The Standard has done three posts in two days calling for David Shearer to go, and on who should replace him.

While each is by a different author, I have been around politics far too long to think for a second that this is not part of a co-ordinated strategy to destabilise Shearer in the leadup to the Labour conference.

Otherwise why not wait until after the conference to see how he goes? Their authors know how destabilising their posts will be, and that it will detract from the Labour conference – even if Shearer performs well.

The three posts are:

• Eddie – On David Shearer’s Leadership – For the Left to win in 2014, David Shearer has to resign as Labour Leader.
• Irishbill – It’s time to go – David Shearer needs to go if Labour is to stand a chance in 2014 and he needs to go as soon as possible.
• Queen of Thorns – Who could replace Shearer? – I agree with the other posters on The Standard who think Shearer needs to go as Labour leader.

Again, if you think this is a coincidence, I have a bridge for sale. Someone has decided to push the button. The only rational reason to come out all guns blazing just seven days before the Labour Annual Conference is so that Shearer is undermined at the conference.

UPDATE: The cartoon below is in today’s Dom Post.

UPDATE2: Auckland based Tapu Misa writes in the NZ Herald:

As the Labour Party heads into its annual conference this weekend, it has some big questions to ponder. But first it has to ask itself how long it can afford to persist with David Shearer as leader.

Again the timing is fascinating – writing for him to go the week before the conference, rather than waiting to see how he performs at the conference.

After years of doing nothing about pedophile Jimmy Savill,e the BBC went to the other extreme and alleged a former Conservative Peer was a pedophile with no proof, and now the BBC Director-General has resigned.

Mr Entwistle said quitting was the “honourable” thing to do as he had to take responsibility as editor in chief of the BBC for what Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, said was “unacceptable shoddy journalism”.

Is Fairfax abandoning having online editions of its Sunday newspapers? Previously it was mainly the Sunday News that was embarrassingly out of date, but now it is the Sunday Star-Times also.

The lead story on the SST home page is from three weeks ago. The most recent column is from five weeks ago.

Under latest edition, there are some sports stories from today, but none of them are on the SST homepage. The most recent non sports story is two weeks old.

Now many of the SST stories are on the Stuff website main page, which is good. But what is the point of having a homepage for the newspaper itself if they are not there also? Fairfax, in my opinion, either needs to drop having the SST as a separate sub-site within Stuff, or they need to keep it up to date.

Once again the media do not tell us something important. The Herald (on Sunday) reports:

The dire shortage of houses for sale in the Auckland market has desperate buyers going door-to-door pleading with homeowners to sell. …

Auckland couple Kate Sutton and Oliver Mannion have taken a different approach, asking Remax agents Peter Thomas and Roshni Sami to use their names in personal letters to homeowners to try to secure their first home.

So does this random couple have a solution?

They said the situation in Auckland was so bad the Government needed to introduce a capital gains tax if there was to be any relief for buyers.

They believed taxing investment properties was the only way to make home ownership affordable for families and less attractive for investors.

On a minor note, they are economically illiterate. There are some sounds reasons to have a capital gains tax. But reducing house prices is not one of them. A tax on housing will increase house prices, not decrease them.

But is it a coincidence that this random couple said that the solution is capital gains tax – the key tax proposal by the Labour Party?

Either the reporter was unaware that Kate has been the Womens vice president of the Labour Party for the last six years, or they decided not to tell the public this.

Kate was also a candidate for Labour in 2008 and 2011. The failure to disclose this in the article is appalling. Even worse it is their lead story online with the headline “Buyers begging for home”.

I would also point out the choice of “desperate” couple was shall we say debatable:

But even with a good deposit and a budget of between $600,000 and $700,000, the desperate couple are still flatting in an Onehunga property Sutton and her brother own.

So already part-owner of a property. So Kate was going to become an evil multiple property owner who needs to be taxed more!

Incidentially Trade Me has 5,220 properties listed for sale in Auckland that cost under $700,000 and are three or more bedrooms.

This is what you call desperate and begging.

UPDATE: Kate brags on Facebook how she managed to get the Herald on Sunday to write about Capital Gains Tax. So was the HoS an unwitting dupe, or an accomplice?

Andrea Vance writes:

Here’s not what’s going to happen at Labour’s annual conference later this week. David Cunliffe is not going to rugby tackle David Shearer to the ground while Grant Robertson sits on his head, with Andrew Little shouting “bags be leader”.

Irritatingly, leadership spills don’t happen that way. If only.

I think having Grant sit on your head is an offence under the Crimes Act 🙂

Labour is especially good at the nasty, tortured coups – so if the party is going to roll Shearer, expect it to be beastly. But don’t anticipate blood on the floor of the Ellerslie Racecourse come next Sunday night.

All an opposition party leader has to do at his annual conference is suggest he might do a better job than the bloke presently in charge. Unfortunately in Shearer’s case, it’s not the incumbent prime minister, but himself.

For when he stands up to deliver his keynote speech, the 500-odd delegates will be staring at a bloody great leader-shaped hole. He’s got about 20 minutes to convince a disillusioned party faithful that he’s not invisible, hasn’t got a speech impediment – and that he’s got a cunning plan to convince the voters that Labour can deliver a costed, credible alternative to National-omics.

Of course, while he’s doing it, the commentators and the pundits will have one eye on him and the other scrutinising the wannabes and couldvebeens.

And say Shearer doesn’t give a whizz-bang, tub-thumping speech? His performance this year suggests it’s not going to be a belter. This far out from a election he’s not going to be unleashing any astonishing new policies to distract watchers from the leadership question.

As I said previously, I expect Shearer to give a good speech, His challenge is not delivering speeches, but handling questions.

The risks in rolling him are inherent, but the party appears to have gone past that now. Shearer could give the speech of his life but for many it will be too little, too late. Labour have floundered in opposition, they are impatient for power and can’t afford him any more time.

He’s had more leeway and more time than most would have got (from the media pack and party members) simply because he’s such a nice man.

But, sadly, it seems Labour are facing that awkward conversation: “David, we’re sorry, it’s not us, it’s you.”

Ouch.

Paul Little writes:

Prince Charles, the plant whisperer, falls into that rapidly growing category of people who were “greenie before it was trendy” and have “always been a bit of an environmentalist in my own way”. Good for him. But he has also been revealed over the past seven years to be someone obsessed with secrecy and whose dealings with the British government tread a very fine constitutional line at best.

He has gone to great legal lengths to prevent publication – sought by the Guardian newspaper under official information legislation – of 27 letters written to MPs lobbying over matters close to his heart. 

Topics included, according to testimony by law professor Adam Tomkins, “the perceived merits of holistic medicine, the perceived evils of genetically modified crops, the apparent dangers of making cuts in the armed forces, his strong dislike of certain forms of architecture”.

The merits of his opinions are not the issue. The issue is that he is attempting to influence politicians – something which, as monarch, he will be prohibited from doing – and does not want the British public to know this.

After seven years of legal actions, a tribunal of three British judges ruled a month ago that the letters should be released. This decision was vetoed by the Attorney-General who effectively confirmed the letters were damaging by saying their release would “have undermined (the Prince’s) position of political neutrality”.

In other words, he is not politically neutral. There is now – after pressure from the Royal Family – an absolute block on any future publication.

Why should we care about Charles’ efforts to stop British people knowing what he thinks? The British tolerate the institution of monarchy in part as a money-spinning tourist attraction. For us, it doesn’t even have that benefit.

Constitutionally, he will be New Zealand’s head of state when he ascends the throne. But do we want as head of state – however notional the role – someone who not only flouts constitutional convention by attempting to influence politicians but also tries to conceal the fact when attempts are made to bring it to light?

All very good points. Our Head of State should be politically neutral – and be a New Zealander.

The Republican Movement has a “It’s time for change” campaign to coincide with the visit.

If we do not change, then one day Charles will be King of New Zealand.

Adam Bennett at NZ Herald reports:

Northland-based Labour list MP Shane Jones has again hit out at the Green Party for opposing development of the regions’s resources, including oil and gas, which he says could help reduce spiralling Maori unemployment.

Energy and Resources Minister Phil Heatley this week announced which areas, including a large section of seabed off Ninety Mile Beach, would be opened up for oil and gas exploration next year. He said the Government had begun consultation with relevant iwi.

Green Party oceans spokesman Gareth Hughes said the Government was “gambling with New Zealand’s economy” by allowing the exploration in deep water, “because if there is a leak there is no sure way to stop it”.

This is just exploration, not drilling. The Greens are against us even knowing what it down there.

But Mr Jones, who has clashed with the Greens before over the prospect of mining in Northland and also over the party’s criticism of the fishing industry, said Mr Hughes’ opposition was premature.

“Let the information be uncovered first. It may be that the area is commercially barren, not unlike the minds conceiving that Green rhetoric.”

Mr Jones did not think the prospects of any significant oil and gas industry in Northland in the short term were high, “but in the absence of information you can guarantee you’ll never see it up there”.

“Let these decisions be made in a rational fashion, not this kneejerk emotionalism that one comes to expect from the Green Party.”

Decisions made on science, not kneejerk emotionalism? That would be a good thing.

If only Shane was speaking for Labour. Alas. Spokesperson Moana Mackey tweeted:

No it’s his personal view

Labour needs a couple more MPs who are pro-economy and pro-science.

The Herald reports:

Mr Fieldsend contacted the Herald to tell his side of the story after ACC used his comment about shooting as an example in a story published on Monday about the rise in threats received by the organisation.

Mr Fieldsend said he told a call centre worker the case manager was “lucky I didn’t have a gun because I would have shot her” when he called to complain about her upsetting behaviour an hour after their first review hearing in August last year.

“I don’t have a gun on me, I’m not that sort of person, I don’t have a criminal record or anything,” he said.

He doesn’t sound contrite at all. he claims he is not the sort of person who would actually shoot someone – he is just the sort of person who would tell someone’s colleague he would have shot them if he had a gun.

How would the ACC staffer know about whether he has a  criminal record?

A fascinating article by Audrey Young:

He is a little regretful at the latest couple of incidents over the shirt and the Beckham conversation.

“From time to time I might push a little bit too hard and I have got to be a bit more careful.”

But essentially he sees it as the media’s problem, not one that comes between him and the public. He hasn’t changed the way he behaves.

“These stories have always been there from time to time. Actually they are an example of where the media is generally out of sync with the public.

“The public talk colloquially, the public’s grammar’s not perfect. They kid around and I don’t think they overly mark me down for that. They just see me as a normal guy.

“I came in as John Key and I’m going out as John Key. The media or our opponents will try and portray that as being too casual. I don’t agree with that.

“You are not going to change me and if you do, it will look like a fraud, it will be a fraud.”

I’m glad he has said that. I’d hate to see Key become one of those politicians who says nothing at all, because it may offend someone. He has an amazing candour about him, and a great sense of humour. Yes sometimes he gets it wrong, but I see his style as a strength – but more importantly it is who he is.

The defensiveness continues with his challenge to show him an example of where he had been required to be incredibly serious and wasn’t.

“I always am. Frankly, I work 19 hours a day pretty much and six-and-a-half days a week. Within those days is a huge range of things I’m doing, a massive range.”

With 30-odd speeches a week and countless briefings on a huge range of subjects, it was little wonder he did not recall everything that was said.

Labour is trying to portray his style as meaning he is detached or lazy. Simply not the case.

He is referring to the fiasco over the spy agency GCSB which told him in September its surveillance of internet mogul Kim Dotcom in January had been unlawful and how it was unable to give him quick answers in preparation for Question Time about the number of briefings he had had.

“I ended up having to do a bit of bloody forensic analysis myself so I called (GCSB boss Ian Fletcher) in later on and said: ‘look, I just don’t think you guys have served me well. I’ve ended having to do all this work and you guys should be able to provide me with those answers’.

“And I said: ‘you’ve really let me down and you need to go away and think about it’.”

He said that conversation was what caused the GCSB to “rip the place apart” and that is when they found a note about a briefing he had had in February.

So it was Key’s ripping the GCSB a new arsehole, that led to them finding the powerpoint presentation.

Key’s relaxed character translates to his leadership style as Prime Minister – it is not hands-on in the way that characterised his predecessor, Helen Clark.

He is said to give his ministers a lot of freedom and is very relaxed with them, right up to the time he needs to be ruthless, as one insider put it.

Like a soft parent, he doesn’t do a lot of reprimanding of ministers, so that when it does happen, it carries a lot of force.

I’ve heard from MPs and Ministers what it is like, when the Prime Minister is not happy with you. You don’t want a repeat experience.

Key is emphatic that he will fight the 2014 election, dismissing claims by commentators that he has somehow lost his mojo. But that doesn’t stop him talking about legacies.

“I want to leave New Zealand in better shape than I found it. I know the job of Prime Minister is not forever and I’m going to do the best I can every day to make that difference.

There is no question he will contest 2014. I wouldn’t guarantee 2017 if he wins in 2014 – and that isn’t a bad thing. Eight years would be a reasonably good tenure.

So if he got hit by a bus this afternoon, who would replace him?

“I had historically always thought it would be Simon Power, but he obviously left.”

He agrees that Bill English, Steven Joyce and Judith Collins would put up their hands – “at least”.

And this is what I like about Key. What other Prime Minister would openly agree about possible contenders to replace him? Almost all other occupants of that office would say something along the lines of “I don’t speculate on hypotheticals”  or “It won’t be my decision” or “It is unhelpful for me to talk on this issue”.

But he reserves his highest praise for Greens co-leader Russel Norman, not Labour’s David Shearer.

“If you want my view, the politician of the year will be Russel Norman by quite some margin.

Heh, mischief making – but also true.

Key says there are three types of issues he has to deal with.

The first are those that just happen on your watch, such as the Christchurch earthquake or the application by a Chinese company to buy Crafar farms.

And for all the opposition to the approval, he is convinced Labour would have dealt with Crafar the same way if it happened under its watch.

“Shearer wouldn’t have been putting up a member’s bill to ban overseas sales (or farmland) or putting a flag on a bloody farm.”

The second type of issues are part of the Government’s agenda, such as the sale of up to 49 per cent of Mighty River Power.

Despite the opposition, National campaigned on it and Key believes National would do itself more damage if it did nothing.

“It’s better to do what you think is right and hopefully (voters) like the prescription. But you can’t be scared of your own shadow.”

The last type of issues are “your own self-inflicted mistakes”.

“Yep, we have a few of those but given the huge number of issues we deal with every day, week after week, month after month, do we get that right more often than we get it wrong?

That’s a useful categorization of the three sort of issues. With respect to the last type, I would make the point that you want greater than a 50/50 “pass” rate. I’m not saying Key is implying 50% is adequate. I agree you will never have no self-inflicted mistakes. The challenge is whether a Minister who makes them learns from their mistakes – or keeps on making them.

A very insightful piece by Audrey Young.

The Bail Amendment Bill has just been reported back from select committee. I am a supporter of it, and think it will save lives. Akshay Chand should never have been able to get bail, and sadly he killed Christie Marceau.

With bail it is a balancing act. If everyone accused of a crime was refused bail, then many innocent people would be spending lengthy spells in jail. But likewise if all those arrested automatically got bail, then the number of people killed, raped and beaten by those on bail would be significant. Once you know you are facing a trial and eventual jail on some charges, some are motivated to offend even more as it may not lead to an increased sentence.

In the last five years 46 people on bail were found guilty of murder or homicide.

Now what is the main provision of the bill:

• remove the strong presumption in favour of bail for defendants aged 17 to 19, if they had previously been sentenced to imprisonment.

This is well overdue. Half of young defendants who had served a previous prison sentence (think what you must have done to have already had a prison sentence by this age) go on to offend while on bail. Removing the strong presumption to bail means they can be judged on the merits on the risk.

But read the minority reports from Labour and Greens.

I can’t even work out what Labour’s position is on this key provision. They repeat what the provision does, but do not state their view on it. As it is a minority report, I think they are against it – but seriously who could tell? I guess they are trying to have it both ways.

The Greens are more clear cut. They support keeping the current law which sees 18 and 19 year olds released on bail despite extensive previous offending and a 50% reoffending rate while on bail.

Vernon Small writes in Dom Post:

Just short of his first anniversary as leader, David Shearer delivers his first speech to a Labour Party conference next week.

But as storm clouds gather over his leadership, it is shaping as possibly his last.

Members, activists and unionists contacted for this article said over and over that the speech at the Ellerslie racecourse conference centre next Sunday was crucial to Shearer’s grip on the leadership.

His first priority is to convince the party rank and file that “he has what it takes” – and those grassroots members will be looking for a hard-hitting address taking the fight to the Government while outlining a clear and personal view of where he intends to take Labour.

Unless he can carry that off, the groundswell in the party is set to break into the open with a push for a leadership challenge, most likely when the caucus meets in February – or even sooner, according to one business lobbyist in close contact with the party.

That’s a big call.

Personally I think Shearer will do fine at the conference, which will subdue the talk. I’ve seen him do speeches, and he has few problems there. His weakness is press conferences and interviews, which are a very different challenge.

According to a senior MP, who backed Shearer in last year’s leadership vote, most inside Labour are withholding judgment until they see his performance at the conference.

But there is wide agreement Labour and Shearer will not be able to avoid a focus on his performance, not least because key business at the Ellerslie conference centre includes a revamp of party rules.

At issue is how candidates are chosen and ranked on the list – a potentiality explosive matter inside the party given the power of its union and sector group blocks.

But delegates will also vote to give unions and members a say in leadership votes. That has previously been the sole preserve of MPs in the caucus.

The draft proposal would require a two-thirds majority of MPs to trigger a leadership vote – a move that would be seen as entrenching the leader between general elections.

A rival option – to put the leadership to a vote if 40 per cent of MPs call for it – is seen as too destabilising and the party is likely to settle on the compromise of a 55 per cent threshold.

40% is too low and 67% too high, so the compromise looks sensible.

If the new rules get put in place, and then in February 55% of caucus say they want a change, we’ll see Cunliffe v Robertson for the leadership. Possible Little could stand also – not so much to win – but to become a powerbroker.

The members seem to most support Cunliffe, the unions Little and the caucus Robertson. The union support can be delivered pretty much as a bloc, so Cunliffe and Robertson will need to make some pledges to the unions to gain the leadership.

Matthew Hooton writes in NBR:

Labour’s New Zealand Council will soon consider John Tamihere’s application to re-join the party.

Despite Mr Tamihere being encouraged by current leader David Shearer, who believes he would make a fine social development minister, the council faces a terrible dilemma.

Either choice will define Labour for a generation – neither in a good way.

But will the Council overlook:

On the other, Mr Tamihere has offended all the party’s factions.

The Women’s Council may have forgiven him calling them “frontbums” and for slamming Helen Clark.

But, since leaving parliament, Mr Tamihere has continued to be an outspoken critic of identity politics, including feminism.

A year ago, he attacked David Cunliffe for selecting Nanaia Mahuta as his running mate: ”The only thing she’s lacking is a limp.  Then he would have got the disabled vote too.”

Choosing her made Mr Cunliffe “smarmy,” he said.

His relations with Rainbow Labour are no better, having called gay people a health hazard to the rest of the community.

Nor is Mr Tamihere a friend of the unions.

Then, in February, he backed Act’s charter schools policy, planning to set one up.

“All we’re looking at doing,” he said, “is bringing the best practice from Remuera to the west.”

Mr Tamihere has also lost friends in Labour’s caucus.

A month ago, he criticised them on national TV: “The front bench is not firing, across the whole line, whether it’s health, welfare or education.”

I think it would be great for Labour to have a member and MP who supports charter schools!

Nevertheless, rejecting Mr Tamihere is also fraught with risk.

There is almost no precedent for a rejection, and certainly none involving a person of his calibre.

A judicial review would be certain and no doubt Mr Tamihere is already operating with the benefit of legal counsel.

Mr Shearer’s encouragement of Mr Tamihere’s return would surely be brought up in court and it would be argued the council, dominated by unionists and Rainbow Labour, was not an impartial jury.

If Shearer has encouraged him to join, and the Council declines, I think it would show Robertson is in control of the party.

Even worse for Labour are the political risks.

Mr Tamihere and Winston Peters are again on good terms.

If Mr Tamihere joined NZ First, the two could hit the road in the provinces and West Auckland portraying Labour as controlled by feminists and gays with no residual interest in good old working-class kiwi blokes.

That would undoubtedly transfer 5% of the vote from Labour to NZ First, putting the former down to 25% and the latter well above 10%.

Mr Tamihere may dream of being social development minister in a Labour-led government.

But, if his membership application fails, it’s not impossible to imagine him as social development minister in a National/NZ First coalition.

An intriguing thought. However I seem to recall there is some bad blood at the family level between Tamihere and Peters.

An interesting analysis on Daily Kos of the most accurate individual US pollsters. Fordham’s Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy stated:

For all the ridicule directed towards pre-election polling, the final poll estimates were not far off from the actual nationwide vote shares for the two candidates,” said Dr. Panagopoulos.

On average, pre-election polls from 28 public polling organizations projected a Democratic advantage of 1.07 percentage points on Election Day, which is only about 0.63 percentage points away from the current estimate of a 1.7-point Obama margin in the national popular vote. […]

And the list of pollsters:

1. PPP (D)
1. Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP
3. YouGov
4. Ipsos/Reuters
5. Purple Strategies
6. NBC/WSJ
6. CBS/NYT
6. YouGov/Economist
9. UPI/CVOTER
10. IBD/TIPP
11. Angus-Reid
12. ABC/WP
13. Pew Research
13. Hartford Courant/UConn
15. CNN/ORC
15. Monmouth/SurveyUSA
15. Politico/GWU/Battleground
15. FOX News
15. Washington Times/JZ Analytics
15. Newsmax/JZ Analytics
15. American Research Group
15. Gravis Marketing
23. Democracy Corps (D)
24. Rasmussen
24. Gallup
26. NPR
27. National Journal
28. AP/GfK

But the commentary is very interesting:

Ha ha, look at Gallup way at the bottom, even below Rasmussen. But let’s focus on the positive—PPP took top honors with a two-way tie for first place. Both their tracking poll and their weekly poll for Daily Kos/SEIU ended up with the same 50-48 margin. The final result? Obama 51.1-48.9—a 2.2-point margin.

PPP is a robo-pollster that doesn’t call cell phones, which was supposedly a cardinal sin—particularly when their numbers weren’t looking so hot for Obama post-first debate. But there’s a reason we’ve worked with them the past year—because their track record is the best in the biz.

The cell phone issue is somewhat overhyped.

One last point—YouGov and Ipsos/Reuters were both internet polls. YouGov has now been pretty good two elections in a row. With cell phones becoming a bigger and bigger issue every year, it seems clear that the internet is the future of polling. I’m glad someone is figuring it out.

Internet panels are a big part of the future – if you do it right. If you do it wrong, they can be self-selecting junk.

But let’s be clear, you have to go down to number six on the list to get to someone who called cell phones. And Gallup called 50 percent cell phones and they were a laughingstock this cycle.

The final Gallup poll had Romney 48% and Obama 47%. Obama got 50.5% and Romney 48% so they were 3.5% out on Obama – just outside the margin of error for a 1,000 sample.

A profile by Guyon Espiner on David Cunliffe has this photo.

A reader sent in the above link, along with this photo below:

Heh.

Isaac Davidson at NZ Herald reports:

The final reading of a bill which amended the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) drew impassioned speeches from MPs, in particular Green Party climate change spokesman Kennedy Graham.

Dr Graham levelled mock criminal charges at the Prime Minister and Minister for Climate Change.

“I charge the leaders of this Government with the moral crime of ecocide. I trust that in due course that they stand accountable before the children of this world, the children of John Key, the grandchildren of Tim Groser and mine.”

He went further: “The leaders of this government … are committing us to purgatory and thence to hell. Purgatory is the next decade, and hell the decade after.”

What insane hysteria. Purgatory and hell?

China’s daily growth in greenhouse gas emissions is greater than the total emissions put out by New Zealand.

I actually think agriculture should start to come into the ETS, but Kennedy Graham does his cause no help at all with such hysterical blather.

Jared Savage at NZ Herald reports:

Immigration officials questioned the decision to grant a wealthy businessman citizenship while he was under investigation by three government agencies, emails reveal.

Labour MP Shane Jones, then a Cabinet minister, awarded citizenship to Yang Liu against the advice of a senior investigator at the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA). …

Emails obtained under the Official Information Act reveal a senior Immigration NZ investigator wrote to Mr Ross after learning of the decision.

Russell Ogilvy asked whether Mr Ross recommended that citizenship be declined and whether he had told Mr Jones “to speak with his own department regarding the decision”.

Mr Jones was the Acting Internal Affairs Minister in this case but also the Associate Immigration Minister.

“The minister was advised of both the pending police and INZ investigations,” responded Mr Ross.

Yet not only granted citizenship, but approved the special ceremony:

The emails also reveal that Mr Jones granted Mr Liu an urgent private ceremony at the request of Labour MP Dover Samuels, despite the advice of another DIA official that he did not meet the criteria.

Criteria only apply to people who are not friends of the Labour Party.

Stats NZ reports bad employment news:

• Employment drops 8,000 in the quarter
• Unemployment up 13,000 to 175,000

If employment data doesn’t improve in the next two years, the Government will struggle politically – to say the least.

Stuff reports:

British actor Clive Dunn, best known as a bumbling old butcher in the popular World War II sitcom Dad’s Army, has died.

Dunn passed away on Tuesday (local time), his agent Peter Charlesworth said, adding that he believed the actor died in Portugal where he has lived for many years. He was 92.

As Lance-Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army – a hit television series in the 1960s and 1970s about a group of local volunteer members of the Home Guard – Dunn was famous for catchphrases such as “Don’t panic!” and “They don’t like it up ’em.”

I was surprised he was still alive. His character looked old when Dad’s Army was on TV, but in reality he was only in his late 40s!

I didn’t realise Dad’s Army ran for nine years. There were 80 episodes in total.

His character was my favourite one on the show.

Personally I’m not sure MPs should have to swear an oath at all. The oath is just a piece of formality. But if we are to keep an oath, then it should be as non controversial as possible – something like uphold the law, do your duty and serve the people of New Zealand.

So I wasn’t a big fan of changing the law so MPs could include a reference to the Treaty of Waitangi in their oaths. That creates multiple oaths. If MPs want to mention the Treaty of Waitangi they can do so in their speeches.

NBR reports:

What some see as another bid by the Maori party to take New Zealand down the road of racial separatism has been rebuffed in Parliament.

Te Ururoa Flavell’s private member’s bill allowing people to pledge to uphold the Treaty of Waitangi when making legal oaths was thrown out by 69 votes to 52.

National, ACT, United Future and New Zealand First all voted against it.

So Labour, Greens, Maori and Mana voted for it.

NBR reports:

Truth’s story quotes unnamed sources close to the King family claiming the Dom Post contacted Mr King on Friday, November 2, allegedly informing him they were running a front-page story based on an accusation made by one of their snitches in jail.

The story has information which could only have come (directly or indirectly) from family members.

Dominion Post editor Bernadette Courtney told NBR ONLINE the Truth story was wrong and she had no further comment.

That’s the sort of response you normally get from politicians, not media. It is called a non denial, denial.

Saying a story is wrong, and saying nothing else, means that one word could be wrong. It is not saying that the substantive allegation is incorrect. A proper denial would be “There was no investigation and there was no contact with Mr King or his family that week”. Of course you can only make a denial like that, if you are sure that no one can not prove otherwise.

Also rare to have an Editor to refuse to comment beyond a non denial, denial. If you worked for Fairfax and were doing a story on the ethical conduct of a business, would you accept such a statement from the CEO and regard it as the end of the matter?

One of the best signs it is late Spring around here.

Click for larger, higher res image

Then it’s back to the world of coffee and alligators…