The Hive

Best Post?

2008-11-20T08:03:00.000+13:00

A couple of readers have asked us to nominate the post that had the biggest impact. There were several but we were proud of this one from 18 December 2007 - Peter Dunne changed his position on the EFA the day it came out, and it wasn't a bad prediction on what happened 11 months later:

Dec 18, 2007

Has The Next Government Already Been Formed?
Who is opposing the Electoral Finance Bill? - National, Maori, Act.

Who is raising serious questions about the emissions trading law? - National, Maori, Act.

Have Labour's tacticians maybe blundered and forged what had previously been thought to be an unlikely alliance? - Maybe.

Might Peter Dunne be risking three years completely out in the cold if he goes ahead and supports the Electoral Finance Bill today? - Yes.

Posted by Queen Bee at 8:18 AM
Labels: National Politics

Final Dispatch

2008-11-15T13:43:00.001+13:00

The Hive was established in late November 2007 as a reaction to the proposed passage of bad legislation – the Electoral Finance Act. The collaborators had several other goals:
To experiment with the power of this new media tool – a blog;
To raise the standard of political debate – particularly around trade and economic policy and about the policy response to climate change;
To expose the truth about Winston Peters’ performance as Foreign Minister and the funding of the NZ First Party;
To assist the wider news media to understand the importance of some issues that had previously been misunderstood, misreported or not reported.

During 2008 we became increasingly frustrated at the way New Zealand was being run, particularly over the process around the proposed emissions trading scheme, foreign investment (eg Auckland Airport), and the squandering of billions on a poor investment (Kiwirail).

We also became concerned about the politicisation of the public service and the fear from some in the public service about providing free and frank advice to Ministers. Ministers were in some cases being told what they wanted to hear as opposed to the truth. And the public were not being told the truth because Ministers would not let officials tell the truth. The likely cost of carbon credits is a classic example.

A year after its establishment the collaborators are pleased that pretty much all goals have been achieved. They are not displeased with some recent developments also:
The decisive result at the election;
The removal of NZ First from Parliament;
The participation of the Maori Party in Government;
The election of Phil Goff and Annette King as leader and deputy leader of Labour.
The probability that Mike Williams will stand down from the Labour Party Presidency and be replaced with Andrew Little.

In sum there has, we believe, been a fundamental shift in New Zealand politics. The Hive, we believe, played a roll in achieving this shift. In the last month it moved to #4 in the ranking of NZ political blogs and was achieving an impressive daily readership of close to 3,000 opinion formers every day Monday to Friday with a daily readership at weekends closer to 1,200.

So we have decided to call it quits on The Hive. We will leave it up as it is an interesting resource for those studying New Zealand politics and history. Those studying the impact of blogs on New Zealand politics will also find this a useful resource.

The Hive has been a collaboration involving around a dozen people. Backgrounds include politicians, lobbyists, journalists and business people. Two of us are discussing a fully commercial venture (once the EFA is abolished) which will seek to continue the improvement of debate and analysis of key issues confronting New Zealand. Watch this space in the New Year.

We thank the collaborators for the hours they donated to this effort. Everything has been done on a voluntary basis, usually late at night or early in the morning.

And thanks again to our readers. Many of you contributed comments. All comments were read and had some form of impact. Thank you for being part of The Hive.

Not Sure Dom Post Has This Correct

2008-11-13T08:27:00.000+13:00

There have been Ministers outside Cabinet for many years. We thought the objection three years ago was the notion of "Minister outside Government" - specifically Minister of Foreign Affairs outside Government.

This is the start of today's Editorial in the Dom Post -

National's leadership has clearly had another about-face experience. In 2005, then deputy leader Gerry Brownlee strongly criticised Prime Minister Helen Clark for allowing the leaders of two support parties, NZ First and UnitedFuture, to be ministers outside Cabinet, The Dominion Post writes.

Heather Roy For Consumer Affairs

2008-11-13T07:22:00.000+13:00

If true this will be aa good appointment. It will be interesting to contrast Heather Roy's performance with that of her predecessor - Judith Tizard.

Goff Comments ON EFA Welcome

2008-11-13T07:16:00.000+13:00

But we hope that Goff will adopt a similar attitude to the Emissions Trading Scheme. Yes, we know several of our regular comments contributors - including Mr Anonymous will be quick to say we don't need an ETS, but we do need one (or a carbon tax) because we do need to introduce a price on carbon - somehow. We need to incentives behavioral change. If Goff can admit the EFA was a mistake and rushed, why not admit that the ETS was similarly rushed and that some of the last minute changes were done for political reasons as opposed to being good environmental or economic policy. If Goff were to signal a willingness to explore the possibility of a non-partisan approach to improving the policy, this would be a good step forward.

Just In Case You Thought The Markets Had Bottomed

2008-11-13T07:08:00.000+13:00

Further big falls overnight in the US. Asia has been falling the last couple of days. This from CNN:

Wall Street markets dipped sharply Wednesday weighed down by losses in Europe and Asia and recession fears.

The benchmark Dow Jones shed more than 3 percent in early trading before rallying a little, down 231 points at 8,463. The Nasdaq was also down almost 3 percent, more than 40 points, at 1,539.

In an effort to bolster economic confidence U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Wednesday he had seen signs of improvement in the economic situation.

"Both at home and around the world we have already seen signs of improvement. Our system is stronger and more stable than just a few weeks ago," Paulson said as he updated reporters on the progress of the U.S. government's financial rescue package.

But Paulson warned that the economy remained "fragile" and said further market turmoil could be expected as a consequence of the collapse of the U.S. housing market.

Broadening the reach of the Treasury's $700 billion bailout plan, Paulson said non-bank financial institutions that provide consumer credit, such as credit cards and auto loans, would also be eligible for government financing and warned that banks and non-banks could require further capital.

"Although the financial system has stabilized, both banks and non-banks may well need more capital given their troubled asset holdings, projections for continued high rates of foreclosures and stagnant U.S. and world economic conditions," Paulson said.

Groser Reiterates Tough Export Goal

2008-11-12T16:46:00.000+13:00

We are pleased that John Key is planning to take personal responsibility for our major export industry - tourism and that national is continuing to strive to boost export performance. In a speech this lunchtime on China Tim Groser said the following:

What we know is that there is a virtual circle between higher participation in exporting and higher productivity. It is no coincidence that the first comprehensive study of total factor productivity that I became aware of ten years ago – the Diewart and Laurence study completed for the NZ Treasury – showed that in a 20 year period from 1978 to 1998 total factor productivity of NZ agriculture was almost three times higher than total factor productivity for the economy as a whole – and that included the contribution of NZ agriculture.

Why? Because NZ agriculture generally regards the NZ domestic market as an abstraction. 90 per cent plus of what NZ agriculture produces is for the world market, not NZ. NZ agriculture – and that is far broader than just our farmers since it includes our marketers, our scientists and our trade negotiators are involved in a virtual circle of innovation, product excellence and expanding market opportunities, or they fall away. Our objective is to move an additional 10% of GDP into that space. Or, technically expressed in terms of the National Party External Strategies Paper, our Government will aim to increase the ratio of exports to GDP by 10 percentage points by 2020. It is achievable.

I said earlier that the Labour Government lost office because it lost touch with New Zealanders about the issues that mattered to them in their daily lives – safer streets, stronger economy, better schools, putting the word ‘winning’ back into the NZ vocabulary. I do not expect that our people will use the language I am using here. There is unlikely to be a new NGO called ‘friends of total factor productivity’.

But what is at the end of the total factor productivity sausage machine is higher real wages. That is something every New Zealander can relate to. Every New Zealander knows we have a problem here: our real wages are too low. That is a principal reason why we are bleeding people. And not just bleeding over 80,000 New Zealanders a year – but bleeding young people. 80% of the people who left NZ last year were under the age of 40. Some 30% of our tertiary educated people do not live in their own country – an unprecedented proportion. We need to get NZ back, over the next decade or two, into the top half of the OECD where we were when I grew up. Frankly, it is where we belong. Raising productivity growth is central to that. Raising our exporting performance is an absolute key. And the Chinese market is a large part of that story.

We agree with all this but note that growing our exports as a proportion of GDP by 10 percentage points by 2020 will take a major change in performance and strategy. Instead of crowing about winning an award as the best Trade Promotion Agency in the World, NZTE should be explaining why our exports as a proportion of GDP have in fact been declining steadily since NZTE was established.

Having peaked at 37% in 2001 New Zealand exports as a percentage of GDP have fallen to 29%.

The reason we guess Groser is confident about achieving this goal is that we have dropped 8 percentage points in six years, so growing 10 over 12 should be achievable. We agree the logic but stress the need for major change if we are going to achieve this worthy goal.

Something To Test Your French

2008-11-12T11:05:00.000+13:00

From Le Figaro - in honour of Armstice Day . Sarko's boldness continues to amaze us...............

Les fusillés de 1917 «ne s'étaient pas déshonorés»

C'est le fort de Douaumont, haut lieu de la bataille de Verdun en 1916, que Nicolas Sarkozy a choisi pour célébrer le 90e anniversaire de l'armistice de 1918. Un anniversaire qui prend cet année un relief particulier : pour la première fois depuis la fin de la Grande Guerre, il n'y a plus de Poilu en vie pour témoigner.

Le dernier d'entre eux, Lazare Ponticelli, s'est éteint le 12 mars dernier, à l'âge de 110 ans. Parce qu'il pensait que cela serait «un affront à ceux qui sont morts» avant lui, il avait longtemps refusé des funérailles nationales avant de revenir sur sa décision peu avant sa mort. Un hommage solennel lui avait été rendu aux Invalides en présence du président Sarkozy. Quatre combattants de la grande guerre sont encore en vie à ce jour, trois Britanniques et un Américain.
Sous un ciel gris et venteux, le président français est arrivé devant l'ossuaire de Douaumont , construit dans les années 20 pour accueillir les restes des 300.000 victimes de Verdun, en compagnie de son épouse, Carla, qui arborait sur sa redingote grise le «bleuet de France», insigne de collectes en faveur des anciens combattants démunis. Etaient présents à leurs côtés le prince Charles, héritier de la couronne d'Angleterre et son épouse Camilla.
Ont également été conviés le grand-duc et la grande-duchesse de Luxembourg, le président du Bundesrat (sénat) allemand Peter Müller, le président de la Commission européenne José Manuel Barroso et le président du Parlement européen l'Allemand Hans-Gert Pöttering.
Les fusillés de 1917 «ne s'étaient pas déshonorés»

Nicolas Sarkozy a rendu hommage à tous les combattants du conflit, et fait un pas vers la réhabilitation des mutins de 1917, ces soldats fusillés car ils refusaient d'aller au front.
«Je penserai à ces hommes dont on avait trop exigé, qu'on avait trop exposés, que parfois des fautes de commandement avaient envoyés au massacre, à ces hommes qui n'ont plus eu la force de se battre», a lancé le chef de l'Etat. Avant de poursuivre en dénonçant «cette guerre totale» qui «excluait toute indulgence, toute faiblesse».

«Mais 90 ans après la fin de la guerre, je veux dire au nom de notre Nation que beaucoup de ceux qui furent exécutés alors ne s'étaient pas déshonorés, n'avaient pas été des lâches mais que simplement ils étaient allés jusqu'à l'extrême limite de leurs forces. Souvenons-nous qu'ils étaient des hommes comme nous, avec leurs forces et leurs faiblesses», a poursuivi Nicolas Sarkozy .

Avant de conclure : «souvenons-nous qu'ils auraient pu être nos enfants. Souvenons-nous qu'ils furent aussi les victimes d'une fatalité qui dévora tant d'hommes qui n'étaient pas préparés à une telle épreuve».

Polémique
Un peu plus tôt, à Paris, Nicolas Sarkozy avait rompu avec une autre coutume, celle de raviver chaque année la flamme du soldat inconnu située sous l'Arc de Triomphe. A la place, le chef de l'Etat a déposé une gerbe au pied de la statue de Georges Clemenceau, aux Champs Elysées.
François Fillon doit quant à lui se rendre à Rethondes, au Nord de Paris, où fut signé l'armistice mettant fin à la «der des der», alors qu'un rapport proposant de limiter le nombre de journées dédiées à la mémoire crée la polémique. Le secrétaire d'Etat aux anciens combattants Jean-Marie Bockel a estimé mardi matin sur RTL qu'il valait «mieux garder les commémorations telles qu'elles sont, qu'elles soient nationales ou pas». «Tant qu'il y aura des gens pour les faire vivre, des médias pour relayer ce qu'elles racontent comme tragédies, comme combats, nous les ferons vivre», estime-t-il.

La guerre de 1914-1918 mobilisa 8,5 millions de soldats en France. 1,4 million, dont de nombreux tirailleurs des colonies françaises d'Afrique, n'en revinrent pas. La plupart avaient entre 18 et 25 ans. En France et en Allemagne, un soldat engagé sur six a été tué. L'Allemagne a perdu 1,9 millions d'hommes, la Russie 1,7 millions, la Grande-Bretagne 760.000.

New Zealand Financial System Holding Up Well

2008-11-12T09:13:00.000+13:00

Some reassuring words from the Reserve Bank

New Zealand's financial and payments systems have held up well in the face of extreme disorder within the international financial markets, Governor Alan Bollard said today, when releasing the Bank's November
2008 Financial Stability Report.

"While we are far from seeing the final impact of the financial and economic disruption, New Zealand's banks, and the Australian parents of the majors, are well-positioned to withstand the economic downturn," Dr Bollard said.

Dr Bollard said that New Zealand's banks have not experienced the significant financial losses affecting financial institutions in the United States and Europe.

"Also, they have sufficient capital buffers to withstand the higher loan losses that will inevitably result from the economic downturn.

"However, recent global market conditions have affected the cost and accessibility of offshore funding that our banks - and the country - rely on heavily."

Measures undertaken by central banks and governments around the world have contributed to some improvement in market conditions over recent weeks. New Zealand has also adopted a range of policy measures to help reduce financial and economic risks.

Deputy Governor Grant Spencer said the retail deposit guarantee scheme that the Government announced in October assures New Zealanders that
their deposits are safe. The wholesale guarantee scheme announced in
early November is aimed at facilitating the re-entry of financial institutions to offshore wholesale debt markets.

"These schemes are a temporary response to exceptional circumstances.
While some distortions are inevitable, the Government has tried to reduce these distortions through the use of risk-based pricing and other features. The Bank will also monitor and supervise the guaranteed institutions more intensively, and will accelerate implementation of the new non-bank prudential regime.

"Recently we issued a consultation document on proposed new standards for the banks' management of their funding and liquidity. When finalised, this policy will reinforce incentives on banks to diversify away from short-term wholesale funding and reduce their vulnerability to credit market disruptions."

Mr Spencer said banks have been constructing Residential Mortgage Backed Securities following the Reserve Bank's announcement in May that it will accept these securities in its domestic market operations. "A number of banks now have these securities in place. This will enable us to maintain liquidity in the banking system if the offshore funding channels continue to be disrupted."

Dr Bollard noted that a slowing in the economy had been reflected in an easing in credit growth, and savings appeared to be improving, particularly in the household sector. Together with the decline in the exchange rate, this is expected to improve New Zealand's external balance and reduce the need for foreign borrowing over time.

"However, global developments have proven extremely disruptive and it will likely be some time before financial market conditions normalise.
The Bank will continue to adopt measures as needed to maintain the stability of our financial system as far as possible in these difficult times."

Lockwood Smith For Speaker

2008-11-12T09:10:00.000+13:00

The Press reports that Lockwood Smith is being considered for the speaker role. We recommended this before the election.

Controversial National MP Lockwood Smith is a frontrunner to become Parliament's next Speaker in Prime Minister-elect John Key's new government.
The formation of a new administration is continuing apace, with a new Cabinet expected by Sunday and National's new ministers to be sworn in early next week.
The Press understands that Smith, the party's most senior MP, who got into trouble during the election campaign for saying that Asians had small hands and some Pacific Islanders did not know how to use a toilet, is likely to be the Speaker in the new Parliament.
Such a move would remove Smith from the day-to-day political fray and avoid any repeat of the loose-lipped comments he made on the campaign trail.
It would also provide him with a reward for his seniority and tap into his extensive knowledge of Parliament,

Fran Reviews APEC

2008-11-12T08:54:00.000+13:00

Fran O'Sullivan has a good overview of the challenges facing John Key at this year's APEC meeting in Peru. We agree with Fran's points about the importance of this meeting for Key at this difficult time for the global financial system. The Vancouver Leaders' Meeting played a similarly important role at the start of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. We hope that Key does ensure that Treasury and maybe some business advisers are in Lima to learn as much as possible from counterparts in the US, Canada, Japan, Korea, China etc. Because of the importance of the GATT/WTO to our economic existence (if it wasn't for the WTO's rules we would be a much poorer country) we have a key interest in being at the centre of any process to reform the Bretton Woods system, of which the GATT/WTO is an important pillar. We can not rely on Kevin Rudd or any other Australian to represent our interests on this issue. Peru offers a chance to remind important players of the contribution New Zealand can and should play in this space. John Key and Tim Groser are better placed than most Leaders/Trade Ministers to play a leadership role on this topic given their backgrounds.

Annette King For Mayor?

2008-11-12T07:22:00.000+13:00

Today's Dominion Post mentions the possibility. Certainly the rumour has been around for a while. This would allow the possibility for Andrew Little to gain some profile by contesting the election that might result, should Annette be able to beat either Deputy Mayor Ian Mckinnon or former Mayor Mark Blumsky, one year out from the next General Election. Should Labour lose the next election it will probably be looking for a new leader. Might Andrew be the chosen one?

Right Back In Control Of Labour

2008-11-11T17:11:00.002+13:00

We enjoyed this very much.

Well done Phil and Annette!!

ILO D-G

2008-11-11T12:00:00.000+13:00

A number of you are inetersted in this topic today so we repeat the D-G's bio. Key details in bold. We understand that there has been a roll over. It is the terms of this roll over that are interesting..................

Biography of Juan Somavia, Director-General

Juan Somavia was elected to serve as the ninth Director-General of the ILO by the Governing Body on 23 March 1998. His five-year term of office began on 4 March 1999, when he became the first representative from the Southern hemisphere to head the organization. In March 2003, Mr. Somavia was re-elected for a second five-year term.
An attorney by profession, Mr. Somavia has had a long and distinguished career in civil and international affairs. His wide experience in all areas of public life - as a diplomat and academic - and his involvement in social development, business and civil organizations have all helped shape his vision of the need to secure decent work for women and men throughout the world. The following is a list of the many positions he held in the United Nations and other inter-governmental organizations before joining the ILO:
1990-99: Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations in New York;
1993-94, 1998-99: President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council;
1996-97: Representative of Chile on the United Nations Security Council, including President of the Security Council in April 1996 and October 1997;
1993-95: Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the World Summit for Social Development, Copenhagen;
1991-92: Chairman of the Social Committee of the United Nations Economic and Social Council;
1990-91: Chairman of the United Nations Third Committee on Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs;
1970-73: Executive Secretary of the Latin American Free Trade Association in Chile; Ambassador of Chile to the Andean Group; Member and Chairman of the Governing Body of the Andean Group;
1968-70: Ambassador and Adviser to the Foreign Minister of Chile on Economic and Social Affairs, responsible for multilateral issues including the ILO.
Since taking office in 1999, Mr. Somavia has taken up the challenge that the rapidly changing economy presents to the ILO. In 1999, he submitted his Decent Work Agenda to the International Labour Conference, which was subsequently endorsed by the Governing Body and the Conference. The work of the Office has been reorganized around four strategic objectives that make it possible to establish targets and indicators to measure progress and provide the basis of accountability.
Mr. Somavia began his career as an academic. From 1967-68, he was lecturer on economic and social issues for GATT's trade policy courses in Geneva. In 1971, he was appointed Professor of International Economic and Social Affairs in the Department of Political Sciences at the Catholic University of Chile, where he highlighted the ILO and its tripartite structure as a case study in international cooperation. Between 1976 and 1990, he was Founder, Executive Director and President of the Latin American Institute of Transnational Studies (ILET), during which time he undertook a number of studies on trade union and social movements in Mexico City and Santiago. From 1996-99, Mr. Somavia was Chairman of the Board of the United Nations Research for Social Development (UNRISD). Throughout his career, he has written and lectured widely on trade issues and labour and human rights and holds numerous citations and awards for his work in the areas of peace, human rights and social development.
Mr. Somavia has always shown a strong interest in development cooperation and economic and social affairs. During the late 1960s, while working in GATT, he promoted the participation of developing countries in the Kennedy Round. From 1970-73, Mr. Somavia served as Member and Chairman of the Board of the Andean Development Corporation in Caracas and worked intensively in favour of regional integration. He was also a Member of the Executive Committee of the International Foundation for Development Alternatives in Nyon, Switzerland from 1977-95 and has been on the Advisory Committee of Development Dialogue (published by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation) for more than 25 years.
Mr. Somavia participated actively in the restoration of democracy in Chile. Not only was he President of the International Commission of the Democratic Coalition in Chile but also founder and Secretary-General of the South American Peace Commission (1986-90). For his contribution to peace and human rights, he was awarded the "Leonides Proano Peace Prize" by the Latin American Human Rights Association.
Mr. Somavia has been involved in business, financial and civil society organizations for many years. As Executive Secretary of the Chilean-Argentinian Chamber of Commerce he strengthened ties between the business communities in both countries. From 1976-82, Mr. Somavia was Coordinator of the Third World Forum, a network of African, Asian, Latin American and Caribbean social actors. He was also a member of the Board and Vice President for Latin America of the Third World News Agency, Interpress Service (1976-82) based in Rome. Together with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winner, Mr. Somavia represented Latin America as a Member of the MacBride Commission on International Communications (1980-82). Finally, he has served as Chairman of the United Nations Committee of Paliamentarians for Global Action.
Born on 21 April 1941, Mr. Somavia's early schooling took place in Chile, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United States and Ecuador. In 1958, he returned to his country to read law at the Catholic University of Chile. After graduating in 1962, he continued higher studies in economic development at the School of Law and Economics at the University of Paris. Mr. Somavia was made Laurea Honoris Causa in political sciences by the University of Turin in November 2001 and awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in May 2003.
Mr. Somavia is married to Adriana Santa Cruz and they have two children.

Why Were They So Desperate To Keep The Hydra Alive?

2008-11-11T09:58:00.000+13:00

This made us feel ill. From The NZ Herald

Labour and New Zealand First got $100,000 donations from fishing and racing industry heavyweights the Vela brothers in the 10 days before the election.
Both parties yesterday disclosed donations of $100,000 from Resource Finance, a company set up by brothers Peter and Philip Vela in 1999 and registered to the Velas' business address in Hamilton.
It follows controversy over donations from Vela companies to NZ First dating back to 1999 that the party did not disclose.
NZ First was cleared of wrongdoing by police, the Electoral Commission and the Serious Fraud Office but was told to update its returns.
Under new Electoral Finance Act rules, donations worth more than $20,000 have to be disclosed within two weeks.
Labour president Mike Williams said Peter Vela contacted him to offer the money. Mr Williams had not known about the donation to New Zealand First.
"He was very definite about wanting to make a contribution, and I accepted."
Mr Williams said there were no conditions to the donation, and he had explained to Mr Vela that his name would become public.
Labour got the money from Resource Finance on October 31, the same day it also received $60,000 from the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union.
Labour told the Electoral Commission of the EPMU donation on November 5, but did not tell it about the Vela donation until yesterday, two days after the election but still within the disclosure deadline.
Mr Williams said this was not an attempt to keep a potentially controversial donation out of the public eye until after the election.
He said he had not known about the EPMU donation, which would have gone directly to Labour's head office rather than to him.

Can't Believe The Pace Of Change

2008-11-11T09:18:00.000+13:00

This is so like 1984. The end of a totally domineering regime. Generational shift, and an economic crisis to boot.

What is different is Helen Clark. She did the honourable thing for her party and country, unlike Muldoon who refused to cooperate during the changeover and who stayed on to be a disruptive influence within his part for far too long.

The front page of the NZ herald today reminds us all how much things have changed in just three days. Three days ago it was possible for vested interests to pay large sums of money to Labour and NZ First, knowing that there would be policy favours in return and knowing that there would be support at the highest level to keep the secrets buried.

While we don't want to dwell in the past we think it essential that we learn from what has taken place in the last 10 years. We need some form of commission to investigate corruption. We need to know what really went on in the Ministry of Fisheries over hoki and scampi quota allocation. we need to know why NZ First kicked up such a fuss, and then went totally silent, indeed made it their task to neuter an enquiry that they had fought hard to have set up. And we need to have a full investigation into the funding of the racing industry, and the impact that the policies that Winston Peters forced through had on horse valuations .

If the Helen Clark led hydra had won this election and if Winston peters had been returned to Parliament we would have seen many of our best and brightest packing their bags and heading for Auckland Airport.

Now we will see a much smaller exodus. There will be a few Winston funders heading to joining Ross Meurant offshore, and we suspect that Helen Clark and Heather Simpson will be offshore pretty fast also. Helen might be sponsored by the Government to depart. Heather will be off to the ILO or some other job within months. Indeed we don't rule out a reunion of H1 and H2 in Geneva sometime within the next 12 months. Watch this space.

When the histories are written one theme will be the tragedy of this last 3 years for the Labour Party. We believe that Helen Clark has been in active negotiation over a job outside New Zealand for over a year and that it was never her intention to see the next three years out. If Clark had stood down a year and a half ago and handed over to Goff and King, Labour would have been competitive at the election. People wanted change, but if this had been delivered before the election, they might have been willing to look more at the issues. Goff and King would have been able to have some say over who was selected to run this election also. Now they have inherited a caucus full of Clark sycophants. There are some excellent people - such as Grant Robertson, but they could have done much better. As the Herald Editorial notes today, Goff has no obvious successor in the current caucus. Some speculate that Andrew Little might be the man of the future, but he is showing some reluctance to associate with the mess that is now Labour. Moreover, with Annette King staying on, the obvious Parliamentary entry point for Andrew (Rongotai) is closed off. We can't see him wanting to move to Mt Eden.

We will post further on some of these themes, but felt the need to get them out of our system!

Shift To The Right Continues

2008-11-11T07:14:00.000+13:00

It looks as though the right wing faction of the Labour are about to clean up the top jobs with news that a Goff/King ticket looks likely to be unopposed. Hardly generational change but the two are amongst the strongest performance in the Labour caucus.

We hope that this move to the right will mean that we can move to more of a political consensus on areas of policy such as energy and climate change. It would send a strong signal to business and the world of Labour can support improvements to the ETS when they are proposed by the Key Government. That suggests that Labour should be a full part of the decision making process on these changes. Offers by National to work towards a consensus on climate change were rebuffed by the previous Government which somehow thought that they could win more votes by painting National as soft on climate change. We hope National will put annoyance over this issue to one side. This should not be a partisan issue. But changes do need to be made to the policy. Far too many changes were made at last minute without consultation.

Rudd Pumps $6.2 Billion Of Australian Taxpayer Funds Into Auto Industry

2008-11-10T14:47:00.000+13:00

We congratulate the Australian taxpayers for their generosity. The auto industry would not have been our preferred charity, now would we have allocated such a large sum, but what the hell. Rudd wants to be loved. If France can subsidise its industries why can't Australia??

What is a bit of a shame is that so little of this package is actually being spent to "green" the industry. Reading the spin you would have thought that every cent was going into the greening.

This also removes one of the comparative advantages that Australia had remaining after the global financial crisis began. Pretty much all OECD Governments had been forced to spend billions bailing out banks. Australia and New Zealand put up some guarantees, but no money - indeed the guarantee schemes might actually generate revenue. Now Australia has gone and blown $6.2 billion to keep the auto industry going.

This from The Australian

THE federal government's $6.2 billion automotive industry package will support jobs at a time of a global financial crisis and into the future, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.
The nation needed a green-car industry that would create high-paid, high-skilled green jobs for the future, he said launching the government's new car industry plan in Melbourne today. The plan sets aside $500 million - double the amount recommended by the Bracks review - for a green car innovation fund. It also confirms a reduction in the automotive tariff to 5 per cent will go ahead as planned in 2010. “In the time of global financial crisis the government today has taken further decisive action to support Australian industry, to support Australian jobs, because we believe this industry has a future,” Mr Rudd said. “We take decisive action to build an international, competitive green economy for the future. “Australia needs a green car industry that manufacturers the fuel efficient, low-emissions vehicles of the future and creates the well paid, high skilled green jobs of the future.” The choice was not between having a growing economy in the short-term and a green economy in the medium to long-term. “We can work effectively to develop both, and that's what a large part of today's package is all about. The automotive industry was part of Australia's future, Mr Rudd said. Building a low-emissions economy was the next step in the government's response to the global financial crisis. “By implementing a green investment strategy today we can transform our industry and create green jobs for tomorrow,” he said. “It's a future in which we should have absolute confidence - fuel-efficient technologies, low-emissions technologies, better designed and safer vehicles.” Australia could be world leader in green car technology, Mr Rudd said. The automotive industry faced a whole new set of market, economic and environmental changes and challenges. “The domestic market for cars has become more fragmented. Australian car makers do battle in a very crowded field, with 60 other car brands, Mr Rudd said. “Consumer preferences have shifted away from sedans, to both smaller vehicles on the one hand and four-wheel drives on the other.” Higher petrol prices had driven consumer demands for more fuel-efficient vehicles, he said. Mr Rudd said the automotive industry had a key role to play in climate change and faced a complicated set of industry challenges. “Some might say it's not worth trying to have a car industry, that is not my view, it is not the view of the Australian government and it never will be the view of any government which I lead,” he said. “I don't believe that car making is yesterday's business or something better left to the Germans and the Japanese. “But I also don't believe that industry policy is about 'saving' the automotive industry, it's about helping to transform the industry to meet the challenges of the future. “It's not about passive assistance, it's about active support for innovation and change.”

Carbon Price Collapse: Is An ETS The Best Way Forward

2008-11-10T14:45:00.000+13:00

A reader just forwarded this article from The Australian.

Carbon crash hits Europe's emission trading scheme
Carl Mortished November 06, 2008
WHILE you were distracted by crashing banks and clashing US senators, you may have missed a small environmental earthquake.
The price of carbon has collapsed.
In only three months, life has become a lot cheaper for polluters. The financial cost of warming the planet has plummeted in Europe's emissions trading system (ETS) and the effectiveness of such a volatile market mechanism in curbing carbon is being questioned.
You may recall that the ETS is a mechanism to encourage businesses to reduce their carbon output. Europe's larger companies are allocated permits to emit CO2, and these allowances, called EUAs, can be traded on exchanges.
Companies that emit less CO2 than their allocation can sell EUAs for cash, but inefficient polluters must buy EUAs or face financial penalties.
The idea is that a shortfall in EUAs allocated by governments will cause the carbon price to rise, stimulating investment in carbon reduction.
It's a market solution to pollution, but this carbon market is showing a distressing tendency to behave like most financial markets -- hysterically. In July, the right to spew out one tonne of CO2 from a chimney would have cost a power generator E29.33, but yesterday it could be bought for only E18.25 ($34.14).
The sudden collapse of the carbon price mirrors the rout in the wider commodity markets. Carbon peaked in July, its price summit occurring within 10 days of the peak in the crude oil price.
Since then, everything from steel to potash has been tumbling and you might think it unsurprising that carbon has tracked the general retreat. Hedge funds and other financial investors dabbled in EUAs as they fiddled with palm oil and soya.
The rush to convert hedge fund investments into cash and US Treasury bills has resulted in rapid closure of positions on various carbon exchanges.
Obviously, the credit crunch has little to do with underlying demand for EUAs in a market artificially created by regulators in Brussels. However, economic downturn and recession will affect the carbon market.
Less industrial and transport activity implies fewer emissions, so the shortfall between actual emissions and allowances will shrink, reducing demand for EUAs, thereby causing the carbon price to fall.
Some analysts reckon the carbon price has fallen far enough, even allowing for a recession. IDEAcarbon, a rating agency, has halved its estimate of the allocation shortfall from 206 million tonnes of carbon to 98 million tonnes in 2008 and 83 million tonnes in 2009.
The point is that there will still be a shortfall. Societe Generale reckons EUAs will find a floor at E15 per tonne before rebounding next year into the low E20s per tonne.
Maybe so, but the ETS is making a mockery of Europe's stumbling attempts to lead the world with a market-based carbon strategy. It is causing irritation and frustration to the armies of advisers and investors who seek to cajole utilities into big investments in carbon reduction.
James Cameron, the director of Climate Change Capital, a financial adviser and fund manager, said: "The whole purpose of the ETS is to take carbon out. It's not there to benefit funds or to support trading."
It's those "speculators" again -- the ones that pushed the oil price up the hill to $US147 a barrel and then let it roll back to $US60.
It is a terrible irony that one aim of creating a carbon market was to provide a measure of certainty to the energy industry in estimating the future price of carbon for the purpose of planning investments in new power generators.
Estimates of the price at which carbon capture and storage technology might be economically viable vary between E40 and E60 a tonne. Suffice it to say we are nowhere near these levels.
More political action is needed, Cameron says, with smaller carbon allocations by governments to industry, which would entail a much bigger shortfall in EUAs and a much higher carbon price.
It is a moot point, however, whether there is political appetite in Europe for such a burden. The European Commission is already struggling to create a coalition of the willing to do battle with carbon emissions, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has made clear his preference for a gentle regime.
It's a measure of the speed at which politics moves in response to market prices that the green agenda has almost vanished from media political chatter.
Carbon's falling price spells companies going bust, the loss of jobs and the shredding of political reputations. Over the next year, no politician with re-election hopes will back a policy that would triple the price of carbon for industry and raise consumers' energy costs. There is a wider question about the ETS that must be addressed, and that is whether it is a sensible mechanism to regulate carbon.
Price volatility, whether in oil, gas or coal, is a huge burden for the energy industry. Violent movements in price cause financial damage and promote short-termism -- the sort of thinking that is anathema to the climate change lobby.
If there is to be any prospect of a serious cut in carbon, there must be stability in carbon pricing. Although a financial market gives useful price signals, it cannot provide stability.
Only a stable regulatory regime can provide certainty, but that means carbon taxes and a policy leap that no one is yet willing to make.

National's 10 Point Plan

2008-11-10T11:53:00.000+13:00

W are largely happy with National's 10 point plan for immediate action, but we hope repeal of the Electoral Finance Act is not overlooked....

NATIONAL'S PLAN
1. Meet leaders of Act, United Future and Maori Party over next two days, with first caucus meeting tomorrow morning.
2. Get economic briefing mid-week from Treasury and Reserve Bank.
3. Legislate by Christmas for further tax cuts. Next tax cuts to be on April 1 next year, then two more rounds on April 1, 2010 and 2011.
4. Instruct by Christmas that breast cancer drug Herceptin be available for 12-month course.
5. Call in public service chief executives, instruct them to undertake a review of all spending with a focus on finding savings. Establish "razor gang" type group to oversee review.
6. Request full December fiscal update from Treasury.
7. Legislate - if necessary - by Christmas for transitional package to help people who lose jobs in economic downturn.
8. Quickly introduce bill to reform Resource Management Act, aim to pass it within six months.
9. Prioritise law and order legislation for first readings.
10. Send Emissions Trading Scheme back to select committee, pass revised version within 9 months.

ETS Architect Jumps Ship

2008-11-10T11:16:00.000+13:00

Dave Brash, David Parker's right hand man on the design of the Emissions Trading Scheme has resigned from MfE and has joined the New Zealand Transport Authority as Group Manager Partnerships and Planning.

What does this say about Dave's faith in the ETS?

The resignation was in well before the election by the way.

Perceptive Comment from Australian Opposition

2008-11-10T09:12:00.000+13:00

A little snippet from the Dominion Post

Australia's federal opposition says new Zealand's strong policy on climate change was a driving fcator behind Labour's loss. The coalition's infrastructure spokesman Andrew Robb said New Zealand had moved too far ahead of the rest of the world too quickly.

We agree

Key Confirms Offer of Top International Posting For PM

2008-11-10T09:06:00.000+13:00

From Tracy Watkins on the front page of The Dominion Post:

Mr Key, 47, made it clear a top international posting was Miss Clark's if she wanted it, saying there was a precedent and that her international standing merited such a move.

What Is Wrong With The Herald?

2008-11-10T08:59:00.000+13:00

Not available again today in Wellington!!!!

There used to be no troubles getting the hard copy Herald in Wellington CBD by 0730. Now you are lucky to have it by 1030.

Luckily today, the Dominion Post is an interesting read.

Fitzsimons And Norman Look Sad

2008-11-10T08:22:00.000+13:00

The Green co-leaders have just been doing an interview with the Herald's Audrey Young. Agent 69 says they look very sad. So they should. They are the big losers. By foolishly tying themselves to Labour they have lost any influence. They were polling close to 12% but only got 6% on the day. Why? Because of Comrade Norman's far left agenda. Jeanette wins votes for the Greens, Norman loses them votes. If they were a true "Green"" Party as opposed to a mixture of Green and Far Left policy they would have done much better.

Interesting Meeting In Koru Lounge

2008-11-10T08:14:00.001+13:00

We have an agent placed in the Koru Lounge this morning at Auckland Airport.

She reports that Goff, Cunliffe and Shane Jones are meeting. Shane is very busy on the phone. Could he be Goff's numbers man?

Cunliffe will be pledging full support to Goff.

We will report any further news from Agent 69.

Why We Think Helen Clark Should Be Made Ambassador To Washington (or UN)

2008-11-10T07:55:00.002+13:00

She will do an excellent job;
She will enjoy it;
She will be a star performer on the Washington Diplomatic circuit;
She will do a much better job at forging links with an Obama Administration than would Don Brash;
We disagree with those (you know who you are) who say her hubby will be a liability. We are not sure he would want to go, but if he did he would be able to further his academic research in the US in a way that would be both useful for him and New Zealand. He will be fine at cocktail parties and Diplomatic dinners (those questioning his abilities at yesterday's BBQ have not seen him in action - we have);
If Helen's long term plan is to find a position with an international organisation, then she will be better placed in Washington to pursue these opportunities than from the back benches of the New Zealand Parliament. Of course New York would be even better in this regard. Has there been an announcement on Rosemary Bank's replacement? Rosemary is talking about a departure reasonably early next year which would be a good fit............

In summary, this appointment would be good for Helen, good for new Zealand and good for the world.

Vernon Small Says That It Is Goff

2008-11-10T07:10:00.001+13:00

Vernon Small has very close links to Labour. He is also saying it looks like Goff as the next Labour leader. This is his speculation on the Deputy.

We think that the best choice for Labour is Street. Smart and hard working she provides gender balance, factional balance, geographic balance, and will also appeal to the rainbow faction. Small could easily have found Party members saying "white heterosexual males from West Auckland".....

Labour will probably seek a balance of left and right as well as taking gender, ethnicity and geography into account. That means Mr Goff and Mr Cunliffe - "white males from West Auckland", as one party source put it - may not provide the right mix. Others said a Goff-King ticket would be logical but would raise eyebrows because they were both from the Right "faction".

Insiders pointed to former Labour Party president Maryan Street, Climate Change Minister David Parker, Building Issues Minister Shane Jones or one of the left-leaning Christchurch MPs, Lianne Dalziel or Ruth Dyson, as other options. A "wild card" could be well-performed Tainui MP Nanaia Mahuta.

Parker For Deputy??

2008-11-10T07:06:00.000+13:00

Go for it Labour. Don't look at the fact he lost his constituency seat last time and this time had a humiliating personal result. And don't listen to those from the business community who say Parker was captured by his officials and vested interests early on, and who say he refused to listen to those wanting to make the ETS work. And don't listen to those in your caucus, or Jim Anderton, who were uncomfortable with the way in which the ETS was rammed home without design flaws ironed out, and without a second round of consultation. And ignore The Hive which long predicted that Parker would be instrumental in causing Labour to lose the election through his handling of the ETS. Go for it....

Cunliffe Rules Out Leadership Bid "this time"

2008-11-10T07:03:00.000+13:00

Sensible and mature move David. You would make aa very good Finance spokesperson, and maybe one day Finance Minister.

Titbits From Auckland

2008-11-09T20:30:00.001+13:00

gbJust back in from a day in Auckland. Spent most of the day exploring views in west Auckland - the new battleground in New Zealand politics. We talked to a few people in and around both Labour and National.

Goff/Street was the most common take on the Labour leadership contest. One commentator suggested that Cunliffe realises that winning a general election might be beyond him, so he doesn't want to put his hat in the ring. Several commented on his relative under performance in his New Lynn seat this time around.

On the National side, there seemed strong support for involving the Maori Party in some way in government. Intensive talks with other parties are due over the next day or so with the new Cabinet line-up perhaps being announced as early as Wednesday.

John Key is keen to go to APEC. This would mean that we will need a very speedy transition. We would have thought that this would suit Labour and PM Clark fine.

Dalziel Also Wins Big

2008-11-09T07:51:00.000+13:00

Again, in contrast to David Cunliffe, Lianne Dalziel managed a big win in Christchurch East.

Her personal majority was 5,545 and she brought the party vote home for Labour also - 14,350 to 11,259.

Off To Auckland

2008-11-09T07:50:00.000+13:00

to attend an important BBQ. Can't tell you where, but you can guess.....

Huge Inroads Into Cunliffe's Lead - And He Lost The Crucial Party Vote

2008-11-09T07:02:00.001+13:00

Those touting David Cunliffe as Labour's great white hope should look at the detail of last night's results.

Cunliffe, as a result of boundary changes had a majority of 11,936 - the biggest in the country in 2005. Last night it was cut to around 3,400. Who by? The policy wonk Tim Groser. Groser also managed to win the party vote for National - 12,634 to 12,221.

What does that say? OK Groser must have campaigned well. But it also suggests that Cunliffe is not as well loved by the Labour faithful as some suggest.

By comparison Annette King had a huge win of Finlayson - 17,204 to 9,358 and Goff won 16,350 to 10,793. King kept Rongotai voting Labour on the party vote also - 14,006 to 10,396. Goff narrowly lost the party vote to National 12,578 to 12,429.

Helen Does The Honourable Thing

2008-11-09T00:36:00.000+13:00

Not only did she concede but she fell on her sword. There will be a new leader by Christmas.

This is going to be a period of major change for Labour - a leadership contest, and generational shift. And for the first time in ages, we think will be seeing some by elections. Mt Albert and Rongotai would be our picks. Those who missed out on seats but who just missed out on the list - eg Judith could well find there way back into Parliament quite fast - should they want to be there. We can't see Cullen hanging around, and others might want to go also.

The PM has done the right thing for Labour. A contest will be difficult, but a series of plots to unseat Clark would have been even worse.

Radical idea from The Hive to John Key. There are no obvious jobs for Helen in the UN system at present. Why not do a Bolger? Helen would be a wonderful Ambassador in Washington as Obama takes over there. While it might be tempting to send Brash there instead, wouldn't it be better to ask Don to serve in some other way? His skill set is rare and directly relevant to the response to the financial crisis. We would ask him to hang around in New Zealand for a while.

Goff v. Cunliffe. Game on. This is going to be fun to watch.

Well Done New Zealand

2008-11-08T23:18:00.000+13:00

We needed a clean result.

Good luck National and ACT.

This is going to be a very tough 3 years.

Lets hope we can move to a true consensus on the response to the financial crisis and climate change. If it can work for foreign and trade policy why not other areas.

Why Did Franks Leave ACT?

2008-11-08T22:41:00.000+13:00

If he had stuck with ACT, worked his guts out, he would be back in Parliament. Still possible (just) on the list, but he might miss out.

Well done Grant Robertson.

95.1% Votes Counted

2008-11-08T22:32:00.000+13:00

Looking very bad for the Axis

National 45.52%
Labour 33.65
Green 6.47
ACT 3.71
NZ First 4.23

In terms of seats

National 59 seats
ACT 5 seats
United 1 seat
Maori 5 seats

Labour 43 seats
Green 8
Progressive 1

When is Helen going to do the honourable thing?

Winston And NZ First Concede

2008-11-08T22:19:00.000+13:00

Winston has just conceded on TV. Both for his electorate and Party.

This is a great day for New Zealand!!

The cancer of corruption has been removed from our body politic.

84.4% In

2008-11-08T21:59:00.000+13:00

Only Mike Williams seem to see hope. His officials are telling him that Labour can win from the 15% left.

National 45.82%
Labour 33.38
Green 6.44
ACT 3.71
4.28

Winston is gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

63% In

2008-11-08T21:35:00.000+13:00

National 46.39%
Lbour 32.95
Green 6.45
ACT 3.67
NZ First 4.31

58% In

2008-11-08T21:27:00.000+13:00

National 46.73%
Labour 32.69
Green 6.42
ACT 3.68
NZ First 4.3

37.2%

2008-11-08T21:09:00.000+13:00

National 47.64 %
Labour 31.98
Gren 6.4
ACT 3.63
NZ First 4.25

29% In

2008-11-08T20:57:00.000+13:00

National 47.96%
Labour 31.81
Green 6.34
ACT 3.55
NZ First 4.31 (falling back...)

Is Dunny In The Dunny?

2008-11-08T20:49:00.000+13:00

Ohariu is looking interesting. Dunne is only just ahead.

21.8% Counted

2008-11-08T20:47:00.000+13:00

National 48.34%
Labour 31.48
Green 6.34
ACT 3.52
NZ First 4.35 (falling back again)

15.7% In

2008-11-08T20:35:00.000+13:00

National 48.8%
Labour 31.1%
Green 6.29%
ACT 3.45%
NZ First 4.45% (falling back....)

11.5% Counted

2008-11-08T20:25:00.000+13:00

National 48.79%
Labour 31.36%
Green 6.17%
NZ First 4.51% (falling back all the time)
ACT 3.41%

Huge Swing Against Labour In Wellington

2008-11-08T20:15:00.000+13:00

Much worse result for Labour in Wellington Central, Rongotai, The Hutt Seats and the two kapiti seats

After 7%

2008-11-08T20:11:00.000+13:00

National still at 49% Labour just above 31%. NZ First falling back.................

After 5.9%

2008-11-08T20:01:00.000+13:00

Maori looking like getting 5 seats.

Labour looking as though they will get 41 seats. National 62.

Guy looks good in Otaki. And Robertson is not as strong as expected in Wellington Central. Hide looks as though he has won Epsom.

Hide Way Ahead In Epsom

2008-11-08T19:41:00.000+13:00

looking good for ACT.

Groser Giving Cunliffe Run For Money

2008-11-08T19:29:00.000+13:00

Nationa leads in New Lynn. And Groser is snapping at Cunliffe's heels. This was Labour's safest seat.

These Are Largely advanced Votes

2008-11-08T19:26:00.000+13:00

Don't worry about NZ First - these are advanced votes eg old people's homes and hospital votes

Ron Mark In Trouble In Rimutaka

2008-11-08T19:21:00.000+13:00

Hipkins and Whiteside are way ahead

After 2.9%

2008-11-08T19:18:00.000+13:00

National on 49% Labour 32%

National on 48% After 2% Come In

2008-11-08T19:12:00.000+13:00

Labour on 32% Green 6%

National Opens Early Lead

2008-11-08T19:10:00.000+13:00

With the first vote count in - 0.6% of polling places in National is leading 45% to 36%. Green on 7%.

Goff Predicts Clear National Win

2008-11-08T19:01:00.001+13:00

NZTE staff were last night telling Wellington audiences that Phil Goff is expecting to have to clean out his office "within the week". His staff are preparing to spring into action. Several journalists were present when we were told.

US Considering Trade Minister Visits With Taiwan

2008-11-08T14:32:00.000+13:00

This is more good news. These visits on Trade issues should be no trouble under the various understandings reached with China when countries such as the US and New Zealand recognised the PRC. But these visits became less frequent, or were suspended in recent years because of the dreadful relations between Taiwan and China during Chen Shui-bian's rule. We hope that New Zealand resumes such visits as well. Taiwan is one of our top 10 markets.

Ever since the KMT came to power in May, one of the primary goals of the Ma administration has been to mend the Taiwan-US relations, which had deteriorated over the past years because of former President Chen Shui-bian’s capricious and provocative cross-Strait policies.

Now, the US government has shown its willingness to strengthen ties with Taiwan, though economically. It is reported that the US government has sent a message to President Ma Ying-jeou through the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) stating that it wanted to restore the mutual visits of ministerial-level economic/trade officials between the two countries.

Yesterday, President Ma Ying-jeou convened a meeting to discuss the matter with top officials from the National Security Council, the Council of Agriculture, the Department of Health, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs.Taiwan and the US signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement in 1994, the purpose of which was to solve trade problems and strengthen economic cooperation between the two countries. The ministerial-level economic/trade officials had often visited each other’s countries before. However, such visits gradually came to a near halt during Chen Shui-bian’s eight-year rule.

“During the KMT rule, the US ministerial-level economic/trade officials paid visits to Taiwan many times. However, the Taiwan-US ties came to a standstill after the DPP came to power. In the last few years, the top economic/trade official to visit Taiwan was Kara Bhatia, then Deputy US Trade Representative,” said a senior Taiwan diplomat.

Positive Development In China-Taiwan Relations

2008-11-08T14:16:00.000+13:00

The Hive has long advocated improved economic linkages between China and Taiwan as the best means to improved political and security relations.

We were therefore very pleased to read a snippet of good news on this front. We have been able to track down fuller details which we repeat below. Longer term we hope that China and Taiwan take fuller advantage of the fact that both are members of the WTO. There is much of an official naature that can be done under this cover.

China, Taiwan sign deals on closer economic ties
3 days ago
TAIPEI (AFP) — Taiwan and China Tuesday signed a range of deals aimed at bringing the two sides closer economically, after almost 60 years of hostilities that often took them to the brink of war.
Officials from the two sides were shown live on television signing four agreements that are potentially worth billions of dollars, after talks that marked a significant warming of ties between the former bitter enemies.
The two sides have agreed to introduce direct cargo shipping and postal services, to add passenger flights and to discuss food security in the wake of health problems caused by poisonous Chinese food imports.
Tourism cooperation was also part of the talks, which took place Tuesday morning in Taipei's Grand Hotel between Beijing's envoy Chen Yunlin, head of China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, and Chiang Pin-kung, his local counterpart as head of the Strait Exchange Foundation.
Television footage showed the two men shaking hands as they held copies of the signed agreements bound in red silk brocade.
Chiang then presented Chen with a large framed painting with eight Chinese characters, in black on a gold background that read: "Peace agreement for a win-win situation."
Chen reciprocated with a crystal sculpture of a handshake, which he said symbolised peace and cooperation.
The two sides have agreed to treble direct passenger flights to 108 per week and expand services to a total of 21 Chinese cities, up from the current five.
The deals will introduce cargo flights, with up to 60 round trips per month crossing the 180-kilometre- (112-mile-) Taiwan Strait that separates the island from China.
Chiang told reporters after the signing ceremony that both sides were happy to have reached the agreements "as expected".
He said Taiwan's current government had completed negotiations on air and shipping links begun by the previous administration of the anti-China Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Direct air links would cut fuel costs for airlines by 40-50 percent, he said, adding: "It will greatly boost Taiwan's competitiveness."
Direct cargo links would cut shipping costs by 15-30 percent, he said, with the time of each journey shortened by up to 27 hours, depending on which Chinese port Taiwan's ship are going to.
Currently flights between the two territories have to pass through foreign airspace. Ships have to traverse another country's waters.
They also agreed to cooperate on food safety in the wake of a number of international scandals involving toxic Chinese food.
The issue has caused widespread alarm on the island, after a woman and three children were poisoned by Chinese milk, and the industrial chemical melamine was found in dairy products from China, all of which have since been banned.
The agreements, which analysts have said could be worth billions of dollars over the long term, mark a step forward in the relationship between the two sides.
Beijing formally still claims sovereignty over the island, which split from China when the nationalist Kuomintang lost the civil war and fled to Taiwan. The Chinese government has vowed to retake the island, by force if necessary.
The KMT government of President Ma Ying-jeou won office earlier this year on a platform of closer ties with China in order to improve the island's sluggish economy.
The policy has drawn widespread criticism in Taiwan , where many people fear that their island is being slowly drawn into a tight economic embrace by China, which will lead to an erosion of freedoms and lifestyle.
While Ma's election victory ended eight years of frosty relations across the Taiwan Strait when he beat the DPP's pro-independence Chen Shui-bian, his popularity has waned in the months leading up to this week's talks.
He has promised that he is not "selling out" Taiwan to China, but DPP supporters have said they fear closer economic ties will lead to an influx of Chinese who could take their jobs.

Huge Frosts In Central Otago Last Night

2008-11-08T13:59:00.000+13:00

And unfortunately there seems to be some damage to some vineyards. Reports arriving here at Hive HQ describe at least 11 helicopters operating in the Cromwell Basin. Temperatures dropped to -4 degrees celcius in the Gibbston Valley. Lowburn Valley reports -2 degrees celcius. Ripponvale temeratures dropped as low as -6 degrees!

Record Turnout?

2008-11-08T13:55:00.001+13:00

Both The Dominion Post and NZ Herald are talking about the possibility of a record turnout in the election. Certainly weather shouldn't be too much of an issue - unless you were up all night fighting a frost in Central Otago, Canterbury, Marlborough etc. When we voted at 1230 there was no queue but there were several people voting.

Are We Taking Enough Advantage Of The Opportunities Offered By China?

2008-11-08T13:48:00.000+13:00

Nick Churchouse has anticle looking at the opportunities he saw on a recent visit to China in today's Dominion Post.

Nick sees the opportunites as bottomless. We agree. And we are not sure that we have the right strategy.

China is a bottomless well of opportunity for Kiwi exporters, reports Nick Churchouse.
You have only to fly into Shanghai's Pudong Airport to understand the true meaning of scale.
A third runway and second terminal completed in March give the airport about 1.5 million square metres of tarmac.
From there it is 90 minutes by car into the central city, through an urban ocean that is home to 19 million people. A short distance from Shanghai is the rural municipality of Chongqing, encompassing 31 million people, in itself larger than 83 per cent of the countries on the planet.
For New Zealand exporters, China is a bottomless well of opportunity. As the first developed country in the world to establish a free trade agreement with the vast nation, there is a lot of hope.

Attacks On Palin Unfair

2008-11-08T07:18:00.000+13:00

We agree fully with this comment from CNN's Campbell Brown

Whatever you may have thought about John McCain's running mate -- about whether she was qualified, prepared or experienced enough for the job -- try to put all of that aside for just a moment, because Sarah Palin is who she is.

She did not become measurably more intelligent or measurably less intelligent during this campaign. Remember, she was only part of the campaign for a matter of nine weeks.
Sarah Palin is who she is, which is why I find it so stunning that the very people who introduced us to her, who told us she would make a great vice president, have now turned on her with a vengeance.

They are the top advisers to John McCain's failed campaign and they are desperate to find someone to blame for their long, long list of mistakes. They have been launching grenades at Palin and her supporters. CNN has found some of their allegations to be patently false. iReport.com: What's next for Sarah Palin?

You will hear people say, "This is what always happens with a losing campaign," and hopefully, this is the last time we will be talking about these people. But what they have done just in the last few days to save their own skins is worth a final comment.

To those top McCain advisers who leaked the little story about seeing Sarah Palin in a towel; to those who called her and her family "Wasilla hillbillies" while using her to stoke class warfare with red meat speeches and an anti-elitist message; to those who claim she didn't know Africa was a continent; to those McCain aides who say she is the reason they lost this election: Can I please remind you of one thing? You picked her.

You are the ones who supposedly vetted her, and then told the American people she was qualified for the job. You are the ones who, after meeting her a couple of times, told us she was ready to be just one heartbeat away from the presidency.

If even half of what you say now is true, then boy, did you try to sell the American people a bill of goods. If Sarah Palin is the reason some voters chose Barack Obama, that is no one's fault but your own.

John McCain, as he so graciously said himself the other night, lost this election. He lost it with your help, your advice, your guidance, and yes, your running mate recommendations. And that is crystal clear to everyone, no matter how hard you try to blame Sarah Palin or anyone else.

This Is Somewhat Disturbing

2008-11-08T07:10:00.000+13:00

From Stuff

Relatives of a dementia patient in a Christchurch rest home were shocked to discover the woman, who cannot recognise her own family, had voted in the election.

A family friend said a young family member was surprised to find the rest home resident wearing a badge proclaiming "I voted today".

The woman could not remember voting.

Alzheimer's NZ national director Lucille Ogston said there were many people living with mild dementia in the community who made "excellent decisions every day" and were competent to vote.

"But if we're talking about someone who no longer recognises loved ones, that's a whole different level of impairment ... If someone is having to tick the boxes for them, I suppose that's open to manipulation."

However, chief electoral officer Robert Peden said there was no obligation for receiving officers electoral workers sent out to collect special votes in rest homes and hospitals to decide if someone was actually competent to vote.

"As long as someone is registered to vote and can mark the paper themselves, or instruct someone on how they want it marked, they can vote."

What Do We Know About This Man?

2008-11-08T07:02:00.001+13:00

We should know more because this is the person who analysts believe is running North korea following Kim Jong Il's stroke.

There is a good story just up on The Times site

The nuclear armed dictatorship of North Korea is being governed by the brother-in-law of the country’s leader, Kim Jong Il, who succumbed to serious ill health three months ago, South Korean experts have concluded.

Government officials and academic North Korea watchers have received intelligence suggesting that Chang Sung Taek, a 62-year old who runs the totalitarian state’s secret police, is making key decisions while the “Dear Leader” convalesces.

They believe that Mr Kim is conscious and probably capable of walking, but that he remains weak after what appears to have been a sudden stroke suffered in the middle of August.
Despite the fact that Mr Kim has not formally named anyone to succeed him to the leadership of North Korea and its million-strong, nuclear-equipped army, the Government appears to be functioning normally for the time being with no obvious signs of instability.

“Chang Sung Taek is now in control and is leading North Korea,” said Choi Jin Wook, of the government-affiliated Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. “Other important figures consulted him, even when Kim Jong Il was OK. He will keep Kim Jong Il’s policy line even if he dies.”

Apart from his family connection to Mr Kim, Mr Chang is a cosmopolitan among North Korean cadres whose career bounced back from the brink of disaster just two years ago.
According to South Korea’s ministry of unification, he was educated at an elite school in Pyongyang, and married Mr Kim’s younger sister, Kim Kyong Hui, after studying in Moscow for three years.

He rose through the hierarchy to become head of the most powerful bureau of the Korean Workers’ Party’s, the “organisation and guidance department”. His older brother was the army general responsible for the defence of the capital itself.

In 2002, two years after a historic summit meeting between North and South, he led a delegation of senior officials on an unprecedented tour of South Korean industrial sites.
The most senior North Korean defector to the South, the former chief ideologue, Hwang Jang Yop, spoke of him as a potential successor to Mr Kim after a coup, and said that he was especially close to Kim Jong Nam, the dictator’s eldest son.

Perhaps because of his growing influence, Mr Chang was abruptly purged in 2004, and sent into internal exile. He reappeared in 2006 and last year a new and powerful post was created for him: head of the Party’s “administrative department”, in charge of the courts, the prosecutors, and the police – including those responsible for internal spying.

Update

The Running Mule have just sent us their post on what is going on in the DPRK

The Next 24 Hours

2008-11-07T20:33:00.000+13:00

The Hive will take a rest from NZ politics in the next few minutes until just past 1900 tomorrow evening. We plan some posts tomorrow on US politics, on Taiwan, on the DPRK and maybe some other topics external to our borders.

We will be blogging live from 1900 tomorrow until we know the final result in the election.

Who is going to win?

Well maybe we should leave the last word to our taxi driver tonight. He thought that there will be a landslide to National/ACT.

Why we asked?

He said that his customers were really angry about the following things:

$800,000 on the pledge card;
Retrospective legislation;
The eelectoral finance act;
ETS and all these lies about carbon footprint;
Labour's support for Winston Peters.

He also thought that Labour would not be able to manage an alliance of many parties pulling in all directions. This worried him because we need to borrow money from the world. Why would the world lend to an unstable country with anti- business policies? Who else is applying an ETS to all sectors and all gases?

We thanked our driver for the ride and gave him a bit of a tip....He understands NZ politics very well.

Vote wisely New Zealand.

Back on line tomorrow middayish with international coverage. Election results from 1900.

Roy Morgan Continue To Seek The Headlines?

2008-11-07T15:39:00.000+13:00

Make your own minds up. Roy Morgan has once again produced a poll that is running counter to the trends that others are showing. We are sure that it is just a factor of methodology, but others are less charitable.

Should you be interested you can read the full result here.

Here is the summary:

On the eve of the 2008 Election the New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll shows National Party support at 42% (down 1%), a 7.5% lead over the Labour Party at 34.5% (up 2.5%).
The MMP system used to elect Parliament means the next Government is likely to be a Coalition led by the National Party with support from ACT NZ, United Future and perhaps the Maori Party. The alternative is a Labour Party led Coalition with support from the Greens, NZ First and the Maori Party.
Support for the Greens 10% (down 1.5%) is near its record high of 11.5%, while support for NZ First is 4.5% (unchanged), ACT NZ 4% (up 0.5%), the Maori Party 2.5% (unchanged), United Future 1% (up 0.5%) and Others and Independents 1.5% (down 0.5%).
The Roy Morgan New Zealand Consumer Confidence Rating (98.3 points, up 1.3 points) has risen slightly after the RBNZ cut interest rates by 1% to 6.5%.

Why Labour Has Run Its Course

2008-11-07T11:44:00.000+13:00

From today's NBR Editorial

"Instead of "transforming" the economy to make it leaner and fitter, Labour has pushed the economy to one of the most at-risk.

It condoned a housing bubble that in turn raised household debt in an unsustainable consumer boom.

Instead of greater prudence, lower taxes and savings policies not based on cash incentives, costs were allowed to rise on the back of a raft of local and central government impositions."

Fair summary. Who do you trust to manage the economy through tough eceonomic times?

Welly Slip Up?

2008-11-07T11:20:00.000+13:00

If you were running a supposedly prestigious awards evening would you allow the owner of a couple of brothels to present the award in the Youth category???

We guess it is in keeping with today's Boobs on Bikes Parade and the opening of the Capital's first sex expo.........................

Interesting Advice For The Losers

2008-11-07T11:13:00.000+13:00

Those who are about to be ejected from Parliament we salute you!

We also recommend you read page A7 of the Dominion Post where those who have passed before you have some helpful advice. Michael Laws has an interesting suggestion, have "as much sex as possible". So there you go Winston - life may not be so bad afterall.

The Dominion Post Asks The Crucial Question

2008-11-07T11:09:00.000+13:00

The Dominion Post Editorial today looks at the responsibility we face as voters tomorrow. It asks the key question:

Those thinking of voting for Labour must ask whether its experience in managing the economy outweighs the fumbles and arrogance of nine years in office.

Death Of The Hydra

2008-11-07T10:49:00.000+13:00

We have been encouraging Cameron "Karl Rove"Slater to re-do his graphic of the hydra to show the seven headed monster with only four remaining heads and with blood spouting from the wounds left following the removal of the two Maori Party heads and that of Winston Peters. According to Vernon Small the hydra should be redrawn lying dead on its side.

Another poll, another nail in the coffin of Labour's hopes for a fourth term.
Today's Fairfax Media-Nielsen poll is sounding the death knell for Helen Clark's Government, matched by the results of TV One and TV3 surveys last night.
These results slay what John Key described as a "five-headed monster". The idea that Labour and the Greens, "plus friends", including a deal with the Maori Party, could pull this election out of the pyre was briefly given oxygen by a brilliant campaign launch.
Even a fortnight ago the Government still dared to hope, buoyed by a couple of polls that put Labour's bloc within reach of National.
But it would require a poll- defying reversal by voters tomorrow, amid signs that even ACT is starting to rise, as the right- wingers in National have granted themselves the luxury of voting with their hearts.
If, as expected, Labour cops a trouncing it can put it down to a handful of errors during the campaign that exacerbated its existing problems: the world economic meltdown, growing unemployment and the electorate's fatigue with a nine-year government.
The first error was the decision to run all three televised debates face to face. Miss Clark clearly thought she could better the inexperienced John Key, but he proved more resilient than she imagined. At the same time she gave him several hours of "face time" with voters who had not been exposed to him before.
And she ruled out attacks that would have put him on the defensive – and would have crowded out his message – from the wit of Winston Peters, the experience of Jim Anderton, and the palpable integrity of Jeanette Fitzsimons.
The second mistake was the failure, after an initial flurry, to drive home the big policy negative for National – its attack on KiwiSaver and the skewing of its tax-cut package toward higher earners.
The third was letting out of the bag Labour Party president Mike Williams' trip to Melbourne to "dig dirt" on Mr Key, and the last was running the "trust" theme – initially useful in casting doubt about Mr Key – for too long.

Bank Of England Slash By 150 Points

2008-11-07T06:45:00.000+13:00

Wow, things must be looking grim for The UK economy. This from CNN

Were The Greens Also Behind The Spy??

2008-11-07T06:36:00.000+13:00

What do denials sometimes mean in politics? This from today's Dominion Post

Mr Keizer said his sister's partner Stephen Day, who works as an adviser for the Green Party at Parliament, had nothing to do with his actions.
Green Party co-leaders Jeanette Fitzsimons and Russel Norman moved quickly yesterday to distance themselves from Mr Keizer's activities.
"The Green Party believes in transparency and honesty. We do not condone the secret taping of private conversations," they said.

Post election we want a full enquiry launched into the Green Party's links with international environmental groups, funding sources, and the pursuit of "the green agenda" to make this economy less competitive internationally. The media might like to start on this now.

Expect more of these desperate tactics from the Labour/Green Axis unless there is leadership change within the Labour Party. It must be very hard for Phil Goff and Lianne Dalziel to campaign this election.

It Is Going To Be A Commanding Win

2008-11-07T06:27:00.000+13:00

We have two new polls this morning

First the NZ Herald DigiPoll

And we have a Fairfax Poll

Today's Fairfax-Nielsen poll shows National has opened up an 18-point lead - 49 per cent support compared with Labour's 31 per cent - and a last-minute surge in support for ACT would put John Key in a position to pick his new Cabinet.

Helen Clark is reported to scoff at this poll but The Hive has been reporting since Tuesday that the gap has been as high as 19. That is based on internal party polling.

What does this mean?

We quote Tracy Watkins:

National is poised to sweep into power.
According to three new polls, the country is on the verge of tipping out nine years of Labour government.

That Other News Channel Has A Poll

2008-11-06T23:06:00.000+13:00

Even worse news for Labour. One News at least had Labour constant. The other channel has them falling backwards and the Greens beginning to compete.

Party Support
National 46.0% (+0.0%)
Labour 33.1% (-4.3%)
Green 9.0% (-0.2%)
NZ First 3.4% (-0.1%)
Maori 2.7% (+0.4%)
United Future 0.2% (nc)
ACT 2.8% (+1.1%)
Progressive 0.3% (nc)
Projected Seats
National 59
Labour 42
Green 12
NZ First 0
Maori 4
United Future 1
ACT 4
Progressive 1
Total 123
This is based on Maori Party winning four electorate seats and ACT, United Future and Progressive one each.

Winnie Has Won

2008-11-06T22:52:00.000+13:00

Yes, Winnie Laban tonight won the Government section of the Wellingtonian of the Year Awards.

Winnie has had a tough year with her fight against cancer. She has continued to work hard for her constituency and New Zealand. She wants to make this a better place. It is a great shame she has not been a Minister inside Cabinet. Cabinet could have done with her wisdom.

Well done Winnie. We think you will hold Mana.

One News Has National 12 Points Ahead

2008-11-06T18:09:00.001+13:00

And the Greens on 9% that is interesting.

Labour is on 35% and no NZ First. What a shame.

ACT will have 3 seats we see.

Full result here....

Spy's Links With Labour Stronger Than First Thought

2008-11-06T16:08:00.001+13:00

Oh dear, we just finish writing a post about New Zealand's Karl Rove, suggesting that Helen Clark, chief Labour campaign strategist, might be about to assume the title, and then we read about a colossal campaign stuff up. The supposedly non-aligned spy who supposedly went taping National leaders at the National Party Conference on the spur if the moment, actually turns out to flat with an important Labour operative.

Read all about it on Hooton, and on Kiwiblog.....

Who Is New Zealand's Karl Rove??

2008-11-06T15:27:00.000+13:00

Well, we know David Farrar aspires to the title, but one of the avid readers over at the The Standard, someone called Vinsin has commented today in a way that suggests Farrar is deluding himself.

"True. Cameron Slater is the Karl Rove of NZ politics. On a side note, and i hope i don’t get burnt for this but I need your help Standardista’s....."

So instead of Farrar this avid reader of The Standard suggests that none other than Whaleoil is New Zealand's Karl Rove.

We are not sure that we agree with either of these names. Labour's campaign strategist for this election is Helen Clark. Nothing happens in this campaign that she doesn't know about or orchestrate. If she manages to win on Saturday, then sorry, Whale and Farrar - Helen will be New Zealand's Karl Rove - she will have pulled off the near impossible!!

Unemployment Closing In On 100,000

2008-11-06T14:16:00.000+13:00

While better than some were expecting the Household Labour Force Survey has some worrying signs - negative job creation in Auckland and a big jump in unemployment for the quarter. 16,000 more people are unemployed than a year ago. Are they going to vote Labour?? Not what one would want to read two days out from a general election.

Today's Trans Tasman

2008-11-06T14:09:00.000+13:00

A very interesting Trans Tasman again this week, the week before the election.

TT's sister publication the Main report got the US election pretty right last Friday.

TT senses a mood for change...

We can't resist drawing reader attention to the following which shows how well TT is informed about what goes on inside Government departments and how well connected it is to the Diplomatic corps. We have felt for a while that Helen's support for Peters and the rushing through of the ETS are the main reasons why Labour might lose power on Saturday:

If Labour loses office this weekend, how much blame will be ascribed to Helen Clark’s embrace of NZ First and Winston Peters? The senior ranks of Clark’s Cabinet have been notable for their water-tight loyalty. But as nerves were stretched even tighter, the leaks are starting and it’s evident that many chafed under the indulgences granted Peters. Most angst attached to his status as Minister outside Cabinet. Ministers were aware this made the Govt look foolish overseas, as if the portfolio ranked near bottom in Govt priorities. How could the Foreign Minister not sit at the Cabinet table? Who argued his submissions? Many of Trade Minister Phil Goff’s international counterparts were dismayed the energetic and capable Minister had been sidelined, until the machinations were explained to them. Some think this is one reason for the trenchant in-house criticism of Peter’s $600m “Step Change” boost to MFAT funding. Murray McCully has flagged this will be subjected to heavy pruning under National, while Michael Cullen, whose books are drenched with red ink, will have the scalpel ready.

National Well Ahead In Economic Leadership Poll

2008-11-06T10:17:00.000+13:00

Apologies for false alarm over DigiPoll this morning. The instruction to put up today's DigiPoll Survey was clearly not undestood clearly (this is what happens when one has to do these things on a voluntary basis).

What should have been put up is the DigiPoll Survey on economic leadership from today's NZ Herald.

National is a clear favourite to best steer the economy through an international downturn, according to a new Herald-DigiPoll survey taken just days out from the election.
The economy is at the forefront of voters' minds - ranking well ahead of other issues such as law and order, leadership and tax cuts as the issue most likely to influence votes on Saturday.
When asked whether a Labour-led government or a National-led one would better handle the New Zealand economy as the world faces a downturn, 49.6 per cent of respondents gave John Key's party their support.
Helen Clark's Labour was behind on 40.7 per cent - an 8.9-point gap that is not enormous but is larger than what has been seen in some earlier polls that have asked the same or a similar question. The rest - 9.7 per cent - either didn't know or refused to answer the question.

Spy Confesses

2008-11-06T06:55:00.000+13:00

The Herald confirms the identity of the person who secretly taped National Party MPs. He has strong left wing leanings and works on development assistance issues. Need we say more...

Is It All Over Rover?

2008-11-06T06:51:00.000+13:00

That is what John Amstrong says in today's NZ Herald. Only a miracle can save Labour now....

It feels like it is all over, red rover.
The shouting won't stop completely until campaigning has to come to a halt tomorrow evening. But rarely has the final week of an election campaign been so flat and devoid of any sense of a fight. Rarely has it seemed as if everyone is now merely going through the motions until Saturday finally rolls around.
That was the case before the last act of the American presidential election relegated its New Zealand counterpart way down yesterday's news bulletins.
The feeling of fait accompli was apparent before today's Herald-DigiPoll survey, which has a clear majority of voters rating a National-led Government as better equipped than Labour to handle the economy, with even more voters thinking National is going the win the election.
The prevailing mood was summed up by a reporter's question to John Key yesterday: Did he sense a landslide? The reporter wasn't talking about a Labour one.
Key wisely declined to take the bait.

Tide For Change

2008-11-06T06:45:00.000+13:00

One of the real positives of yesterday's vote in the US was its decisiveness. It was a clean win, there will be no uncertainty out there now over who will form the next Government. Financial markets will like that certainty. Lets hope we get a similarly clean result here. The last thing we need is a prolonged period of uncertainty as small parties try and decide who they will make the next Government here. There is now more demand for capital than capital available in international financial markets. We need to think hard about the image we present to the world. Investors don't mind change, but they don't like uncertainty. The last thing we need right now is uncertainty. We will certainly be bearing this thought in the front of our minds as we stand in line to vote on Saturday.

Who Won?

2008-11-05T20:26:00.001+13:00

Very hard to call.

PM perhaps a bit too subdued, but did not appear to be a winner.

Key conveyed more hope.

There is no way Key lost.

And in that context Helen probably lost.

She needed a huge win to pull back 19 points.

Well done Mark Sainsbury.

Sainsbury Had The Same Take As Us

2008-11-05T20:24:00.000+13:00

Or else his Producer reads The Hive.

Final judgement on the debate in a couple of minutes.

All Over?

2008-11-05T19:44:00.000+13:00

Watching the debate.

Anyone else notice the praise for FORMER PM Jim Bolger?

Anyone else notice that the chemistry between the two leaders has improved enormously since the first debate?

Could this mean that the PM is preparing for loss and her future? If she does want an international job it will be John Key's call.

Likewise, if the PM wants a few SOE Chairs today's debate is the way to go.

Well Done Senator Obama

2008-11-05T18:08:00.000+13:00

You ran a great campaign.

You have given your nation and many in the world hope.

They want change. We hope you can deliver on their expectations.

Please don't look inward. Keep the international trade flowing. Finalise and ratify the KORUS deal. Begin negotiations on Trans Pac. And lets get the WTO Round finished.

We are sure that whoever wins New Zealand's election will be keen to help you achieve the change and leadership the world needs at this time of crisis.

Swan Dive Or Belly Flop

2008-11-05T10:59:00.001+13:00

We reported yesterday on the revised version of the think piece by Mark Weldon and David Skilling. We read this last night. Here are our views.

This is now a very significant document. It is an head on attack on some current elements of Government policy (eg the current R&D policy is described as "deeply flawed in design") and an endorsement of some of the ideas coming from John Key.

We agree fully on the need for an economic strategy. We have so called strategies right now but they are largely spin. It is great to see Weldon and Skilling try and and define essential components of that strategy.

Urgent Actions:

We think that we should be cautious on fiscal stimulus. we think that tax cuts are a great way to get money flowing in the economy. We are less happy with expanded Government expenditure unless this can be linked to likely productivity growth - eg key infrastructure. We really need to focus on improving the quality of Government expenditure.
We agree that RBNZ needs to keep cutting and like the goal of having our rates down to 2.5% to 3% above the Fed's rates.
We agree with the recommendations on provisional tax- this is just common sense.
Accelerated tax depreciation on capital investment is essential if we are to grow productivity.
Still thinking about the proposed review of the imputation regime and suggestions re Deposit insurance.

Drive to increase local investment and performance

We support debt financing of key infrastructure projects and agree with the note of caution. We like the idea of SOE bonds being offered to NZ investors and the idea of a 30-year NZ Government Treasury bond and long term infrastructure bonds.
Reforms of the CCMAU process are fully in line with our own thinking.
The idea of an ownership vehicle for the SOEs is also of some interest. We know the Singapore model well. It has made some mistakes though....
We, like you, support the idea of having more coordination of the various NZ Government investment funds. We are comfortable with National's 40% vision in the short to medium term.

Improve growth environment for New Zealand business

We support a compulsory savings scheme and agree that 2% is a good place to start.
We are happy to see housing removed from the LAQC regime but would oppose a capital gains tax.
Agree that we should try and develop an R&D scheme that works rather than one that creates more accountants jobs.
Agree fully on the need to reduce corporate tax.

Win in the global economy

We must get those well qualified and experienced Kiwis home.
Very open to use tax incentives to attract firms to NZ. Also keen to go out and buy some with our investment funds - should they fit.
Expanded investment offshore is critical. Integration with our FTA strategy is essential.

Public Private Sector Cohesion

In full agreement.

Summary

Thanks for doing this work. Lets hope that a new Government, whether it be Labour or National led picks up your ideas and runs with them.

Labour Up To No Good In Botany?

2008-11-05T08:37:00.000+13:00

A very disturbing article in today's NZ Herald. If true this makes us extremely angry.

Some Chinese voters are crying foul over Labour's tactics to get the elderly to the ballot box early.
Botany resident Harry Lu plans to lodge a complaint with the Electoral Commission today after his mother-in-law was asked to cast her vote, and told who to vote for.
On October 24 she was taken by Labour officials to an early voting station at Panmure Library following a talk by Labour's Chinese candidate Raymond Huo.
Lu alleges elderly Chinese voters are being taken to early-voting stations by officials, coerced into casting their votes early - and being told where to put their two ticks.
Mr Lu said in Mandarin: "I feel that the Labour Party is taking advantage of the vulnerability of elderly Chinese voters."
His mother-in-law, who wanted to be known as Mrs Chen, 72, said she felt "cheated" after casting her vote because she didn't get the chance to listen to the policies of other parties.
"I don't even know who I voted for. I just followed the instructions of the Labour Party man on how to fill in my form because my English is not very good. He was standing right beside me and telling me what to write and where to put my ticks," she said in Mandarin.

Fran O'Sullivan Calls For A New Enquiry

2008-11-05T08:31:00.000+13:00

Fran O'Sullivan today calls for a new enquiry to be launched into links between Vela family donations to political parties and voting outcomes. We agree

If New Zealand had an independent Corruption Commission, it would by now be probing allegations that a former MP turned political adviser had tried to "sell policies for cash" and various political parties had been targeted.
At issue is whether the parties named in the Dominion-Post's news stories this week - Winston Peters' New Zealand First and Peter Dunne's United Future - did in fact cross the line when former National MP Ross Meurant tried to orchestrate favours for commercial interests such as the Vela family, from whom he later sought a "top-up" while he was a taxpayer-funded adviser to NZ First.

Landslide For Change

2008-11-05T08:23:00.000+13:00

That is what we are predicting in the US. How will that affect our polls? it can't be good for an incumbent seeking a fourth term......

WTO: HAS Lamy Just Thwarted Brazil's Plans For Takeover?

2008-11-05T08:19:00.000+13:00

WTO DG Pascal Lamy has just notified the WTO membership that he will be seeking a second term. Here is the media release

General Council chairperson Bruce Gosper informed WTO members on 4 November 2008 that Director-General Pascal Lamy has announced he will seek a second term in office when his current term expires in 2009.

Ambassador Gosper said he had received a letter from Mr Lamy telling him about the decision. The Australian ambassador, who presides over the selection, had reminded members of the selection procedure (WT/L/509) at the General Council meeting on 14 October 2008.The procedure requires the incumbent to declare he is a candidate for a second term by the end of November. After that, the election is open until the end of December for additional nominations.If there are additional candidates, they will then have three months until the end of March to “make themselves known” to members, followed by two months of a selection process, ending at the end of May.

We Join Some Dots

2008-11-05T07:01:00.000+13:00

OK, the media don't want to go there so we will.

We think an enquiry needs to be launched into the effectiveness of our intelligence services and possible infiltration of New Zealand political parties by operatives of either foreign intelligence services or foreign environmental groups tasked with economic sabotage. This is, we believe the real story behind what is going on.

First we have the very strange interception of theft of Don Brash's e-mails and their being given to Nicky Hager;
We have well known links between Mr Hager and activists in Europe, activists who have been well infiltrated by European intelligence services;
We have an employee of the European Commission move into Winston Peters' office and within months NZ First changes its position on the Emissions Trading Scheme;
We have a Dutch citizen undertake a covert operation on the National Party Conference, ask leading questions, tape the answers, and leak these to the NZ media and Labour Party. The intent has clearly been to damage National's image;
Have a look at this Dutch citizen's recent "holiday" and who he met with on that holiday.
We have Greenpeace launch attach after attack on dairying in New Zealand and perpetrating the lie that unless we don't pass the ETS European consumers won't buy NZ product;
The Green Party are running a similar mantra. Labour won't take them on, but thank goodness Jim Anderton does. Then what happens? News of a large donation to Jim Anderton from forestry interests gets leaked around town.
We have huge funding from the Netherlands into Greenpeace;
The Netherlands has a strong dairy trade interests.

What is this all about? Well with Europe it is usually about dairy.

Why would European Governments be so keen to keep Labour in power? Because the ETS is the key to their strategy to render the New Zealand dairy sector less competitive. National has signalled changes to the ETS and has mentioned dairy as one of the potential changes. If National win, the EU plan to neutralise the NZ dairy sector will be thwarted.

Why would the EU want to get rid of Don Brash? He was openly sceptical on climate change and very pro-US. There are forces in the EU that don't like the warming in relations between Washington and Wellington. The last thing they want is our dairy sector to get an FTA with the US.

Do Labour know this is going on? No, but they don't want to have these questions asked because the outcome of the election might be swayed by the Dutch citizen's taping operation. Likewise Labour needs people to believe that the ETS is important to secure our trade, otherwise Labour will have been seen to have committed an enormous stuff up.

Maybe TV3 should ask itself a question. Might the above be true, and might they have been manipulated?

Kiwirail - What A Great Investment

2008-11-05T06:55:00.000+13:00

According to the Crown accounts released yesterday Kiwirail's value has declined $242 million in the first three months of Government ownership. What a great investment Dr Cullen. Thanks so much for spending tax payer money so effectively. We could build several new roads or buy a whole lot of new locomotives and carriages for our region with that sum.

Time For A Laugh

2008-11-04T22:49:00.001+13:00

We have a lot of time for journalist David Barber. he is one of the few journalists who has really followed Asian affairs in depth. Even today, he was devoting his day to chairing an Asia Foundation seminar in Auckland.

David has sent in the following contribution which he has agreed we can publish under his name.

By David Barber

I figure we’re all going to need a laugh or two (apart from Winston Peters) this week. I offer this free of charge (just as well The Hive doesn't pay...)

David Lange was in short pants when his father took him to an election meeting where a candidate called Gotz indignantly rebutted criticism of his foreign name. He said his full name was Frank Leon Albert Gotz and his initials stood for the flag.
"Yeah mate, and like all flags you’re up the pole," yelled a heckler, instantly etching the exchange in the mind of the young Lange who decided there and then on a life in politics.
Those were the days when even the staid Sir Keith Holyoake could capture a crowd by rebuking a persistent interjector: "I am a hop-grower and you seem to be on the other end of the trade."
Regrettably, there are few laughs in elections these days. The campaign is largely fought on television with candidates’ meetings restricted to party faithful where hecklers are more likely to be thrown out than challenged with repartee.
Today’s elections are dry and humourless affairs - at least in New Zealand, which lacks a Sarah Palin and her Saturday Night Live alter ego Tina Fey to brighten the campaign.
But it’s not all laughs on the American presidential campaign trail either and Palin has spawned vitriol to a degree which makes the New Zealand election campaign look no tougher than a ballot for a kindergarten committee.
Consider this assessment of the woman who could be a heart-beat away from becoming the leader of the western world by Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi: "As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy.
"Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed, fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV."
The nearest we come to that is in the blogosphere - today’s replacement for the spirited public meetings and hecklers of the past - which was described by a commentator during the last British election as "an explosion authored by political snipers tearing chunks out of the bombast pouring from party media machines".
There is nothing new about so-called spin doctors and their attempted manipulation of the media to advance the interests of their own party, of course. There was a story that the British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, on holiday, called his press secretary at Westminster to urge him to keep a damaging story off the front pages.
As it happened, news of an especially disgusting sex murder in London broke overnight and Wilson phoned the next day to say: "Henry, you’ve gone too far this time."
As humour has disappeared from the election scene, so sadly has the art of oratory. Fifteen second soundbites for the six o’clock news are poor substitutes for the spine-chilling speeches of Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.
New Zealand has had no political orator worth the phrase since David Lange and as former BBC political editor Andrew Marr wrote about Britain, "there are as few people left in the country who can hold an audience spellbound for an hour by the sheer power of their language as there are sword swallowers".
Lange was the last Member of Parliament who could empty the offices of the press gallery, sending all its journalists to their seats overlooking the House of Representatives, when they got word that he was about to speak.
Oratory has been replaced by what George Orwell called Newspeak in 1984. "The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought," he wrote, clearly anticipating postcard-size manifestos and campaigns built on single word slogans like "Trust" and "Change".
Obfuscation is the name of the game, and you can tell it’s coming every time a politician starts saying: "I/We’ve made it quite clear...."
Stephen Franks - a former ACT MP now standing for National in Wellington Central – joining the ranks of politicians ready to change allegiance depending which party is most likely to help them elected, confessed to a trick of the interviewee’s trade recently.
"You’ve got to revive that ability to ignore the question and just say what you want to say, which is the mark of experienced politicians," he said.
That does not mean lying, of course, even though once on the hustings politicians are freed from the parliamentary shibboleth that bars them accusing each other of what Churchill once called a "terminological inexactitude".
Even that model of British rectitude Margaret Thatcher once confessed: "You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive."
An election, that astute American observer of the political condition H.L.Mencken once observed, was where "one party always devotes its energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed and are right."
And as you decide how to vote mark the reported sign on a septic tank truck in the US: "CAUTION: This truck is full of political promises."

Wellington journalist David Barber compiled the books of political quotes "Gliding on the Lino: The Wit of David Lange" and "Don’t Vote: It Only Encourages Them!", which was illustrated by cartoonist Bob Brockie.