key difference between the most recent appreciation compared with that of the early to mid-2000s.

“In the 2000s the New Zealand dollar appreciated more broadly, that is, against most major currencies and to a similar degree against each. Since 2009, though, it has held broadly stable at a low level against the Australian dollar.”

Australia is the destination for nearly half of New Zealand’s manufactured exports.

A point I made the other day.

David Fisher at NZ Herald reports:

John Key went to meet Hollywood bosses with a briefing from officials saying studio bosses were looking for easier ways to target New Zealanders who downloaded and shared films illegally.

Officials told the Prime Minister Hollywood objected to the $25 fee it had to pay each time a notice warning against copyright infringement was issued and wanted to pay less.

Yep, they hate it. They say it should be zero or at best a few cents. They think ISPs should act as their delivery agents for no charge at all, and that they should be able to send tens of thousands of infringment notices per month via ISPs at the ISPs expense.

What they also hate is that the NZ charge may set an international precedent of reasonable reimbursement of costs for ISPs.

The briefing stated the support came through the MPAA’s New Zealand arm – the Federation Against Copyright Theft – which saw the regime as becoming a “gold standard” for similar schemes around the world. Despite the support, Mr Key was told the studios behind the MPAA did not use it because the $25 fee paid to internet service providers to send warning notices was too high.

Yep, they threw their toys out. I give RIANZ credit that they are at least using the system they lobbied for.

A recent review of the scheme kept the fee at $25 because lower costs would hurt ISPs, who were forced to pay up to $100 to send each notice. Mr Key was told the MPAA’s involvement would lead to an increase in the number of warning notices sent to people and give a “critical mass” that would bring the cost down.

Opponents of the fee change warned cheaper costs could lead to a rise in vexatious complaints.

As reported, the Government recently decided to not give in to the demands from the MPAA and kept the fee at $25. What is also not widely known is that when the scheme was set up, the (then) MED recommended the fee be only $20 and it was in fact Cabinet that increased the fee to $25.

Seven Sharp is not current affairs so much as infotainment. I don’t have a problem with that because I am not sure enough happens in NZ for a daily current affairs show. This leads to manufactured stories and the like.

But I do think current affairs shows are important, even if not daily. And Rachel Glucina points out how many we have now:

• Sunday, TV One
• 360, TV3
• 60 Minutes, Prime
• Native Affairs, Maori TV
• 3rd Degree, TV3
• The Vote, TV3
• 20/20, TV2
• Q+A, TV One
• The Nation, TV3

When people say there is no current affairs in New Zealand, well far from it.

Tom Pullar-Strecker at Stuff reports:

Government websites will switch to free, open-source software from Wellington firm Silverstripe under an “all-of-government” contract …

DIA last year chose 33 firms to design and develop websites for government agencies through separate all-of-government web services contracts. The decision to pick Silverstripe as its “common web services platform” following a tender means those firms will use Silverstripe’s software in place of about 50 other content management systems when carrying out work for government agencies. …

Don Christie, co-chairman of NZ Rise, which lobbies on behalf of domestic information technology suppliers, said the win was “fabulous” for Silverstripe, which employs 50 people. The company was founded by three Wellington College and Scots College graduates in 2000 – Tim Copeland, Sam Minnee and Sigurd Magnusson, who still own 84 per cent.

Although its software is free, Silverstripe earns money from add-ons and consulting.

Silverstripe rose to prominence in 2008 when its software was used to manage the website for the United States Democrats’ National Convention at which Barack Obama was selected as the party’s presidential candidate.

Air New Zealand switched from a Microsoft content management system to Silverstripe the following year.

Silverstripe is a great local success story, and they go from strength to strength.

The Dom Post editorial:

There are two ways to look at John Key’s call for a four-year parliamentary term.

The first is that it will give the “bastards” more time. The second is that it will give voters more time to assess whether their representatives and, more particularly, governments are deserving of another term.

By international standards New Zealand’s electoral cycle is short. Australia too, has a three-year term, but the United States president serves for four years and so do the parliaments of Germany, Japan and a host of other nations. Britain has a five-year term.

The attraction of a shorter electoral cycle is that it allows voters to dismiss truly awful governments quickly and it make politicians more responsive to public opinion.

The reality in New Zealand since 1960, however, is that voters have only once exercised their prerogative to turf out a government after only three years.

I think a four year term would increase the number of one-term governments. Unless a Government is a walking disaster, they will tend to get a second term as most New Zealanders think that three years is not enough time to judge if their policies are working. And they are right. It can take 18 to 24 months to even get laws introduced and passed, so there is little chance of being able to judge their impact within a three year cycle.

A four-year term would provide breathing space. It would also give governments more time to fine-tune their policies before implementing them. The New Zealand Parliament has not earned the reputation for being the fastest legislator in the west for no reason.

Finally, a four-year term would give voters more time to take the measure of their elected representatives. One more year might be enough to identify hopeless governments that should be put out of our misery.

I agree.

The Herald editorial:

But the arguments in favour of an extra year are sound. Governments need time to establish and then implement new policies. New Zealand has too frequently run out of time in politicians’ minds to prove their benefits to the public before the short election cycle interrupts normal business. Each year, the Budget documents forecast spending and revenues four or five years out, but the incumbent government must spend its political capital within a maximum of two and a half.

Some would argue that in winning a second or third term a government is able to pursue its strategy adequately; that a divisive debate over changing the term could in itself distract from the policy changes we most need.

It will not be easy to persuade voters of the benefits. Most, naturally, live in the here and now and have little time for long-term planning.

If it gets put to the vote, the country should take the longer view. New Zealand has long needed a plan for economic revival and development that is not hostage to the next opinion poll.

As I have said previously, if it goes to a vote in 2014, it should be made very clear that it will not apply to the next term of Parliament.

Ramesh Ponnuru at AEI writes:

Conservatives often point out that laws, no matter how benign they may appear, have unintended consequences. They can reverberate in ways that not many people foresaw and nobody wanted: Raising the minimum wage can increase unemployment; prohibition can create black markets.

The efforts in many cities to discourage the use of plastic bags demonstrate that such unintended consequences can be, among other things, kind of gross. 

San Francisco has been discouraging plastic bags since 2007, saying that it takes too much oil to make them and that used bags pollute waterways and kill marine animals. In 2012, it strengthened its law. Several West Coast cities, including Seattle and Los Angeles, have also adopted bans for environmental reasons. The government of Washington, D.C., imposes a 5 cent plastic-bag tax. (Advocates prefer to call it a “fee” because taxes are unpopular.) Environmental groups and celebrity activists, including Eva Longoria and Julia Louis- Dreyfus, support these laws.

So what happened?

Most alarmingly, the industry has highlighted news reports linking reusable shopping bags to the spread of disease. Like this one, from the Los Angeles Times last May: “A reusable grocery bag left in a hotel bathroom caused an outbreak of norovirus-induced diarrhea and nausea that struck nine of 13 members of a girls’ soccer team in October, Oregon researchers reported Wednesday.” The norovirus may not have political clout, but evidently it, too, is rooting against plastic bags.

Warning of disease may seem like an over-the-top scare tactic, but research suggests there’s more than anecdote behind this industry talking point. In a 2011 study, four researchers examined reusable bags in California and Arizona and found that 51 percent of them contained coliform bacteria. The problem appears to be the habits of the reusers. Seventy-five percent said they keep meat and vegetables in the same bag. When bags were stored in hot car trunks for two hours, the bacteria grew tenfold.

That study also found, happily, that washing the bags eliminated 99.9 percent of the bacteria. It undercut even that good news, though, by finding that 97 percent of people reported that they never wash their bags.

And the impact?

Klick and Wright estimate that the San Francisco ban results in a 46 percent increase in deaths from foodborne illnesses, or 5.5 more of them each year. They then run through a cost-benefit analysis employing the same estimate of the value of a human life that the Environmental Protection Agency uses when evaluating regulations that are supposed to save lives. They conclude that the anti-plastic-bag policies can’t pass the test — and that’s before counting the higher health-care costs they generate.

It is a good reminder about the law of unintended consequences.

David Clarkson at Stuff reports:

A Christchurch Christian journalist has admitted making intimate videos of a student at home and a 5-year-old girl at a church expo.

John Raymond McNeil, 67, was granted home detention at his Christchurch District Court sentencing, but his internet access will be blocked as part of the sentence.

He was found with 1000 child-pornography images on his computer, which he had viewed on the internet, and three videos he had made.

It’s one think to view pedophile videos others have made (still very sick and wrong and illegal), but quite another to also make said videos.

One video showed a student at her home, one was videoed up the skirt of a 5-year-old girl at a church expo and the third was taken up the skirt of an unidentified young woman walking in the Halswell Quarry.

McNeil is well known in his community, and the court was told that people now knew of his offending.

He is described as a veteran newspaper and radio journalist and South Island editor of Challenge Weekly, a non-denominational and independent Christian newspaper.

I’m sorry but he shot a video up the skirt of a five year old. Why is he not in jail?

A suitable address had been found for him to serve a home-detention sentence, an issue that had led to sentencing being delayed in December.

He said McNeil would be able to continue with his work on computers, without having internet access.

Oh yes it is important he can still put out his newspaper preaching against sin!

There is a fair degree of hypocrisy here. In 2003 McNeil said:

The Government is using the pretext of helping children who are victims of family breakdown as a lever for continued social engineering.

Along with other legislation, e.g. the Families Commission, the forthcoming Civil Union Bill and the Care of Children Bill seek to replace the primacy of married parents with other types. It’s doing this piece by piece in a process we call ‘legislative creep’. All three Bills promote diversity from different angles and through incremental change. …

‘Creep’ will ensure continued change masquerading as ‘reform’. The social fabric is being re-defined through a few key pieces of legislation. Instead of encouraging diversity of family types, it is better to assist those having difficulties, while advocating and supporting marriage as the best environment for nurturing children.

Pardon me while I vomit about the concern he expressed for nurturing children.

Asher Moses at SMH reports:

Fresh from controversy over a suspicious space-faring monkey, Iran is now under fire over a suspect stealth fighter jet breakthrough that one Australian defence analyst said “looks like it might make a noise and vibrate if you put 20 cents in”.

Unveiling the Qaher F313 (Dominant F313) earlier this month, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad described it as “among the most advanced fighter jets in the world” with features including the ability to evade detection by radar and hit both ground and air targets.

Aviation experts have questioned whether the jet shown can even fly as it was too small to accommodate a real pilot and the controls and wiring looked too simple.

It also lacked the bolts and rivets found on all aircraft and offered wonky aerodynamics.

“It looks like the Iranians dumped some rudimentary flight controls and an ejection seat into a shell moulded in what they thought were stealthy angles,” wrote Foreign Policy magazine.

Andrew Davies, senior defence analyst and director of research at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the jet was a “laughable fake”.

“It looks like it might make a noise and vibrate if you put 20 cents in,” he told Fairfax Media.

The monkey that changed appearance was laughable enough, but this takes the cake. You wonder if those in charge are morons, or just think everyone else is? Fourth formers could do better fakes!

“I can see (almost) how North Korea gets away with transparent nonsense due to isolation, but Iran has a population that’s much more switched on and connected, at least in the cities.

Hopefully it will lead to greater unrest amongst the population. People don’t like a Government that lies and turns their country into a laughing stock.

Todd seems to have enjoyed his day off on Wednesday, so I think we’re short a scenic photo of NZ this week.

So that’s the motivation for this alpenglow picture from the Hauraki Gulf 🙂  This effect is usually seen just before sunrise, where the light reflects off clouds or mountains.

“Red Glow” click for larger, higher res image

Peter Creswell blogs at Not PC:

Yet again another Novopay pay round has been labelled a shocker, as “the Ministry of Education fielded hundreds of calls from school staff either not paid or underpaid by Novopay yesterday.”

As you might have noticed, a ministerial inquiry is about to be established to inquire why the centrally-planned, centrally-governed, one-size-fits-all system failed. 

Perhaps the first question to be asked is ‘why is such a system is even necessary?’

Schools have their own pay administrators, who currently spend around half their time making up calculating pay and the other half trying to remedy stuff-ups by Novopay. Why on earth not have them simply pay the staff from the school’s bank account, without any need at all for a centrally-planned, centrally-governed, one-size-fits-all payroll system?

Why not?

Because perhaps the second point to contemplate is that the problem with Novopay is not specifically a software problem at all.  I suggest instead it’s exactly what you’re expect of a centrally-planned, centrally-governed, one-size-fits-all system.

I agree. Rather than have all teachers employed by the Ministry of Education and paid by them, I’d have each school responsible for employing their own staff and paying them. If a school wished to used a centralised system such as Novopay they can, or they could use another SAAS system, or local software as they see fit.

It would also mean each school would have flexibility over how much they pay their teachers, within their overall funding.  They could pay a great teacher twice as much as a poor teacher.

Chris Hipkins blogs against performance pay at Red Alert:

There are some excellent teachers working really hard in schools where the students are struggling. They get incredible results, and often the students in their classes learn a lot more in a year than a child at a school with better test scores, yet because the kids are still behind some of their peers at the end of the year, these schools are labelled as ‘failures’. Why would a great teacher work their guts out at a struggling school when they could get more ‘performance’ pay by working in a school that wasn’t struggling?

This is not an argument against performance pay. This is an argument against measuring performance on the basis of test scores, rather than student improvement. It is a red herring. No one who argues for performance pay says it should simply go to the teachers whose students get the highest grades.

As Kelvin points out, there is a lot more to teaching than making sure kids hit an arbitrary and narrowly focused set of standards. The fundamental problem with ‘performance’ pay for teachers is that a narrow range of student achievement statistics alone aren’t a reliable measure of how good a teacher is. Can we do a better job of rewarding great teachers? Undoubtedly. Should we provide more incentives for teachers to undertake professional development and continually strive to be better teachers. For sure. Will ‘performance pay’ based on student achievement help achieve these things? No.

Again, no one I know is arguing for performance pay based purely on student achievement. The problem is Chris thinks performance pay has to be like the current pay system – based on one centralised collective scheme with defined criteria for extra pay to be based on.

I’d make each Board and Principal decide how to allocate “performance pay” in their schools. The school community knows who the great and not so great teachers are. I knew it when I was a pupil. Almost everyone knows it. Some teachers have a marvelous gift for connecting with pupils and some teachers just can’t do it no matter how hard they try.

Performance pay will never work as a centralised system based on what marks your students get. It can work as a flexible system where principals can reward the teachers they know make a huge different to their students and whose loss to the school would be a disaster. This is a subjective local decision, not a rigid central decision.

I got sent a link to this video from an anonymous e-mail account. No idea who made it up or e-mailed it to me, but they seem to not be impressed with Trevor Mallard’s claim that David Shearer is the new Norman Kirk. They also have set up a Facebook page.

The December 2012 HLFS is out. Key points are:

• Employment down 22,000 in quarter
• Unenmployment also down 10,000 in quarter
• Those not in labour force up 43,000
• Unemployment rate down from 7.3% to 6.9%
• Under 20 unemployment rate up to 30.9%
• European unemployment rate up 0.1% to 5.5%
• Maori unemployment rate down 0.3% to 14.8%
• Pacific unemployment rate up 0.4% to 16.0%
• Asian unemployment rate down 2.0% to 8.0%
• Primary industry jobs down 10,400, manufacturing down only 800, construction up 4,500

Pretty weak data. The Government will face real challenges if the employment situation doesn’t improve in 2013. However worth noting that the 6.9% unemployment rate is 14th lowest of 34 in the OECD and lower than Canada, UK and US. The OECD average is 8.0%.

Isaac Davidson writes in the NZ Herald:

The Government’s decision not to extend the Official Information Act to Parliament is “entirely specious”, a former Prime Minister and president of the Law Commission says.

I’m amused that so many supporters of opening Parliament to the OIA, refused to do so when they were in Parliament and could have done so.

In announcing the proposals on Monday, Justice Minister Judith Collins said New Zealand had an open government by international standards and Parliament already made a great deal of information available.

She told the Herald yesterday: “While it may be tempting for a Government to have access to Opposition parties’ research and funding data, extending the OIA to include the offices of Parliament would see Opposition parties unnecessarily scrutinised.”

A lot of people don’t realise this. Ministers are already subject to the OIA, so extending it would actually be giving the Government the ability to file OIAs to the Opposition seeking draft policy papers, staff advice, spending details etc.

The Green Party supported the proposal to extend the OIA to parliamentary business, but the Labour Party did not.

My view is that the OIA should apply to Parliament for financial matters, but not documents and communications. As stated above, I think it would be chilling and unfair to Opposition MPs to have to battle OIA requests around their political strategy, draft policies etc. However their expenditure of public money is a different matter, and hence my compromise is to have financial documents come under the OIA. It is worth noting of course that since 2009 there has been a huge increase in financial transparency already.

Labour’s open government spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said her party instead supported proactive release of documents to a dedicated website.

That is a good idea.

John Armstrong writes in the NZ Herald:

It is much easier to pass a verdict on the Greens’ new “rent-to-buy” housing package. It is really a huge state house building programme in drag.

Under the policy, low-income families would occupy new, government-built $300,000 homes without having to stump up a deposit or take out a mortgage. The families would instead be required to make a $200 weekly payment to the Government to cover the interest cost on the Crown capital used to build the house. The occupiers would have the option of making additional payments to buy equity in their home.

The Greens won’t say how many such houses they want to build. They say the scheme would complement Labour’s plan, and the Greens’ share of those 100,000 homes would be decided during coalition negotiations.

The policy is easy to comprehend. Its generosity makes it extremely attractive. It seems to make sense.

Wrong. It is a dog of a policy. It should be put out of its misery.

The slow repayment of capital by occupiers under the Greens’ scheme would require the Government to go on a continual borrowing binge. There would be huge problems of fairness in terms of cut-off points for eligibility.

There is no incentive or requirement to pay off capital. Occupiers would have the house for life and enjoy cheap rent at $200 a week. It is not clear whether that payment would increase and by how much when interest rates increased – as they inevitably will. It is not clear who would pay the rates and the general maintenance costs.

Labour’s scheme at least imposes discipline on buyers to maintain the value of their properties by requiring them to take out a mortgage.

The Greens’ policy should carry a health warning. It flashes “unintended consequences” in neon – consequences that would probably have to be picked up by the taxpayer.

Labour has officially welcomed the Greens’ contribution to the affordable housing debate. Instead, it should quarantine this Nightmare on Struggle Street before it taints its own policy by association.

Labour and Greens seem to be competing with who can come up with the biggest bribe, and hope no one notices that the massive borrowing needed by the taxpayer will plunge our credit rating down the gurgler.

Surely what we need is less borrowing, at a time when Governments around the world are crumbling under the burden of their debt.

Amelia Wade at NZ Herald reports:

New Zealanders are adopting the Silver Fern as the national flag because they identify with it more than the Southern Cross, a leader for a republican movement claims.

Flag campaigner Lewis Holden said New Zealand needed a flag that Kiwis connected with and related to, rather than one which gets confused with the Australian flag. …

Mr Holden said it was evident at sports matches and events of national significance that New Zealanders preferred to wave the Silver Fern.

“And from pictures I’ve seen of the Waitangi Day pub crawl in London, very few people actually had New Zealand flags – they were all draped in Silver Ferns or Southern Crosses.”

I agree. You also see it with Kiwis hitchhiking around the world. The Silver Fern is the emblem of choice.

Labour spokesman for Arts, Culture & Heritage, Charles Chauvel, who put forward the New Zealand Flag Bill in 2010, said the Government needed to address the issue. …

Mr Chauvel’s bill, which is waiting to be drawn, seeks to create a commission which must spend 18 months seeking public input on the status of the national flag.

The commission would be appointed by the Prime Minister after consulting all parliamentary leaders.

As part of its functions, it would hold a nationwide competition for new flag designs, ranking the three that best reflect national identity, aspirations, culture and heritage.

While my personal preference is for the Silver Fern, I like the idea of a national competition. The final decision should be made by the public in a referendum.

James Weir at Stuff reports:

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund has beaten the cost of debt by $346 million over nine years, according to a new analysis.

That “modest achievement” was not enough to justify the risks run by the Government’s Super Fund, according to an analysis by the Retirement Policy and Research Centre co-director Michael Littlewood.

The research centre is based at Auckland University.

The reality is that the impact of the NZ Super Fund on future affordability of superannuation was always going to be fairly modest, and that was even with optimistic levels of returns. When the level of returns is barely more than the cost of debt, it does raise issues over its importance.

The only proper way to measure that was by comparing the fund’s return with the cost of long-term government debt.

“That’s because the Government, if it wished, [could] sell the NZSF investments and repay that debt,” Littlewood said.

The Government had the choice with each contribution to either cut debt or ask the fund’s guardians to invest the money.

Like a household, it was not sensible to raise a mortgage on the family home and invest the proceeds in shares and other investments, unless the before-tax returns were better than the cost of debt.

Against that measure the Super Fund’s returns were “less than comforting”, Littlewood said.

In the year to June 2012, the Super Fund lost $645m based on what it could have saved by paying off debt instead.

That loss was based on the 5.04 per cent yield on 10-year government stock, against the fund’s guardians’ published return for the year of 1.1 per cent, giving a loss of $645m.

My concern is that we still have a high risk of significant failures in the US economy and the EU – and that would drive down returns again from the Super Fund.

James Weir at Stuff reports:

The high cost of repairing leaky buildings is a big factor in commercial builder Mainzeal’s receivership, an industry source says.

Mainzeal Property and Construction, begun more than 40 years ago, was put into the hands of receivers yesterday.

It employs more than 400 people.

The firm is the country’s third-largest construction company, behind Fletcher Building and Hawkins Construction. …

A source said Mainzeal had been effectively killed off by several leaky apartment buildings that it was repairing, some of them costing many millions each to fix.

Mainzeal had been involved in their construction, but ended up as the “last man standing” because others involved, such as architects and designers, had already folded, the source said.

Profit margins on other projects had been too small to cover those repair costs.

Another victim of leaky homes. Very sad both for the economy, and for those directly employed or sub-contractors.

Some of their existing projects may continue on in receivership, as they are presumably individually profitable. So the impact may be less than we expect. But still bad news, and somewhat surprising considering the construction boon. But one big job you make a loss on can wipe out lots of jobs with small profit margins.

Simon Day at Stuff reports:

Prime Minister John Key wants to extend the parliamentary term to a fixed four-year period as part of the Government’s constitutional review.

One hundred and 73 years after the constitutional foundation of New Zealand was laid, the constitutional landscape was again the topic of discussion at Waitangi yesterday.

“My view is that there should be a four-year fixed date of Parliament.

“I think it makes a lot more sense to know when the date is fixed and I think it makes a lot more sense to have it for four years,” Mr Key said.

I support both these changes. A fixed date gives certainty and also removes a tactical advantage from the incumbent PM. And absolutely three years is too short an electoral term. NZ and Australia are very rare in having such a short term. It gives very little time for Governments to design and implement policies before the politics of election campaigns interfere.

The only Parliament I know with a shorter term is the US House of Representatives at two years, and we can see the impact as Representatives are constantly campaigning for re-election and hence the House has been a source of leglisative gridlock for many years.

Any change would require the support of 75 per cent of MPs or public support in a referendum. The proposal had failed twice before, in 1967 and 1990.

But the prime minister appears to have the support of his political opponents and allies.

Opposition leader David Shearer agreed that three years was not enough.

Good on Shearer. Any change should go to a referendum, and importantly should not come into force immediately. What I mean is if there is a referendum with the 2014 election, the term of Parliament for the next Parliament should not be dependent on the  outcome, rather it impacts the term after that.

So the next Parliament would be 2014 to 2017, but the one after that might be 2017 to 2021 if NZers voted for a four year term. This is important for two reasons.

The first is we must know what the term of Parliament is when we elect a Parliament. The second is that people are more likely to vote for an extension of it is not see as a Government trying to extend its next term in office – but rather is for the term after the next term.

Colin Espiner writes in The Press ten reasons why he thinks NZ is better than Australia:

1. We’re more friendly
   
2. Small is beautiful
3. Our houses are cheaper
4. Our food and drink is better
5. We love our indigenous culture
6.  We’re not so uptight
7. We’re more entrepreneurial
8. There’s fewer things that can hurt or kill you
9. Our TV’s better
10. The weather

I’m sure there will be a variety of views on this one!

A hilarious interview with Kai the hitchhiker, whose driver went crazy claiming he was Jesus. I suspect they couldn’t actually show too much of the interview on the air!

Dita De Boni does her final blog on parenting in the Herald and lists what she has learnt:

1.  I knew nothing, absolutely nothing at all, about children before having them.
   
2. People who are violent to children (not a smack on the bum when they’ve done something wrong, but serious violence), I believe, forfeit their right to be around children at all.
3. Boys and girls are very, very different, and basically need different parenting.
4. Bottle feeding isn’t poisoning your child; daycare probably won’t harm them; crying babies down at a certain age is bound to restore sanity to a household.
5.  I have been incredibly lucky to have a husband who enjoys spending time with the children is an excellent dad.
6. There are many days parenting young children (or even older children) that will test your sanity and make you despair.

It is her first point especially I want to focus on. She also said:

On the one hand this was terrible: the first child is the clusterbomb that blows your life to pieces. I firmly believe that, in the main, the first child is the hardest (while the subsequents grow the workload, they are not mindblasting in the same way, major issues aside). On the other hand, fewer people in general would probably have children if they were fully conversant with the effort required. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing, which is another purpose an honest parenting blog/column can fulfil.

I’d like to be a parent one day, but I have to say the thought does terrify me also. I know that until you have actually been a parent, you really have no idea what it is like. You may have a year or two of never having an undisturbed night’s sleep. You can’t relax if your kid suddenly disappears out of sight etc etc.

Just as someone who has never worked in business generally has no idea how business actually works, I think those who have never been parents also have no real idea (including myself in that). We can be sympathetic and empathetic, but nothing beats living it.

There is a political element to this also. MPs who have never been a parent I think will always struggle (no matter how well motivated) to truly understand the challenges of raising a family. This is in no way to suggest only parents should be MPs or have views on political issues that affect families. Of course not. But that it is useful for MPs to have experiences beyond the political.