Have a look of this five minute video which describes and shows clearly how bad the US Budget deficit is. Basically it is impossible to close, which means I’d say the US will have to print money in a big way to cover the debt, which will of course mean the NZ dollar will keep rising relative to the US. We can do nothing to stop this, unless we have hundreds of billions to waste on trying to stop it happening.

The presenter tells us how the spending is $3.8 trillion for 2013, the income $2.5 trillion and deficit $1.3 trillion.

Now expenditure is in three categories. Mandatory entitlements, interest on debt and US Federal Government discretionary spending. The mandatory entitlements are $2.2 trillion and interest is $0.2 trillion which is (rounded) $2.5 trillion. So the federal income is just enough to meet mandatory entitlements (Social Security, Medicare etc) and debt interest.

Now of the $1.3 trillion “discretionary”, $0.9 trillion is on security such as the military.

So to balance the Budget, there are three options:

1. Increase taxes by 50%
2. Abolish the Federal Government, including the military
3. Massively cutback entitlements on social security and Medicare which would probably lead to Greece style riots

It would be nice to think if you get the economy growing, then that will increase tax revenues enough. But the spending has been increasing far faster than the economy.

The presenter concludes it is a matter of when, not if, the US gets downgraded again.

An interesting index called the Legatum Prosperity Index places NZ as 5th out of 142 countries. The breakdown by sub-factor is:

• Economy 27th
• Entrepreneurship 13th
• Governance 2nd
• Education 1st
• Health 20th
• Safety 13th
• Personal Freedom 2nd
• Social Capital 4th

So 5th overall is good. Norway is top and Finland 7th.

John Armstrong writes:

In its most damning criticism, the Commission says Wilkinson’s department should have prohibited Pike from operating the mine until its health and safety systems were adequate.

Given the mine opened in November 2008 – just a month before Wilkinson became Minister of Labour – there would have been demands for her resignation as her department’s woeful performance happened on her watch.

Certainly the mine did operate during her watch, and she has resigned. But the interesting thing is that Armstrong has reported that the Department of Labour should never ever have allowed Pike River to start operating.

The Minister, when it did start operating, was Trevor Mallard – not Kate Wilkinson.

Now I say this not do do a blame game. I don’t think either Mallard or Wilkinson are to blame. And I think David Shearer’s statement that Labour accepts responsibility for their period in Government was the right thing to do, as was the PM’s apology for the failings of the current Government for the lack of oversight. But it is an important fact that the report finds the mine should never have been allowed to open.

Where this goes now is in two directions.

The first is the Government’s formal response to the recommendations.

The second is the prosecutions of Pike River Coal and certain former managers. The findings of the Royal Commission are incredibly damning with regard to them.

Just heard that Kate Wilkinson has resigned as Minister of Labour as the “right and honourable thing to do” as it happened on her watch. Indeed an honourable call.

The report is here, NBR has a good summary:

• Setting up a new crown agency solely focused on health and safety. It would have an executive board accountable to a minister. It would be responsible for administering health and safety in line with strategies agreed with the responsible minister and should provide policy advice to the minister.
• Setting up an effective regulatory framework for underground coal mining. This would include establishing an expert task force to carry out the work. Its members would include health and safety experts and industry, regulator and worker health and safety representatives, supported by specialist technical experts.
• A change in the crown minerals regime to ensure health and safety is an integral part of permit allocation and monitoring.
• A review of the statutory responsibilities of directors for health and safety in the workplace to better reflect their governance responsibilities.
• The health and safety regulator should issue an approved code of practice to guide directors on how good governance practices can be used to manage health and safety risks.
• The health and safety regulator should issue an approved code of practice to guide managers on health and safety risks, drawing on both their legal responsibilities and best practice.
• An extension of the current regulations imposing general health and safety duties on the statutory mine manager to include detailed responsibilities for overseeing critical features of the company’s health and safety management systems.
• Worker participation in health and safety in underground coal mines should be improved through legislative and administrative changes.
• The regulator should supervise the granting of mining qualifications to mining managers and workers.
• Urgent attention needs to go on emergency management in underground coal mines. Operators should be required to have a current and comprehensive emergency management plan which is audited and tested regularly.
• An urgent review of the implementation of the coordinated incident management system in underground coal mine emergencies.
• Legislative support for the activities of the New Zealand Mines Rescue Service. The adequacy and fairness of the current levies imposed on the mines to fund the services also need to be reviewed.
• Operators of underground coal mines should be required to have modern equipment and facilities. This includes facilities suitable for self-rescue by workers during an emergency.

The Government has indicated it intends to implement at least most, if not all, of the recommendations but a formal response will take some time.

The Pike River explosion was deemed preventable, and we must make sure such a terrible accident does not occur again.

The Electoral Commission has made its final report reviewing MMP. There is little change from the draft proposals.

The key recommendations are:

1. The one electorate seat threshold for the allocation of list seats should be abolished. I agree, as I think it promotes tactical voting rather than voting for the best candidate. I do not though it would make Parliament less proportional in some cases.
2. The party vote threshold should be lowered from 5% to 4%. I also agree. I would not go lower, but I think the original Royal Commission had it right at 4%. it also reduces tactical voting by having a lower threshold.
3. There should be a statutory requirement for the Electoral Commission to review the operation of the 4% party vote threshold and report to the Minister of Justice for presentation to Parliament after three general elections. I disagree. Let’s not keep tinkering with it.
4. If the one electorate seat threshold is abolished, the provision for overhang seats should be abolished. I agree.
5. Consideration should be given to fixing the ratio of electorate seats to list seats at 60:40 to help maintain the diversity of representation and proportionality in Parliament obtained through the list seats. I agree – this means that over time Parliament may grow beyond 120 seats due to population growth in the North Island.
6. Political parties should continue to have responsibility for the selection and ranking of candidates on their party lists. I agree, but I think there should be greater obligations on parties to involve members.
7. Political parties should be required to give a public assurance by statutory declaration that they have complied with their rules in selecting and ranking their list candidates. A meaningless feel-good gesture. Better to have some requirements they must meet.
8. In any dispute relating to the selection of candidates for election as members of Parliament, the version of the party’s rules that should be applied is that supplied to the Commission under section 71B as at the time the dispute arose. Agree.
9. Candidates should continue to be able to stand both for an electorate seat and be on a party list at a general election. Disagree. I think this turns List MPs into shadow electorate MPs. I would treat the jobs as quite different. Also dual candidacy encourages tactical voting rather than simply voting for the best party and the best candidate.
10. List MPs should continue to be able to contest by-elections. I disagree, as I think it means the outcome of by-elections are people get elected who are not on the ballot paper, and it encourages tactical voting.

The Government is going to consult with all political parties on the recommendations. I predict they will all continue to advocate what is in their self-interest, rather than what is in the interest of the best electoral system. That is because all parties believe the best electoral system is one that gets them into Government!

You know, having now seen the top, the description isn’t totally inaccurate 🙂

Stuff reports:

Key flirted with controversy again that day on the Farming Show radio programme when he slagged off host Jamie Mackay for wearing red.

He said the host would not do well in a charity golf event that afternoon because he was wearing ”that gay red top”.

Key had made the remark after offering to donate up to $10,000 for a charity golf tournament if Mackay shot a hole-in-one.

“You’re going to be nervous when you line up in those par threes now, aren’t you. You’re munted mate, you’re never going to make it. You’ve got that gay red top on there.”

Of course there is outrage. But I think the comments from two gay groups were fairly reasonable:

Rainbow Wellington chairman Tony Simpson said Key may have used the word ‘gay’ in the broader sense, but it was a peculiar choice.

“We won’t get really far as a society if we start walking around calling people names. Hardly seems productive activity.”

Gay Auckland Business Association chief executive Gresham Bradley said he wasn’t offended by Key’s comment, but that it could be taken the wrong way.

“Given the way ‘gay’ is used today as a derogatory remark I’m a bit surprised he would say that,” Bradley said.

“I personally don’t take offence from this coming from John Key, who I know to be a very supportive person of the gay community.

‘‘[However] I think he may wish to consider the wisdom of using that word as people could easily misinterpret his meaning.”

I agree with Gresham. People can misinterpret, especially when it is the PM, so he should avoid the phrase. But can we have less of the hysteria sweeping certain people about it.

Not that I get a vote, but for the record if I was in the US, I would be voting Romney. Before I explain why, I want to touch on the record of both men.

Barack Obama

As President Barack Obama has performed pretty much as well as I expected – he had a total of two years experience as a junior senator before he started campaigning for President. It is no surprise at all with such a lack of experience, that he has failed to meet expectations of so many of his supporters.

That lack of experience is one of the reasons I said I preferred Hillary Clinton over Obama in 2008, and I note polls show she would win easily against Romney.

Now this isn’t to say that Obama has been a bad President, more somewhat lackluster.

On foreign policy, I think Obama has been fine. He saw the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq successfully (albeit on the timetable agreed to by Bush).  The surge in Afghanistan was the right strategy, and while (like Iraq) the country they will leave behind is imperfect – it will be a lot better than it was.

Obama’s intervention in Libya to protect civilians with a no fly zone, basically worked. Of course the later death of his Ambassador is a potential scandal that may claim some scalps.

And of course one has to give him credit for Osama bin Laden’s death. It was a high risk mission that could have destroyed his presidency if it ended up a shambles.  He trusted his military commanders and the special forces and his confidence was rewarded.

His decision to use a drone to kill to Anwar al-Aulaqi, a US citizen in Yemen, was controversial. It is the first ever extrajudicial execution of a US citizen ordered by a President.

With domestic policy the silly don’t ask, don’t tell policy ended and the world didn’t end. But he had done almost nothing sensible on immigration reform, and the health reform was in fact little more than requiring poor people to have private health insurance. he doesn’t have a very strong domestic legacy.  One many issues he has lets the polls decide for him. In 1996 he was for same-sex marriage. In 1998 he was undecided. In 2004 he was against same-sex marriage. In 2012 he was back to being for same-sex marriage.

On the economy, this is where he has failed, and in fact his policies are a danger to the US and world economy. The US deficit and debt must be reined in, and Obama’s policies of massively increasing spending are reckless. The Budget Control Act merely slows the rate of growth of debt, not reverses it. Federal spending is projected to continue to grow faster than the economy grows, and this is impossible to maintain. The US public debt grew by $1.9 trillion (think $6,300 per capita) in 2009 and $1.7 trillion in 2010.

So overall I think Obama has done pretty well on foreign policy, been average at best on domestic policy and bad on economic policy.

Mitt Romney

I thought Mitt Romney was a good Governor of Massachusetts, and he has a successful private sector career.

As Governor he passed health care legislation (not that different to Obama care), eliminated the state budget deficit and was pro-choice. Worth noting Romney got elected Governor by a 5% margin, despite every poll showing him behind the Democrat candidate.

As Governor he made many non-partisan appointments, and he also reduced the size of the state bureaucracy. He closed tax loopholes also. On the education side he funded the top 25% of high school students with tuition-free scholarships to public universities or colleges.

So I liked Governor Romney. Candidate Romney was a different case. He flip-flopped on so many issues.

He want from getting rid of ethanol subsidies, to supporting them in 2008 and then in 2012 against them. He went from supporting a cap and trade on carbon emissions to opposing them. he introduced individual health mandates, and then attacked Obama for them.

He did not support the Bush tax cuts, but now campaigns to keep them. His position on abortion has changed radically, as it has on stem cells.

For these reasons Romney was not my preferred candidate for the Republicans in 2008 or 2012. All politicians modify their positions to some degree. Obama certainly has. But Romney’s changes have been so many and dramatic you wonder what he really believes.

Obama v Romney

As I said I don’t think Obama has been a terrible President. For someone with just two years in the Senate (before near full-time campaigning) he has performed as about the level you’d expect. He’s made some good calls in quite a few areas. He’s failed to show leadership in quite a few also.

However his fiscal policy is dangerous and wrong. It is vital the US gets onto a path out of deficit. The deficit is massive. To break things down the US spends $121,000 a second. Of that $121,000 it borrows $52,000. This is so far living beyond the means, it is not funny.

Romney is a flip-flopper, and has said some silly things. but he does have a good proven record on financial management – both in government and the private sector. For that reason I would vote Romney. I seriously worry about the US economy with another four years of massive and growing deficits.

If Obama does get re-elected, his second-term performance on the economy will I believe form a large part of how history judges him.

Saw this ODT article on my old Otago hostel:

The University of Otago will carry out earthquake strengthening at Carrington College over the summer holidays as it awaits the results of further assessments on some of its buildings.

The work at the residential hall Carrington College is part of a $50 million earthquake-strengthening programme unveiled by the university earlier this year.

At the time, Otago University chief operating officer John Patrick said it was hoped to complete strengthening work by 2019. After the first round of building assessments, only the Scott building – at between 25% and 30% of new building standard (NBS) for earthquake strength – was found to be earthquake prone.

Other buildings assessed in the round including the School of Medicine’s Lindo Fergusson building and Scott building, the arts building and the clocktower buildings were found to be less than the university’s draft target of 67% of NBS for its older buildings – meaning that work would have to be carried out to bring them up to that standard.

Since then, Linton House at Carrington College had been found to be earthquake prone – at 28% of NBS – in July.

Hmmn Linton House is the house I was in. Glad there were no earthquakes when I was at Carrington!

Mind you I may have contributed  to the lack of strength in Linton House. I heard about how the smallest room in the hostel (Linton 2) had a record of managing to get 40 or so people in it despite being something like 2.5m by 1.5m in size. It was called the closet.

I am competitive and like breaking records so tried to beat that one weekend. By having girls go on the shoulders of guys, we managed to fit 78 people into the room, which was truly impressive. We also had an ODT photographer perched on the top of the closet who managed to get a nice aerial shot of us in the room.

The photo appeared on the ODT front page, and not surprisingly was seen by the Warden who summoned me and went on at some length over breach of fire regulations, damage to the ceiling of the dining room (beneath us). My meetings with the Warden on such issues were semi-regular.

An earthquake during the 78 people in the room would have been very unfortunate. I suspect we may have made world news though, and possibly won a Darwin Award 🙂

Not a headline I thought I’d write often. But two items worth a read.

Queen of Thorns has done her own “Shearer Says” template:

This week I’ve been in [ insert location].  The people there are [hard-working/real] New Zealanders with a great sense of [fairness/justice/community/family].  But they’re [having a hard time/losing their jobs/worried] because of [insert recent National policy implementation].

This isn’t [good/just/fair/helpful].  This is [bad/stressful/unjust/unconstructive].  Labour will stand by the people of [insert location] and help them through the tough times ahead.

National was elected on a promise to [insert promise here].  Instead they’ve [insert policy here].  This isn’t [the way forward/the right thing for New Zealand/what they promised].  As the Leader of the Labour Party, I will do something to fix this [optional:  and will shortly be announcing our policy in this area].

Labour knows that [jobs/children/the environment/the economy/the heartland/our communities] are important to New Zealanders.  Under National, [insert previous] is [suffering/in decline/living below the breadline/spiralling out of control/neglected] while they [insert policy implementation].  As Leader of the Labour Party I’m committed to fixing this [optional:  and will shortly be announcing our policy in this area].

Warm regards,
David Shearer
Leader of the Labour Party

The commenters seem to feel that QOT version is better than the actual thing, and that she should be hired as a writer for Labour!

Michael Valley assesses the Labour front bench. He comments:

Comparing them to the winning Labour team in 1999 really hammers home how awful our guys today are. I pitted each of the frontbenchers today against their 1999 equivalents. Out of the 9, only 2 of the 2012 crop come out on top. And only 3 (Parker, Cunliffe, Cosgrove) have done the job they’ve been put there to do.

Some of his assessments:

Leader
David Shearer (2012) vs Helen Clark (1999)

No contest. Whatsoever. None. Clark looked like the next Prime Minister. Shearer’s minders wouldn’t even let him front on Q+A this morning for fear he would be shown up by Norman.

Deputy Leader
Grant Robertson (2012) vs Michael Cullen (1999)

Grant is better than his leader. Without a doubt. But he just doesn’t shape up compared to Cullen. While Cullen gave excellent support to Clark, oversaw a brilliant house strategy, and kept on top of every portfolio he was ever given (finance, tertiary education, attorney-general, acc etc.) Robertson has failed to fire. His strategic genius has put Labour in the shit they’re in now, and Labour are virtually invisible in the Tertiary Education and Environment space. …

Social Welfare

Jacinda Ardern (2012) vs Steve Maharey (1999)

Maharey was a brilliant advocate and really held the government to account. Remember Christine Rankin hiring a plane for WINZ executives to visit an exclusive Taupo resort? Maharey uncovered it. Ardern on the other hand has been invisible, even after being gifted the MSD privacy uncovered by Keith Ng the Greens outshone Labour. She does not deserve the portfolio nor being put at number 4. New Zealand’s most vulnerable deserve better. …

Health

Maryan Street (2012) vs Annette King (1999)

While now past her use-by date, 1999 Annette was a brilliant opposition politician. While no one even knows who Maryan Street is, in 1999 Annette was ripping Wyatt Creech to shreds. Barely a day went by without health making the news and Annette always stood strong against good healthcare for only the rich. Street on the other hand is awful. She must go.

Education
Nanaia Mahuta (2012) vs Trevor Mallard (1999)

Trevor used to be good. Bloody good. This really is no contest. Nanaia hasn’t performed. Putting out a press release after getting hints she might be dumped doesn’t cut it. She ought to be slaying Parata. To be fair she’d probably beat 2012 Mallard. But how hard is that? Yesterday, Mallard thought it would be a good idea for a senior Labour MP, him, to publicly attack the head of Treasury after he made comments widely welcomed as open-minded and turning away from dry neoliberalism. At least Nanaia keeps her mouth shut rather than putting her foot in it.

It’s going to be an interesting Labour Party conference in two weeks time.

The executive summary of the newsletter:

October saw six four polls published – two Roy Morgan polls a One News Colmar Brunton poll and a 3 News Reid Research Poll.

 The average of the public polls has National 13% ahead of Labour in October. In September it was 12%, so the gap has slightly increased. However the centre-right would have had just 56 out of 120 seats in October and the centre-left (including NZ First) 62 seats.

Australia now has the Labor Party leading or tied in the polls.

 In the United States all three “polls of polls” show Obama marginally ahead in the popular vote and with a more comfortable margin in the popular vote. Unless the Democrats have a poor turnout for the election (and the early voting has shown lower turnout for them, than previously), then Obama looks likely to be re-elected, but with a greatly reduced electoral college margin from 2008, when he won by 192 electoral college votes and 7.2% on the popular vote. The Republicans look likely to win at least 235 of the 435 House seats but only 46 or 47 of the 100 Senate seats.

Romney’s best chance of victory is to win Ohio (18 votes) and Colorado (9 votes). Pollster and RCP say that Obama is 2.6% to 2.8% ahead in Ohio and 0.3% to 0.6% in Colorado. It is fair to say that if Romney wins Ohio, he could well become President. But the gap behind Obama in that state has been persistent and fairly stable.

In the UK the Conservatives remain 10% behind Labour.

In Canada the Liberal Party have shot up 7% on the news that Justin Trudeau (son of Pierre) has announced his bid for the Liberal leadership. They are now tied for second place with the NDP.

The normal two tables are provided comparing the country direction sentiment and head of government approval sentiment for the five countries. New Zealand continues to top both.

We also carry details of polls in New Zealand on National’s achievements, Kim Dotcom, John Banks, the drinking age vote, plus the normal business and consumer confidence polls.

The full newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues go to http://listserver.actrix.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/polling-newsletter to subscribe yourself.

Despite having only landed back in New Zealand that afternoon, and having not slept for 30 hours, I trotted off to Downstage on Friday Night to see Paper Sky.

I found it one of the most creative plays I have seen. The plot is basically a love story between the reclusive writer and the young neighbour – but the strength of the play is how it is portrayed.

The main character, Henry, is portrayed by not just Emmet Skilton (Almighty Johnsons) but has three comic shades played by Veronica Brady, Alison Bruce, and Justin Haiu. They play out his inner turmoils to huge comic delight. It is hard to describe in mere words how well they do it, but it is a visual delight.

The other visual delight is the set. It is a movable feast, that is very much part of the play.  Rooms get made and unmade. Houses are formed. The physicality of the actors, the mobile set, the sound and the lighting all combine to a great performance.

Julia Croft plays the perky Louise, the next door neighbour who just will not be deterred. Henry’s alter-egos throw all sorts of barriers at her, and she (literally sometimes) climbs over them to try and bond with Henry. Croft was a natural in the role, and managed to portray a character who is both shy and unworldly but also determined.

There’s other great parts to the show – the paper creations, the sub-text around the book Henry is writing etc. Again, it is hard to capture these in writing because unlike many plays where the strength of the play is the dialogue – this play has relatively little dialogue – it is a 70 minute visual treat.

Theatreview has a glowing review also.

The SPCA list of shame:

• In Woodville, Palmerston North a husband and wife kept 161 cats and 87 dogs in extreme circumstances.
• In Wellsford two men shot 33 dogs and puppies one by one
• A 20 year old Kaikoura man who bludgeoned to death 25 seals, including newborns pups, with a metal pipe
• A 40 year old Waikino Farmer has been convicted over the ill treatment of dairy cows. The man was sentenced to 10 months home detention for breaking 115 of the 135 herd cow’s tails and hitting them on the hind legs with a steel pipe causing broken legs and swollen and infected joints in a number of the cows.
• In South Auckland an emaciated puppy was dumped in a box at the end of a drive way in Manurewa. The puppy was unable to stand or walk and the puppy’s bones could be seen through its skin.
• In Te Atatu, Auckland a 3 year old silver tabby was found outside an archery club with an arrow that had been fired into his head which went through the back of the head and out near its eye with the arrow still protruding when found.
• In Timaru a beloved family cat was found deliberately cut up outside her Waimataitai home. The 17 year old cat was found nearby a beheaded hedgehog. Police considered the case as being premeditated and sadistic.
• In Rotorua the owner of a Shar Pei cross threaded a climbing carabiner through the neck of the dog, a chain was clipped to this and then attached to the dog’s kennel. The owner also claimed he took it for walks like this.

I find pet abuse as inexplicable as child abuse – it goes against all the instincts that most human beings have.

You can donate to the SPCA here.

As I said at the weekend, Greg King was not just a top lawyer, but someone who could engage without rancour on important issues around our justice system. This is reflected by the fact that tributes have come from family members of murder victims where he represented the killer, and many others. I’ve gone through various sites to gather some of the tributes.

• Lesley Elliott said she was “shattered” by his death.  While the family might not have appreciated Mr King’s “tactics” during Weatherston’s trial, the lawyer earned their admiration and respect. His personal side was sympathetic, generous, passionate and humane, she said. She had attended justice forums at which Mr King was a lone voice on some issues. He was prepared to be at odds with others, but the “great thing about him” was an ability to listen and engage.
• Sophie’s father, Gil Elliott, said Mr King was extremely intelligent, courteous and friendly. “He admired Sophie, he told me that.”
• Auckland Crown Solicitor Simon Moore, SC, said the thing he most admired about Mr King was his “completely principled approach to everything he did”. He had a “sense of proportion” which made him such an effective advocate.
• Barry Hart said Mr King was the architect of Dixon’s appeal and eventual 2008 retrial. He added that he was reeling from his friend’s death. “He’s helped me and gone beyond the call of duty to assist me both as a friend and as a fellow lawyer in my time of need. I don’t want to really go into all of that but Greg was there for me and, as I say, I’m in disbelief.”
• Convicted double murderer John Barlow told 3 News: “In prison, people talk about lawyers a lot. There’s only one lawyer that came up a lot and every single time people praised him, whether he’d won their case or not.”
• Wainuiomata Rugby League Club spokesman Simon Itula said King played a significant role in rescuing the club from serious financial trouble when he became involved as a sponsor in 2008. … “He was just hugely inspirational and always positive. Even though we knew we were struggling and we felt there was no way out, he would always come in and allow us to remain positive.”
• Former Wellington District Law Society president Gary Turkington said … “He was very affable and enormously liked and had the gift of the gab, which is pretty essential if you’re in criminal work. “He’ll be sorely missed.”
• Former MP and fellow Wellington lawyer Stephen Franks said he would remember King as a man deeply concerned about issues of law reform. “For me Greg was like coming across an oasis in the desert. “It was so refreshing to find someone who wanted to put time into improving it [the legal system] and open-minded about the criticisms.”
•  “Although young in years, Greg King had already achieved a huge amount in his career,” Chris Finlayson told NBR. “He was a lawyer in the finest traditions of the criminal bar, of the same stature as the likes of Mike Bungay, Kevin Ryan and Roy Stacey. “He was a fine advocate and a very nice guy. His early death is very sad, and my deepest sympathies go to his family at this time.”
• Law Society head Jonathan Temm said the legal profession was “tremendously saddened” by Mr King’s death. “Throughout his career he represented clients who were often unpopular and he did that with real ability and determination,” Mr Temm said.
• Dunedin Crown solicitor Robin Bates said he was saddened by Mr King’s death. They had appeared on opposing sides in cases, in which Mr King was a “fine advocate” who fought hard for his clients. “Greg was one of those people who was straight up, and direct, and you knew where you stood with him … his word was his bond in that regard.”
• Otago University Faculty of Law dean Prof Mark Henaghan spoke highly of his former student, whose career he followed with interest and pride. Mr King had been subject to massive public vitriol for doing the crucial work of a defence lawyer, a role whose importance in the legal system was under-estimated by the public, Prof Henaghan said. … Mr King, who started law school in Dunedin in 1989, was a conscientious and questioning student who went on to an extraordinary career in which he was counsel in about 50 homicide cases, Prof Henaghan said. He was unusual in taking some at his own expense, and remaining sensitive to victims while being an outstanding advocate for the accused.
• His mentor, Dunedin lawyer Judith Ablett-Kerr QC, was distraught when contacted on Saturday. “I’m absolutely devastated,” she said. “He was like a son to me.”
• GPT – I heard the news about an hour ago. To say it is shocking is an understatement. A tragedy, especially with a young family. I was fortunate enough to met Greg several years ago at Lit Skills. He was simply inspirational. The law and advocacy simply flowed from him. He was genuine, supportive and personally interested and, freakishly, would remember you even years later. As with so many of the most brilliant he had his eccentricities – I remember someone telling me that if it wasn’t for his staff he would never earn any money because all he did was law. Billing just happened. Clearly he also had some serious demons. The profession has lost a giant but his family have lost so much more and with them my thoughts are with.
• FE Smith – A great lawyer, fantastic raconteur, wonderful teacher of other lawyers, and all around good guy. A judge in the making if ever there was one. We will all miss his presence at the Defence Bar.
• Finlay Torrance – I sit here stunned at the loss of a great friend. I have had the privilege of knowing Greg since his varsity days and only have great things to say about the man,I just cant for the life of me get my head around the fact he is gone.
• David Garrett – All I want to say is that Greg represented me without charge in my fight against the Law Society to get my practising certificate back. He knew I was not in a position to pay him. At a rough guess, he probably gave me $5,000 of his time when he knew I could not pay. We were nominally on opposite sides of the law and order debate. I respected him greatly, and I feel immensely for his wife and children.
• Sandy – He didn’t know how to say no to helping people. … NZ has lost one of its greatest. We met only a few times but had mutual friends and how far this guy went for clients, both as a lawyer and human being was phenomenal. … His intellect was above and beyond, his drive and quest to improve life for the underdog unmatched.

Quotes from NZ Herald, Stuff, NBR, ODT, and comments on Kiwiblog.

UPDATE: I must include this column by Sir Bob Jones:

Greg King was one of the finest men I ever met. … He will be remembered by all who knew him as a very special human, whom we will all miss dreadfully.

High praise.

Vernon Small writes:

So four lowly ranked heads are on the block over the unforgivable security lapse at the Social Development Ministry.

As an interim step, it is a reasonable response to the “damning” Deloitte report, which found “woeful” failures at the ministry – and those are just the words of chief executive Brendan Boyle.

The legal rights of those workers – presumably middle IT management – are being handled with the required caution.

I’m not sure I’d call middle IT managers lowly ranked. We don’t know positions and names (and may never know), but IT Managers can be pretty well remunerated and quite senior.

But that still begs the question of whether it is a case of “the worker wot gets the blame” while the executives escape with their salaries and bonuses intact.

That will only be answered by a second report looking into the systems and culture at the ministry. But it will be extraordinary if all the failures are left resting on the shoulders at the bottom of the pile.

Among papers released yesterday was the ministry’s 2006 risk-management manual that makes clear where responsibility rests.

It is hard to see how “monthly discussions relating to risk management and mitigation” at deputy chief executive level or a rule that all risks be “documented, rated, managed and monitored in a comprehensive manner” by general managers allowed urgent risks picked up last year by Dimension Data to “drop off the radar”.

How could the risk presented by 700 public terminals, linked to the main servers, not be the responsibility of a senior manager somewhere in the system?

This is the point I also made yesterday. Unless the risk was never ever reported to senior management, I’d expect a senior manager such as the CIO to be accountable for not following up. But we don’t yet know the full details.

Meanwhile the ministry is doing itself no favours in the way it is advising those affected by the leak. Sure, Keith Ng and Ira Bailey, who accessed the data, pledged it went no further.

But the ministry cannot be certain there were no other privacy breaches. It is unclear who was behind a similar one on October 4, the day before Mr Bailey reportedly accessed the system.

Yet Mr Boyle said only 10 people, with the most sensitive privacy issues, would be told out of the 1432 whose data was accessed.

It is out of kilter that an agency that allowed such a major lapse should then arbitrate on how serious it was and who should be told. Those not informed include some facing benefit fraud investigations.

Mr Boyle seemed to think a public apology would suffice.

He should ponder Ms Shroff’s advice. “There’s been far too little focus on the fact that there are real people behind the information that government agencies hold.”

A fair point, but to be fair to MSD this security vulnerability may have bene in place for 13 years. Arguably every client of WINZ in that time *may* have had some details about them accessed. I think it is unlikely, but I can understand why they are only individually going to those with the most sensitive information.

A very good segment on The Nation with Truth Editor Cameron Slater, Bill Ralston, Brian Edwards and Rachel Smalley.

Sorry for late posting everyone – Kokila

Keith Ng blogged on Friday on the MSD report into their security breach. He notes that MSD itself says the report is damning. He quotes the earlier report:

The most pressing security issue discovered is the lack of network separation of segregation within the environment… This introduces an inherent level of risk as it could allow for a member of the public to gain access to MSD network resources and services. Physical network separation is strongly recommended, and the current solution should not be deployed into a production environment before network separation is achieved.

This is the key. If you have them physically separate, then you solve almost all the issues. It is good that Dimension Data recommended this. The massive question for MSD is why this was not implemented.

So where are we now? Four “employment investigations” are under way. Boyle refused to say anything about these people, so we don’t know their seniority or the nature of their roles. But he did make clear that the decisions didn’t get escalated properly – i.e. Senior managers weren’t involved. He also said that it simply “dropped off the radar” – that it wasn’t a matter of cost-cutting, it was a matter of WTF.

So basically, there is no explanation of why they ignored DiData’s report. Hopefully we’ll find out more once those “employment investigations” are completed and the second phase of the report comes out.

Heads must roll for this. How high up it goes, will depend on the facts. I would make the point though that just because it wasn’t escalated to someone, doesn’t mean they are in the clear. The question should be whether a particular manager should have asked for a copy of the report and reviewed it themselves. I would expect senior managers in the IT area to be managing risk in this area, and to be maintaining a risk register. This should have been on it, and they should have been asking for reports on it. Now if underlings just neglected to enter this issue on the risk register, then maybe senior management not culpable. But if senior IT management were not running a risk register, then they face hard questions also.

NBR have the full report.

Also of interest is this Herald story:

Computer terminals used for 13 years by job seekers at Work and Income offices had the same security flaw as the self-service kiosks at the centre of the major privacy breach at Winz.

An independent report has revealed the computers used between 1998 and 2011 were also connected to Ministry of Social Development’s corporate computer network allowing access to private information.

13 years!!

Rodney Hide writes in NBR:

The Maritime Union of New Zealand is in the same pickle as the New Zealand Meatworkers’ Union. It, too, has hidden millions of dollars of spending from the legally required public scrutiny.

Following my complaint, the Registrar of Incorporated Societies, Neville Harris, has ordered the Meatworkers’ Union to re-file six years’ of accounts (Hidesight, Aug 24).

His clear expectation is that the full accounts be presented for approval at the annual meeting on November 7 and be filed promptly thereafter.

It will be fascinating to see if the union complies. It has fought long and hard to keep its accounts hidden. But I’m backing the Registrar to prevail. He has the necessary statutory power to ensure the union complies with the law.

This is good. Unions get numerous rights and privileges under the law. One of the few obligations to to be an incorporated society, which means their annual accounts must be public documents. Hiding the majority of funds away from public scrutiny is not acceptable.

Rodney writes how the Maritime Union has also been hiding money in branch accounts, which have not formed part of their public accounts they file with the Registrar. He notes in the comments on his post:

The Registrar of Incorporated Societies replied to my complaint as follows:

“In light of the issues raised by the NZ Meat Workers and Related Trades Union matter, my office is currently reviewing financial statement compliance by those incorporated societies who are registered unions.

This suggests that the Registrar will be investigating all unions to ascertain how many are following the law and disclosing their full accounts, and forcing those which are hiding accounts to publish in full. It will be fascinating to see how many other unions have been doing this.

Hat Tip: Whale Oil

John Ansell has blogged something lovely from Jim Traue, the former chief librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library on his Pakeha Whakapapa. The background to his piece:

A short time ago I spent a weekend on a marae.

It was the Ngati Raukawa marae at Otaki and a group of us were there for a two-day seminar to talk about the relationships between our institution and the Maori people and their culture.

On the first night, after the evening meal, we gathered together in the meeting house and one after another we introduced ourselves to others in a brief speech.

My Pakeha colleagues did this by giving their names, sometimes the place where they were born, and their jobs.

It almost seemed as if their jobs made them, defined them as individuals.

The local Maori introduced themselves by name, by place of birth and tribal affiliations.

Some went back one or two generations while the more eloquent went back fifty generations.

They defined themselves by their ancestral lands and the features of those lands — the rivers and mountains — and their family links to those lands; by their bloodlines, their ancestors.

I thought about the different approaches of the two, Pakeha and Maori, as I waited my turn.

I did not believe that my bloodlines were adequate to define me; that my physical ancestors and their relationships to an area of land were that important for me.

On the other hand I did not believe that my present job defined me as a person.

I think of myself as very much the product of my wider culture.

When my turn came I attempted to place myself within that culture, a culture of the written record and of the individual, just as Maori had placed themselves within their culture, a oral culture of the closely-knit tribal group with a base in a particular locality.

The next day I wrote down an account of what I had said — it had created quite a stir — and then substantially extended my account to cover what I really wanted to say to that group, especially to the Maori members, about the cultural heritage of people like me.

This is that extended account.

It is what I shall say next time I am on a marae and am invited to introduce myself to the group.

My name is Jim Traue.

I was born in Auckland.

As a child and young man I lived in Palmerston North, Hawera, Rotorua, Frankton Junction and then back in Auckland. But I have lived most of my life in Wellington.

By birth, by domicile, by loyalty I am a New Zealander.

I have no other home.

My parents were born in New Zealand. And their parents before them.

My paternal great-grandfather, the first Traue in New Zealand, was born in Berlin in the Kingdom of Prussia.

He came here in the early 1870s and married a Fitzgerald, born in British India of Irish parents.

Since then there has been an admixture of Welsh and English blood to this original German-Irish stock.

They, my ancestors, have determined my genetic inheritance.

They have determined my height, my shape, the colour of my eyes, the colour of my hair. (And, alas, the lack of it.)

They may well have determined how I react, how I respond. That is, my temperament.

That strong Celtic strain from my ancestors may explain a certain gift for words.

But my great-grandfather also had a love of the English language, and wrote it like an angel, though he spoke with a German accent.

But others, all of them outside my blood lines, have shaped my ideas, my beliefs, my values.

From others I have learned the things I hold dear — the things that identify me as a person, a unique individual, and that have given me my standing, my reputation in the community.

My ancestors of the mind include my teachers.

Miss Davidson at the Rotorua Primary School, who believed in me and encouraged my development.

Mr Taylor, Mr Morton, Mr Gudex, who provided encouragement or models to emulate at secondary school.

Professor Musgrove and Professor Airey, Keith Sinclair, John Reid, Allen Curnow, Bob Chapman, M. K. Jospeh, Bill Pearson, and the other university teachers who opened my mind to exciting new worlds of books and ideas.

My ancestors of the mind include the men and women with whom I studied; the men and women with whom I have worked; the great leaders in librarianship, Geoffrey Alley and Graham Bagnall in New Zealand, who have been my mentors;Lawrence Clark Powell, Archibald McLeish, Paul Raabe, some of my heroes from overseas.

They include the man whose cloak has been passed down to me, Alexander Turnbull the collector, who built a great library to comprehend the European, Polynesian and Maori inheritances of this country.

A man who believed that the writings of the Englishman John Milton in the seventeenth century were as relevant to New Zealanders as the written records of our past in New Zealand; the histories of Maori traditional beliefs, the records of European settlement in New Zealand, our distinctive New Zealand literature and history.

Behind every one of them, and the source of their ideas and their values, is the great culture which belongs to all of us, the culture of Western European peoples, the culture of what was once called Christendom.

My ancestors of the mind, nay, our ancestors of the mind, are all those men and women, most of them long dead, who recorded in their books the ideas and values of that culture, a culture going back some 3000 years.

Our ancestors of the mind include the great thinkers of Ancient Greece.

The dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

The poet Homer.

The scientists Archimedes and Ptolemy.

The mathematicians Euclid and Pythagoras.

The historians Herodotus and Thucydides.

The philosophers and moralists Socrates and Plato and Aristotle.

All believed in the importance of ideas, the power of ideas.

All believed that the highest purpose of humanity was to define the nature of truth, beauty, and justice.

Our ancestors of the mind include the poets and essayists, historians, political philosophers, architects, engineers of Ancient Rome:

Terence, Horace, Livy, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Catullus, Plutarch, Lucretius, Pliny, Tacitus.

And the jurists of Rome who attempted to lay the basis for laws to guarantee justice, fairness and equality of treatment for all. …

Our ancestors of the mind include the great army of thinkers and writers of the new societies created within the last 1000 years in Europe and beyond in the Americas and Africa and the Pacific.

 The ‘tribes’ of Western tradition, as it were, who drew on the ideas and values of Greece, Rome, the Hebrews and the Christians, and on each other, to develop their own cultures and values.

We may, of course, be grievously mistaken.

But those of us who belong to the western tradition believe that reason and natural justice are the right tools to deal with the world.

We see the human condition in terms of problems to be tackled.

We believe that wrongs should be put right.

That progress is always worth the struggle.

Mysticism and resignation leave us puzzled.

But this concept of duty coexists with the conviction that the interests of the individual must be protected, even against the state itself.

We believe that the life of the mind and the need for action have equal claims.

We like to think we are tolerant of the views of others.

Ours is a written tradition.

And because it has been a written culture for 3,000 years the knowledge and the wisdom of 3,000 years of experience has accumulated in our libraries and our archives and our books.

And it belongs to everyone of us.

As the inheritors of a written culture we can wear it lightly because we no longer need to depend on memory.

We may not be able to recite our genealogies, of all of Shakespeare or Milton or the Bible.

But nevertheless they are there, indestructible, immutable, always there when we need them.

Safe in the storehouses outside of our minds which our culture has created.

Just as agricultural societies could store their surplus food, so literate societies could store their intellectual surplus, their experience, to call on in the future when it was needed.

Our ancestors of the mind come from all languages and civilizations that have left written records.

We are all part of the international community of the book, the library, the archive.

The Frenchmen Montaigne and Moliere and Voltaire and Rousseau…

The Germans Goethe and Herder and Lessing…

The Russians Tolstoy and Dostoevsky…

…are just as much our ancestors of the mind as Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton, Defoe, Dryden and Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Walt Whitman and T. S. Eliot, Allen Curnow, Frank Sargeson, A. R. D. Fairburn, R. A. K. Mason, Janet Frame and Karl Stead.

Our ancestors of the mind include Aristotle, Plato, Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein, Locke and Rousseau, Tom Paine and Robert Owen and Karl Marx.

They include Adam Smith and J. M. Keynes and Milton Friedman; Voltaire and Gibbon and Ranke and Keith Sinclair and Bill Oliver; Coke and Montesquieu and Blackstone; Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo and Newton, Linneus and Darwin and Einstein, Marie Curie and Rutherford.

Our ancestors of the mind are innumerable, encompassing many races and religions and times and places.

And their ideas, their creations, are available to me and to you, to everyone, in millions of books that fill our libraries.

Who am I?

I am one of the heirs to all this.

Every one of us, whether we wished it or not, whether we deserved it or not, have been given this same inheritance of the written and printed words of our culture.

You must not suppose I am claiming close personal acquaintance with all these writers.

A written culture does not work like that.

We do not have to memorise it to make it our own, or call on someone to recite it to us.

It is always there and we can go directly to it and read it and interpret it for ourselves.

It is the most democratic of cultures because it belongs to everyone.

Most of us do not need to read more than a fraction of the original works.

The ideas they contain are always present, are never lost or forgotten.

Our ancestors of the mind are immortal on the printed page.

I am proud of my ancestors, my ancestors of the mind, as proud as any Maori is of his ancestors.

I have listed only a tiny fraction of them by name.

There are countless millions who, by recording their experience in some permanent form, have become my ancestors of the mind, who have in some way contributed to making me what I am.

That is my genealogy, that is my whakapapa.

The HoS reports:

Kim Dotcom is proposing free broadband to all New Zealanders as he tries to resurrect the ill-fated Pacific Fibre cable connecting New Zealand to the United States.

Dotcom last night revealed his ambitious plans to build the $400m cable – which would double New Zealand’s bandwidth – set up his new Me.ga company, creating jobs and a data centre to service the rest of the world.

He would provide New Zealand internet service providers such as Telecom and Vodafone with free access for individual customers and charge a fee to business and central government.

Kiwis would still be charged a fee by the internet companies, but it would be as low as one-fifth of current bandwidth plans and three to five times faster with no transfer limits.

The $400m would be partly funded by Mega, raising additional funds from investors.

He added he could fund the project by suing Hollywood studios and the US Government for their “unlawful and political destruction of my business”.

I am keen to get more international bandwidth for NZ, and more competition with international cables.

However this pledge can in no way affect the legal process that Dotcom is facing. The extradition hearing in March 2013 must be based on the law, and whether the charges by the US Government are ones that warrant extradition. It is not the job of the NZ court to determine guilt or innocence – that is the job of any actual trial in US courts.

If Dotcom wins in the US courts, then I’ll welcome his investment in fibre for NZ. But his pledge can not and should not affect the legal process underway.

The media have just started to report that top lawyer Greg King is dead. My thoughts go out to his wife with two young daughters, but King’s death will touch many many people. He was one of , if not the most, respected criminal defence lawyers in NZ. He also had a great passion for public policy, and presented the Court Report and often took part in forums with others like Stephen Franks, as an exemplar of identifying issues, and agreeing or disagreeing on solutions without rancour.

His death is a huge loss to the legal fraternity, and those who knew him well. And again, his family most of all.

His death has been reported as non-suspicious and referred to the coroner, which of course is code for suicide. All suicides are hard to comprehend, and this one almost inexplicable. It makes his death even more tragic.