Next month is a treaty level conference, called the World Conference on International Telecommunications. It is primarily comprised of Governments, and there are two major threats looming.

Some Governments are wanting to amend the International Telecommunication Regulations, so they can clamp down on free speech outside their borders. Others just want to be able to tax the Internet or have the equivalent of international terminate rates to gain revenue for their countries.

I thought people would be interested in which countries are sending the largest delegations – especially when you consider their standard of living. The largest delegations are:

1. United Arab Emirates 153
2. USA 115
3. Nigeria 72
4. Russia 45
5. Brazil 42
6. South Africa 38
7. China 31
8. United Kingdom 31
9. Thailand 25
10. Canada 23
11. Venezuela 19
12. Algeria 18
13. Ukraine 18
14. Ghana 17
15. Guinea 16
16. Gabon 15
17. Oman 15
18. Turkey 15

With just a few exceptions, few of the wealthy (OECD) countries are sending a delegation of more than 15. The vast majority of the big delegations are from impoverished or developing countries.

Also worth noting that more than half the US delegation are from the private, not the public sector.

So the vast majority of the attendees at WCIT will be from countries trying to censor or tax the Internet. Luckily New Zealand, the US and other countries will stand firm to stop a consensus over any malignant changes.

Stuff reports on the Maori Council court case:

Justice Young said he did not understand why the Government needed to act before the transfer because water rights were determined under the Resource Management Act and the Government could change that any time in favour of Maori. ”I don’t follow why it matters who owns Mighty River Power.”

Exactly. Contact Energy was sold totally and this is no way impacted any rights around water. The mechanisms for recognizing water rights are not linked to the ownership status.

One can of course not judge the outcome off one possible isolated comment, but it is heartening to see the Judge identify the core issue.

The left have complained bitterly about the reduction in staff numbers in the public service, and have claimed fewer staff mean inferior services. Putting aside the lack of fiscal reality of their stance, the latest SSC survey of public satisfaction with services shows that you can keep costs under control, and improve performance. Some extracts:

• Overall satisfaction up from 68 in 2007 to 74 in Sep 2012
• Passports & Citizenship 79 (+2)
• Border Services 78 (+7)
• Environment & recreation 76 (+4)
• Health 73 (+4)
• Social Assistance and Housing 73 (+5 from 2009)
• Local Govt 73 (+4)
• Education and Training 71 (+3)
• Taxation & Business 70 (+8)
• Justice & Security 68 (+5)

And some individual indicators:

• Public Hospital Outpatient Services 73 (+5)
• Stayed in public hospital 75 (+4)
• Family Services/Counselling 73 (+8)
• The Police 69 (+5)
• Emergency 111 Services 82 (+5)
• Getting a benefit 64 (+5)
• NZ Super 84 (+9)
• Tax Inquiries 66 (+7)
• Company reg/returns 77 (+6)

Overall some pretty good improvements.

John Crysler of the Department of Political Science of Carleton University in Canada has done a paper looking at the influence of party leaders on selections in two parties, with one of them being NZ Labour under Helen Clark.

It is a fascinating contrast to the current situation with David Shearer who couldn’t even stop conference voting to lower the threshold to challenge him – and just as importantly couldn’t get the party to agree to rules on future candidate selections.

Here’s what Crysler says about how it worked under Clark:

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the parliamentary party and the party organization were divided, the Labour Party leader had very little influence over candidate selection. In fact, some interviewees reported that in 1993, the party president and her allies deliberately influenced candidate selection to move the ideological orientation of caucus to the left and to replace the incumbent leader (which is how Clark came to the leadership in 1993). However, under Helen Clark’s leadership, during which time the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary wings were far more united, many interviewees reported that she did influence many electorate selections.

Clark was firmly in control. Now, no one is.

The institutional framework was such that all she had to do was communicate her preferences to the three head office representatives to have some influence. It is not clear how often these representatives took her advice, but many in the party believe it to have been frequent.

By the way this can not happen in Labour National. The head office gets zero say at all on selection meetings. Their role is just the traditional veto early on of totally unsuitable candidates.

According to the party’s constitution, there are 36 members of the moderating committee, only three of which are parliamentarians (the party leader, deputy leader, and someone elected by caucus). The rest represent the various elements of the party (party executives, sector councils representing various demographic groups and trade unions, and regional representatives). Despite (or perhaps because of) this disparate membership, Clark was widely reported to have taken a strong hand in the ranking process. Some interviewees reported that her influence stemmed from the respect the other committee members had for her judgment. One member of the moderating committee for three elections described Clark’s influence this away: Helen Clark’s opinion “was sought and always acted upon. If one slot didn’t reflect her preference, the next one would

I think the 2014 Labour Party list ranking will be fascinating. Think if Cunliffe is ranked No 3!

In Clark’s case, she also appears to have used her influence to augment the party’s electoral chances. For example, she tried to ensure that those demographic groups shown by Labour polling research to be likely Labour supporters be represented high on the party list.

Such as Rajen Prasad!

The conclusion is worth noting:

The experiences of Helen Clark and John Howard suggest that political media stardom is not necessary (nor, perhaps is it sufficient) for sustained political success in New Zealand and Australia. Instead, party leaders must be very competent media performers (preferably superior to their parliamentary colleagues) and media managers, and they must continually forge party unity through the drudgery of managing personalities and attending to party affairs so that their political messages are unsullied by unseemly divisions.

I think they are missing Helen!

The Herald reports:

A senior Taliban leader thought to be behind a roadside bombing in which three New Zealand soldiers died has reportedly been killed by coalition forces.

Prime Minister John Key today confirmed Abdullah Kalta died in the Afghanistan airstrike.

New Zealand soldiers Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker, Private Richard Harris and Corporal Luke Tamatea were killed in August when their Humvee struck an improvised explosive device.

New Zealand personnel were not involved in the attack on Kalta but coalition forces could have used intelligence gathered by New Zealand SAS troops, Mr Key said on TVNZ’s Breakfast show.

“We weren’t physically involved but it was almost certainly intelligence that New Zealand people have been gathering over there.

“It was in the northeastern part of Bamiyan province. If that is the case, and that seems to be the information we have, then I think that’s good news if it makes Afghanistan a safer place for our people.”

It is good news. Hopefully it means our troops complete their mission with no further causalities.

In today’s anti Peter Jackson story, the Herald discovers that Peter is not still in touch with everyone he knew or worked with 25 years ago.

What a cad.

Hasn’t the plethora of anti Peter Jackson stories in recent weeks been a great example of the NZ tall poppy syndrome.

What a pity that there haven’t been stories interviewing people who have worked with Jackson recently. I recall at the public rally in Wellington to stop the unions moving The Hobbit offshore, how so many people got up and spoke of what it was like to work with Jackson. They spoke of his qualities as both a director and a human being.

Of course Jackson is not universally popular with every person he has ever known or worked with. Who is? But everything I have heard is he is held in far higher esteem personally by those who work with him than  almost all other directors and producers of his caliber.

Neil Reid at Stuff reports:

New Zealand’s environmental watchdog is unlikely to call for a ban on fracking upon the release of her initial inquiry into the controversial oil and gas industry technique.

Will this stop the Greens from trying to get it banned?

Green Party energy spokesman Gareth Hughes said if Wright did not make a binding stand on fracking in her report, he would call on the Government to order a moratorium on fracking until the procedure was proven safe.

Of course not. We should also ban manufacturing until it has been proven safe.

Earlier this month, Todd Energy released the 178-page submission it had provided Wright’s investigation.

In it, the energy company – which has a history of fracking in Taranaki – said New Zealand’s multibillion-dollar energy industry would be uneconomic if fracking was outlawed.

Todd Energy chief executive Paul Moore argued the practice could be done safely.

“We need to do it – but we also need to assure the public that we’re doing it well,” he said.

The sensible debate is around how it is done and what consents are needed.

Tapu Misa writes in the NZ Herald:

No independent observer of Shearer’s media performances could have failed to notice his potentially fatal deficiencies.

Whatever his strengths, however nice a human being he is, he hadn’t lived up to the hype. If National was losing some of its gloss in the polls, it was no thanks to Shearer’s stumbling leadership. …

If the criticism seemed harsh and overly impatient, it has to be seen in the context of the past four years.

The party had been conspicuously united behind Phil Goff despite widely held reservations almost from the moment he assumed the leadership.

Much good that show of unity did them.

Now they were being asked to extend that faith to a political neophyte who, if anything, had fewer weapons in his arsenal.

If politics is a contest of ideas, it needs well-armed champions. …

But the reality is that whatever Cunliffe’s credentials, his thwarted leadership ambitions would have been dead if Shearer had lived up to expectations. No one would have been hankering after Cunliffe’s superior grasp of finance or communication skills. Or wondering why Shearer didn’t follow the canny lead of Helen Clark and John Key and keep his talented rival close, giving him the deputy leadership and finance portfolio.

Would this have happened if Shearer had kept Cunliffe as Finance Spokesperson? Would people be saying Russel Norman is the MP of the Year if he had been competing against Cunliffe instead of Parker?

Did Shearer’s much-praised speech silence the doubters? Was it the speech to bind all of Labour?

Those at the conference were certainly excited. I watched it on YouTube and was less smitten. Maybe you had to be there to feel the rapture.

However good, it was asking a lot of one speech. Especially when Shearer’s subsequent TV appearances show him bumbling his way through straightforward questions on Labour’s new housing policy and Cunliffe’s summary execution.

It’s nonsense to say this doesn’t matter.

There is no “rightful leader” of the Labour Party. The position isn’t Shearer’s by right, nor Cunliffe’s for that matter. It ought to be threatened if enough people feel the incumbent hasn’t earned it.

71 days to go until the next vote!

Olivia Carville at The Press reports:

Combining the ageing population and the unprecedented number of young people leaving Christchurch, in about 20 years more than half of the city would be over the age of 65, Parker said.

“We are on a direct path at the moment to become New Zealand’s most modern and attractive new rebuilt resthome.”

One possible solution to the “age group crisis” was to relocate the University of Canterbury back inside the four avenues.

Despite the university’s reluctance to shift, this was the most “grievously undercooked” opportunity in the rebuild.

I don’t know what it would cost to move the university, but imagine it would be a nine figure sum. In reality you would be building a brand new university. Looking at the UC annual report this would be a capital outlay of around $700 million less what you would get for the existing land and buildings.

Having the university more central isn’t a bad idea by itself, but money doesn’t grow on trees (except for the Greens). If Bob Parker really thinks it is essential, than maybe he can identify what projects he would can to pay for it.

A nice video summary of Labour’s week by Whale.

The front page lead for the Sunday Star-Times yesterday was:

Forensic accountants are investigating the estate of New Zealand First MP Brendan Horan’s mother, amid allegations that large sums of money were misappropriated from her bank accounts over several years.

I read the full story, and couldn’t see the public interest in it – let alone making it a front page.

It is a sad reality that families have disputes over estates.

A source familiar with the accounts said: “There is a lot of strange activity going on, a lot of TAB withdrawals.”

The implication is that Horan may be responsible – but as far as I can see there is no proof of this – and it would be fairly easy to track down who was gambling at a TAB at the time of withdrawals etc.

In today’s Stuff it is further reported:

NZ First MP and former weatherman Brendan Horan is welcoming forensic accountants investigating the estate of his mother, saying he wants to clear up allegations large sums were misappropriated from her bank account.

The Tauranga-based list MP said the matter was a family dispute and he was “disgusted” it had been dragged before the public. …

There have also been allegations of many TAB withdrawals.

It is understood the allegations have come from Mr Horan’s brother, Mark Ormsby, also known as Mana and Te Karera, who is a long-term sickness beneficiary.

I think it is regrettable that the allegations were given oxygen and prominence without any proof of any wrong-doing by Horan. If there is going to be an examination by an accountant, then why not wait for the results of that before running a front page article insinuating wrong-doing?

I suspect we get all these farcical attacks on charter schools not because they believe their claims stand up to scrutiny, but that they hope to just damage the “brand” of the concept. The latest example is this article:

That does not come as a surprise to Auckland University associate professor and charter school critic Peter O’Connor, who says the business model is clear: Spend less than you get in state funding and pay the difference as dividends to owners.

Essentially, New Zealand charter schools – comfortingly branded as “partnership schools” – will be funded on similar lines to state schools, so a for-profit owner would need to create profit by spending less per child following a pattern developed overseas.

“Every child brings a pot of money with them,” he said. “Because of the deregulated environment, a profit can be made by driving down teacher costs by employing unregistered teachers. You drive down that cost by de-unionising the workforce, and employing on individual, not collective contracts.”

This theory has two problems with it. The first:

Catherine Isaac, a former ACT party candidate now on the government working party tasked with introducing charter schools, says there won’t be a single for-profit among the first wave of applicants to establish schools in 2014.

“There aren’t any for-profit proposals coming through as far as I am aware. They are all community groups, or existing schools or Iwi,” Isaac said.

So you have this guy say charter schools are about shareholders being for profit owners who will slash costs to make profits – and there isn’t a single for profit operator applying!!

But the bigger issue is so what if someone did make a profit. Unlike state schools where pupils are forced to attend based on their address, not one single student in New Zealand will be forced to attend a charter school against the wishes of their family. They will only enrol if they think it will be a better school than the local state school.

The Guardian reports:

Egypt‘s most senior judges have condemned President Mohamed Morsifor granting himself sweeping new powers which they say amount to an “unprecedented assault” on the independence of the judiciary.

The supreme judicial council said work would be suspended in all courts and prosecution offices until the decree passed by the president earlier this week was reversed. …

Morsi’s decree orders the retrial of former president Hosni Mubarak, officials and security force members accused of killings during the country’s revolution. Controversially, it also exempts all of Morsi’s decisions from legal challenge until a new parliament is elected, as well as offering the same protection to the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly, which is drawing up the country’s new constitution.

Egypt may have swapped one dictator for another.

Stuff reports:

Larry Hagman, who created one of American television’s most supreme villains in the conniving, amoral oilman JR Ewing of Dallas, has died. He was 81.

Hagman died at a Dallas hospital of complications from his battle with throat cancer, the Dallas Morning News reported, quoting a statement from his family. He had suffered from liver cancer and cirrhosis of the liver in the 1990s after decades of drinking.

I loved Dallas, and especially Hagman’s character of JR. He was and made Dallas. I was looking forward to seeing the rebooted series with so many of the old cast returning to be in it.

Simon Day at Stuff reports:

Already under pressure from internal ructions, the Labour Party leadership has been given a mauling by disgraced former MP Taito Phillip Field.

Just over a year after his release from prison, Field, who compared himself with South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, weighed in on Labour’s recent struggles, saying the party has lost its way and been “contaminated” by liberal policy.

The former Helen Clark government, in which he was a minister, had infested the party with homosexuality, Field said.

“There is a perception that they are controlled by homosexuals. It’s like a smell that won’t go away.”

I’d say the bad smell is the former MP who used immigrant slave labour and was sent to jail for corruption.

“Nobody wants to go to prison, but Mandela was imprisoned for 26 years. Who I am to complain?”

Incredible. The sense of entitlement.

Field cited John Banks’ mayoral campaign donation by Kim Dotcom, and Helen Clark signing a painting she didn’t paint for charity, as “prima facie” examples of corruption and fraud.

Helen won’t like that comparison.

Kirsty Wynn at HoS reports:

It’s almost as good as claiming Lotto’s first-division prize – the winners in Auckland’s frantic housing market are selling their properties for hundreds of thousands of dollars above their official valuations.

Ummm, no it’s not.

One could sell a house for hundreds of thousands above GV and lose money on the sale.

Official valuations are often massively different from market values. What makes a seller a “winner” is how much profit they made selling a house compared to what they paid for it, plus improvements made.

Statistics show that in the past six months there have been at least nine properties that sold for $500,000 or more above their CV, and one went for a whopping $1.2 million above valuation.

A meaningless statistic.

Another stand-out property was 18 Rangitoto Ave in Remuera, which sold for $2,895,000 in August – $1,175,000 over its recent CV of $1,720,000.

Bayleys Remuera agent David Rainbow, who marketed and sold the property, said buyer competition was fierce.

“Two hundred parties registered from open-home viewings and at auction. Five parties were competitively bidding against each other, which ensured the top price was achieved,” Rainbow said.

He said the CV could be a ballpark figure but a lack of stock and high demand meant the price was pushed up by bidders who all desperately wanted the home.

The house had undergone significant internal renovations and remodelling work that were not factored into the $1,720,000 council valuation.

“A council valuation is a broad snapshot of a suburb, and fails to take into account added-value work that owners have invested in,” Rainbow said.

Exactly. An apartment near where I live recently sold for around $100,000 thousand over GV. However the previous owner had spent $300,000 on improvements – so in fact she lost considerable money on the sale – yet this article’s criteria would declare her a winner.

This is not to say that some people are not making a good profit on selling their houses. I am sure they are. But the comparison should be to purchase and improvement price.

Phil Taylor in the NZ Herald profiles David Cunliffe:

In government, Cunliffe was one of Clark’s standout ministers, succeeding, where others failed, in unbundling Telecom’s local loop monopoly, and making bold decisions as health minister.

I’ve said many times that I thought Cunliffe was an excellent ICT and Comms Minister. He not only made good decisions, but he absolutely understood the issues from major to minor, and showed a determination to make beneficial changes.

I have to say also that I’ve never personally seen any of the issues cited by some of his colleagues about him. Yes he is ambitious, and I certainly think he made the wrong decision last weekend in his choice of words. But I’ve always found him honest and trustworthy. However I accept that others have a different perspective.

“Look, he’s a nice bloke, I like the guy. He was a competent minister [and] in my view he was a team player. I’d have to say that he polarises people. I don’t know what it is about his personality but he has the ability to make people utterly despise him.”

Two sources who have worked closely with Cunliffe are adamant he is made of the right stuff. The former staffer rates him as an exceptional boss, “warm, friendly, polite, and caring about his staff”. The staffer did no see him lose his temper with anyone despite long hours and the pressure of making tough political decisions such as approving animal organ transplants, sacking a hospital board, and going against the wishes of the strong herceptin lobby.

He can’t understand why Cunliffe attracts such passionate opposition among his caucus colleagues.

A lot of people who have worked with Cunliffe only have good things to say about him.

“He had a terrible personality clash with Clayton Cosgrove [a Shearer loyalist].

I think they both came in together in 1999 so there was a bit of rivalry. Cosgrove is thought to be the MP responsible for giving Cunliffe the Silent T nickname – but this has not been confirmed.

Quite right, says a health sector source who worked closely with Cunliffe. He is the right type to lead New Zealand, she told the Herald , having character, brains, heart and being in “politics for all the right reasons”.

Suggestions of arrogance were “a myth. It’s jealousy and spite. He’s talented, he’s open about his ambitions. That’s him he’s honest to a fault. He cares passionately about New Zealand and he has ideas about how to make it a better society.”

But Matthew Hooton in NBR is less generous:

But after Mr Cunliffe’s incredible antics this week – the ridiculously facile answers to the media; the smarm; the smirking; the fake wounded innocence; the bizarre victim mentality – my view is reversed.

Put Mr Cunliffe on national TV every night and the voters will certainly be repulsed. …

Hooton lays waste to the claims that Cunliffe did nothing wrong:

Now, Team Cunliffe expects us to believe, there never was any kind of leadership challenge planned at all.

According to Mr Cunliffe’s diminishing supporters, all their man has done these last four years is diligently work on new policy to break the current neoliberal hegemony.  (Yes, they really do talk that way.) …

The new story being put about by Team Cunliffe is that all the speculation about a leadership challenge at Labour’s conference was a right-wing media construct.

Under this scenario, current leader Mr Shearer was put into the job by a right-wing cabal as the human face of the dreaded neoliberalism.  (Team Cunliffe also sometimes says Mr Shearer is a neoconservative but consistency is not its strong point.) …

Alarmed at such apostasy, Team Cunliffe tells us, right-wing media barons, including even at Radio New Zealand, instructed their reporters to make up a story that he was challenging Mr Shearer for the leadership.

Poor Mr Cunliffe!  When he arrived at his party conference, the dastardly right-wing press gallery asked him whether he would support Mr Shearer’s leadership next year.

Mr Cunliffe could have said “yes” and the devious neoliberal plot would have been thwarted.  But, no, our Mr Cunliffe is way too honest for that.  Instead, he reserved his position:  “This is a constitutional conference, not a leadership conference.”

Disingenuously, the right-wing media decided that the fifth-ranked MP in the main opposition party refusing to publicly support his leader at their annual conference was newsworthy.

They even used camera angles to try to make Mr Cunliffe look smug and smarmy.

He’s not of course.  As his supporters point out, it’s just that his mind works so much faster than anyone else’s. 

Ouch, Matthew can be so sarcastic.

John Armstrong is more balanced:

Finance was not the only job Cunliffe was hankering for in Opposition.

According to insiders, he also unsuccessfully lobbied the caucus to appoint a second deputy leader. No prizes for guessing who intended filling the job.

Such an unquenchable ambition causes him to exempt himself from the laws of politics to which everyone else adheres.

It was not the first time and – as the past week or so has shown – not the last time that he has overreached himself.

That, in a nutshell, is the tragedy of David Cunliffe. He has most of the attributes required of a leader – intellect, political acumen, the ability to articulate the party’s position on something in simple, easily understood language.

He is pragmatic enough to bend when necessary, yet principled enough to stick to principle when the occasion demands.

But like Icarus, the figure of Greek mythology, Cunliffe tends to fly too close to the sun.

Can he come back:

The question now is whether colleagues could work under him. One of this week’s most significant statements was made by one such colleague, Chris Hipkins, who accused Cunliffe of undermining the Labour team.

If Cunliffe did manage to come back, then a number of senior MPs would not credibly be able to serve under him and would have to head to the backbenches.

Finally why did the Cunliffe “challenge fail? I think Claire Trevett has the answer:

Sources have also since claimed that on the Friday Cunliffe and his ally, Rajen Prasad, unsuccessfully tried to stack the Ethnic Sector council with Cunliffe supporters, including trying to install Cunliffe’s electorate committee member Susan Zhu as chairwoman. The ethnic sector group has more than 1000 members in it and is a potentially rich voting pool for a hopeful leadership contender. The rumour was that the plan was for the ethnic sector group to eventually publicly endorse Cunliffe come the time of a leadership contest.

If your plan for seizing the leadership rests on the strategic genius of Rajen Prasad, then you deserve to lose 🙂

It is interesting though that all the media have been full of stories against Cunliffe – obviously coming from other MPs. Yet Cunliffe himself has stayed quiet.

Stuff reports:

Ireland has opened a new investigation into the death of a woman denied an abortion of her dying foetus, as the government scrambled to stem criticism of its handling of an incident that polarised the overwhelmingly Catholic country.

Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year old dentist, was admitted to hospital in severe pain on October 21 and asked for a termination after doctors said her baby would not survive, according to husband Praveen. 

But in a country with some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws, surgeons would not remove the foetus until its heartbeat stopped days later.

Husband Praveen Halappanavar, who believes the delay contributed to the blood poisoning that killed his wife on October 28, has said he would not cooperate with an investigation already launched by the country’s health service because he did not believe it would be neutral.

Barbaric. They knew the baby could not survive, but they still did nothing, with the mother then dying.

Ireland’s abortion stance is enshrined in a 1983 constitutional amendment that intended to ban abortion in all circumstances. In 1992, when challenged in the “X-case” involving a 14-year-old rape victim, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was permitted when the woman’s life was at risk, including from suicide.

I understand that many Irish women just travel to Northern Ireland to get abortions.

Opposition party Sinn Fein introduced a motion to parliament on Wednesday calling for parliament to legislate on abortion, but it was rejected.

“Successive governments over the past 20 years have failed in respect of legislation. That failure is in large measure due to fear or cowardice,” said Mary Lou McDonald, vice president of Sinn Fein.

Not often I agree with Sinn Fein.

Duncan Garner, Fran O’Sullivan and John Amrstrong all write on Labour this weekend.

First Duncan:

Dissent. Uprisings. Rebellion. Scraps. Blood.

It was something Helen Clark kept a careful lid on. 

Not even on her weakest day or in a moment of madness would Clark have given up control of who picks the leader of the proud Labour Party – never, ever.

Caucus must control its own destiny.

What happened last Saturday would never have happened under Clark’s strong leadership. Now the Labour leader can get rolled and rolled easily.

If a minority of 13 other MPs out of 34 decide to support Grant Robertson or David Cunliffe next February, then that triggers a party wide vote.

Actually I think it is even worse than that. I have not seen the final rule, but I don’t think a contender even needs to challenge. The vote is basically just a confidence vote in the Leader. Someone could just quietly encourage 14 MPs to vote no, and bang there is a leadership ballot – and only then do contenders have t step forward.

During that vote, party members get a 40 percent say and unions get a 20 percent say. You reckon they’ll hang on to David Shearer in that scenario? Doubt it. And it’s like that every three years.

If Shearer lost the Feb caucus vote, I don’t think he would even contest the party wide ballot. He’d be impotent in Parliament while he has to fight a rearguard action to stay on as Leader. I think he would bow out.

The February following each election, Labour will be able to boot out their sitting leader – that leader may have just months earlier been crowned Prime Minister.

So when you vote for Labour, you don’t know who you will end up with as PM.

It’s a recipe for instability. Quite frankly it’s a disaster, a train-wreck waiting to happen. …

If the 40 percent caucus vote and 40 percent party member vote cancels each other out – i.e the caucus wants a change but the party members don’t, then guess who has the casting vote?

The unions. They get 20 percent.

Could the unions select the next Prime Minister? Yes. Could they dump a sitting Prime Minister just two or three months after they took office?Yes.

By this move, Labour have become even more subservient to the unions.

And now Fran O’Sullivan:

Four days on from Cunliffe’s execution, there is little sign that Shearer is on top of his game.

His post-caucus press conference was a bumbling, mumbling mess which at times bordered on total incoherency.

It was a shocker.

It does not bode well for Labour to have its own leader so frightened of his own shadow that he has to banish one of his few competent colleagues to the back bench.

Unfortunately, Shearer was also simply not politically tough enough, nor sufficiently competent and astute, to have pulled off the accommodation that Australian Liberal Leader Tony Abbott made with potential rival Malcolm Turnbull this week to position his party to win the next Australian federal election.

I blogged on this yesterday. A much smarter way to handle a more popular rival.

In Shearer’s case he does not have the skill to bring off an accommodation with Cunliffe. (Though in months to come he may wish he had gone down that path instead of listening to the caucus players who want the New Lynn MP buried at all costs).

The old guard remain in charge.

And John Armstrong pulls no punches:

Barmy, loopy, stupid, crazy. Last weekend’s Labour Party conference had so much political madness on and off the conference floor that the proceedings could well have been deemed certifiable.

The handful of MPs who tried to talk sense into delegates may agree – particularly on the vexed question of how high to set the bar before a leadership ballot involving the whole party membership is triggered.

The MPs’ advice was not only ignored, they were shouted down. The rank-and-file saw things very differently. The rewrite of the party’s constitution was giving them a rare whiff of grass-roots democracy. They were not about to say “no thanks” even if their votes were being manipulated for nefarious reasons.

All I’ll say is I can’t see National rushing off to make similar changes.

I guess in Labour the desire for more of a say is understandable, as members have traditionally only a very weak say in even electorate selections.

From now on, the leader will be subject to a post-election endorsement vote by the caucus which must take place no later than three months after polling day.

Failure by a leader to secure more than 60 per cent backing from his or her colleagues will trigger a leadership vote involving the whole party.

The upshot is National will spend the election campaign delightedly claiming the Labour leader cannot guarantee he or she will still be in charge three months after the election.

Moreover, the new method of electing the leader gives a slice of the action to affiliated trade unions. You can imagine how National will exploit that.

Oh, yes.

I actually the the principle of giving members a say is laudable. But giving unions 20% of the vote is not far off organised corruption (just look at the Australian unions for examples of what they do with the extra power) and having a threshold below 50% for a challenge is silly.

When they were not naively setting things up to the advantage of the old enemy, delegates occupied themselves with such pressing matters as lowering the voting age to 16 – something for which there is absolutely no demand – and ordering school boards of trustees to let same-sex couples attend school balls.

Then there was the remit requiring 50 per cent gender equality among officials on the party’s electorate committees.

When it was pointed out that most committees had three officials, the conference determined that an extra position such as an assistant treasurer could be created.

Staggering. Their solution is to create an extra unneeded role, just so there is prefect gender equality on a committee. They have effectively outlawed a committee having an add number of members!

This kind of nonsense shows that political correctness is alive and well in Labour.

It speaks of a party that is out of touch with mainstream New Zealand. And it speaks of a leader who has no control over his party.

Where was the strategy for the conference?

The other casualty of what John Key describes as the now very “public war” within Labour is the party’s ability to project unity and stability.

That is a serious handicap for Labour, which may well have to patch together some kind of governing arrangement which accommodates the reforming zeal of the Greens and the reactionary predilections of New Zealand First.

Think if they were to form a Government. They’d first have to get agreement between the internal factions in Labour, and then with the Greens, and then with NZ First and maybe then with Mana also. If another financial crisis struck, it would probably take a month to even make a decision!

I’m in Dunedin attending Nethui South. Jordan Carter has a good blog about it:

So I am in Dunedin at the university for NetHuiSouth — a conference that is part of InternetNZ’s effort to bring multi-stakeholder Internet governance out to the provinces.

There’s a strong focus on rural and provincial issues, as well as the traditional issues concerning the global governance of the Internet. The looming WCIT summit, where the International Telecommunications Union (set up two centuries ago) will try and get its grubby little hands on the Internet, will be a key issue of concern. I am also expecting reports back from the global Internet Governance Forum, held in Baku last month.

It’s so everyday that for most of us it is easy to forget just how revolutionary the Internet is. A private sector, collaborative, open infrastructure lets people innovate without permission. It lets anyone publish their views, discover any fact, share their joys or sorrow, make money or spend it, and connect with whoever they want.

Keeping it that way is important. Some states want to shut down this field of freedom. They are wrong, but they will make the attempt now and again in future. Keeping the ‘net open is the vital response all of us can take – and we can help do it at events like NetHui.

I think the biggest boon of the Internet has been sharing of knowledge. 20 years ago you had to go out of your way to access information. You had to buy it, or go to a Library, or have it sent to you etc. Now a huge portion of the world’s knowledge is online and open to everyone.

In line with that, good to see this announcement:

Information Technology Minister Amy Adams says New Zealand will try to block an international move by some governments to take over the running of the internet.

Mrs Adams made the announcement at the first regional internet community conference, NetHui South, in Dunedin on Friday.

Some 193 countries will meet in Dubai in December this year to discuss a move to extend global treat the International Telecommunications Regulations to also cover the internet, giving national governments much more control.

Mrs Adams says New Zealand will vote against the move, because the not-for-profit agencies including ICANN, which organise the worldwide web, are doing a good job.

Having the ITU gain authority over aspects of the Internet would be horrific. Great to see NZ arguing against.

An interesting interview with John Key by Audrey Young. Some extracts:

Who first suggested you visit Burma?

My trusty foreign policy adviser [Ben King] and it worked because of location – it is close to Cambodia – and because we as a Government genuinely do believe that the Myanmar [Burma] Government is making progress. I don’t think we are naive to that progress. We understand it is not all perfect. It’s a long way from perfection, but fairly much every country is recognising them now and taking sanctions off them and trying to encourage them. The other EAS leaders have been very strong in their personal views to me. Certainly [President Susilo Bambang] Yudhoyono of Indonesia and [Prime Minister] Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore have been very much of the view that [Burmese President] Thein Sein is quite genuine in his progress. …

You said in a press briefing with President Thein Sein that New Zealanders were passionate about human rights.

I care about people’s human rights and, as a country, we have a very proud record indeed. But I’m also realistic about what we can do … we can raise those issues with leaders and we can talk about those issues, and we do that. Moral persuasion over a period of time makes a difference, but we shouldn’t be naive to think that just because we raise it in a meeting it will make all those problems go away. It won’t and it doesn’t.

Can you have real democracy in Burma and still keep the ban on motorbikes?

You could if the voters had the chance to vote out the Government that had such a policy. But apparently the genesis of the ban was that one of the generals’ sons was killed on one so they just got rid of them.

Amazing. The madness of absolute power.

Do you think he’ll visit New Zealand as President?

My foreign policy adviser keeps reminding me to ask. I am not so confident. I hope so and he will probably come to Australia and he has obviously been before. He might. He really wants to. But the problem is that there just aren’t areas of disagreement. There’s obviously the anti-nuclear issue but that has been put behind us long ago. In a world that is so intense for him with so little … I know he personally wants to.

Ironically, you’re more likely to get a US visit if there is a dispute to help smooth over!

Was it a good trip?

I reckon really good. The thing about EAS is we got everything we wanted. We got the President saying let’s try and get a deal by the end of 2013. We said to him ‘do you want us to say this in the press because [if] you do, it will be reported and we’ll be held to account on it?’ and he said yes, absolutely. That doesn’t mean we’ll get a deal. There’s a lot of scepticism from those that aren’t involved in TPP. But he’s really serious about it. He thinks there aren’t that many levels for him to pull. It’s hard. They’ve got very low interest rates, they’re printing money, they’ve got big fiscal deficits. What things can he do to stimulate the economy? That’s one of them. It might fail but it won’t fail by want of trying.

My reading of this is the US needs the TPP more than NZ does. This doesn’t mean NZ should be unreasonable and try to screw the US over in negotiations. But it does mean that the NZ position on issues such as the proposed IP chapter shouldn’t be traded away.