Last evening Doug Bailey and Dr Andrew Butler of Russell McVeagh presented to the National Party’s Blue-Libs a plea for the party to  upgrade what Andrew called "the Bill of Not Quite Rights" (the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990). Among other recomendations Andrew urged strengthening the duty on the Attorney General to report on whether Bills before Parliament are inconsistent with NZBORA and a "forced response" from the government when there is an inconsistency,  requiring the government to say if and what it will do about  it.

Among the Bills that desperately needed an adverse NZBORA opinion was what is now the Financial Advisers Act 2008.

That Act completely over-rides section 14 of NZBORA, which reads "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form". Perhaps the economic wizzes responsible for Securities law have a version of section 14 specially for them, showing a hidden codicil that says "but not speech about money or property or the honesty or competence or prospects of people in business".

It is not as if the drafters of the Act showed that the law is "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society" to fit the weasel words in  section 5 of NZBORA that allow breaches of the principles of the NZ Bill of Rights Act when the judges or Crown Law feel like it.

The new law is complex but the effects can be summarised simply. I will outline them at 12-30 pm today at a Securities Law conference at the Duxton Hotel in Wellington.

When it comes into force there will be a $100,000 fine for:

a) broker who explains on the radio or television why a company is doing well or badly and should be sold;

b) Brian Gaynor for any acid comments to discourage bad investment, or praise for strong companies, unless he can show that despite the common description of him as a funds manager he is actually entitled to an exception for journalists;

c) a broker who acts on phoned instructions from clients he’s known for decades, instead of insisting they give him orders in writing.

There’ll be a $5000 fine for:

a) b) a financially savvy blogger who earns money from ads on his blog, if he says something like, "steer clear of Bridgcorp/Blue Chip – Petriecivic/Bryers will lose your money";

b) a  lawyer who replies honestly to a question about what he thinks of a moratorium or buy-out offer for dud finance company stock (because the lawyer exception applies only to advice that is "a necessary incident of legal practice". Note that it is not just the lawyer’s practice. It must be necessary to legal practice generally);

c) a kindly employer who advances wages to an employee to pay off the finance company before repossession, or organises for the employee to go to his bank, with a recommendation to replace loan shark credit with a regular bank loan (because the employer exception dies if you express an opinion about suitability of "the product");

d) the accountant uncle who dares to respond to the university graduate’s question about how to get the best interest from the bank on the savings accumulating against the day they’ll pay off the student loan (accountants are exempt only for advice that is a necessary incident of accounting practice).

Without the slightest evidence that "competent" financial advising can be taught, or that it consists of more than making sure you recommend what nearly everyone else is recommending at the same time, the goverment is straining to bring in a comprehensive occupational licencing scheme. It will effectively prohibit discussion of matters financial by anyone who might conceivably know what they are talking about, unless they pass exams and register as professional financial advisers, or work for a company that is registered.

At a time when the buzz demand is for more "financial literacy" in the Cameron Task Force’s words, the unconstrained debate that best achieves an informed public is being regulated out of existence. This law will ensure a steepening of New Zealanders trajectory to financial oblivion, a trajectory usefully shown by  the Cameron Task Force Progress Report of 31 July. This elite cadre of financial advisers are to acheive what all the world’s experts could not acheive, and unaided by unregistered amateur opinion avoid "undesirable outcomes" for investors.

The Task Force recommendations in December were timid, but dumped on by the Select Committee (as I’ve mentioned previously). Their latest report gets as close as they dare to saying "dump your stupid new financial advisor law", by saying they have worries about its implementation.

I’m to comment today on the likely fate of the Task Force’s other work. Given the $11.6m just allocated to be wasted on the Code to govern the new advisory profession, I predict even their timid other reform proposals will be meat too strong for the officials who govern in this area.

Securities law does not need anything complex. the critical thing is enforcement of simple law, ensuring that crooks know that dishonesty will land them in prison.  Instead successive governments and the Securities Commission prefer to think up shiny new laws rather than put in the hard and boring work of making sure what they’ve already got means what it says.

The mudslide of new law on financial advisers is a pitiful subsititute for updating and enforcing the century-old law against secret commissions, and enhancing the defamation law protection for journalists and others who dare to express adverse views of people with enough money to issue gagging writs .

It is breathtakingly stupid to head in the opposite direction, with threats to legally shoot anyone with the presumption to express views on matters financial without a licence.

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The SAS are on a policing mission. The people and country they defend will often appal us. They will seem indefensible.

The SAS are no more likely to "win" than our Police are to "win" in Manukau, if we judge winning by reaching a state where force is no longer needed. Nor is the war they are fighting any more "just" than our Police battle to protect the properties and rights to live in peace of bottle store owners and brothel keepers and liars and tax avoiders and adulterers and cheats on their child support payments, alongside innocent schoolchildren and their mothers.

The SAS are fighting because our leaders, who have more information than us, and who we hope can therefore make a better overall assessment of our interests, believe that the SAS commitment will be to our nation’s advantage. Possibly our warriors will contribute to our long term safety from ruthless enemies, by continually disrupting  those enemies in their homelands. Most peoples at most times have found it advantageous to conduct fights away from home in the enemy’s territory, if fight we must.

There can be some anciliary benefits from putting our people in harm’s way.  Without real action from time to time armed services can’t stay tuned up, or confident of their capacities. They volunteer to be warriors so the moral burden on our leaders may not feel quite as grave as it does with conscripts. Special services probably need action with its risks to keep recruiting the right people. None of these anciliary benefits are of course sufficient reasons.

But the needs of our allies can be. If we as a people childishly demand that our forces should be deployed only in holy wars to defend saints menaced by wicked men, we will perish. Because if we will only allow our soldiers to shed the blood of people who are unremittingly evil they will never get their weapons out of their armouries. And if we only help those who share our values we will be on our own.

It is harder to fight well without an inspiring and  obvious noble cause. Pursuing geopolitical tactical advantage is never as noble as fighting to keep an enemy from our beaches, or installing democracy or upholding freedom. So we should doubly honour our volunteers in Afghanistan, and when they return. For volunteering alone we owe them honour. Never again should we allow what the left of my generation did to the returning Vietnam veterans.

For the feeling of righteousness most citizens crave to justify this commitment we’ll have to fall back on seeing evil ideology taking knocks, even if none of our blows are fatal to it, and even if, as the British commander has said, it could still be going on in 40 years.

In Afghanistan we owe to our troops everything they need for effectiveness. They should lack nothing that would reasonably reduce casualties to the minimum consistent with their mission. We should honour them whatever the outcome of their efforts. We should honour them by protecting them from the lawyers now crawling over our armies (but of course not those of our enemies) looking for breaches of dumb rules of engagement.

And above all we should insist that all our politicians show respect to our service people for courage and professionalism, without requiring us all to pretend that we agree with or "believe in" the mission of the side we are on.

Washington Post columnist Diana West states the chances of long term success succinctly

"An infidel nation cannot fight for the soul of an Islamic nation — a truism that, in a more rational (non-PC) world, might bring surge enthusiasts to their senses."

I agree with her. I do not "believe" we can demand a final victory from what our troops will have to do.

But policing is dangerous, honourable and essential work for all that. So lets hope New Zealanders will find the spirit to give our SAS and those they fight alongside that honour by wholeheartedly supporting them for as long as they are there, even if the cause is murky and dark.

I think our courts would do what has just been done in a US court  and order the unmasking of an anonymous blogger dedicated to falsely vilifying an unfortunate model.

Defamation law works for us all if it upholds a reasonable expectation that personally damaging public utterances will not be lies. We all have a stake in reputation mattering. We have to keep cranking up formal punishments or turn to private punishments if there is little consequence for conduct that should shame, or earn praise.  Privacy law’s attempt to abolish reputation has coincided with despair about the ineffectiveness of much of our law, and growing incivility.

Civilised jurisdictions depend on people being concerned about their reputations, on there being deterrent consequences to a bad reputation and incentive consequences to a good reputation.

But we need a balance if the threat of unmerited but terrifyingly expensive defamation action is not to leave vigorous comment to people on the margins, those with nothing to lose. Public comment has been unleashed by the internet to prick pomposity, and to undermine those who would keep the truth to anointed insiders. It should not be warped by defamation law.

Once again I think of the proposal I developed into a draft Bill to supplement our Defamation Act so that tactical or gagging writs would require the issuer to be ready to compensate their targets if they do not sustain their complaint.

The same principle should be the constraint on abuse by the owners of copyright, of whatever is finally adopted in place of s 92A

Saturday’s Wellington Rugby League Grand Final at Fraser Park was a celebration of what is good about Rugby League.

Jules Kuresa’s Porirua Vikings gave a superb display of fitness and commitment to beat Wainuiomata, making the Wainui team look slow. The Wainuiomata College Kapa Haka group went some way to evening the balance for their community, singing strongly without amplifiers.  

Boot parties in the car park were enticing in the mild windless weather but there were no resulting disturbance to the family friendly atmosphere iinside the Park.

I’ve been proud to be involved with Wellington League this season. Next month I will hand over my chairmanship to the incoming Zone Board (now being selected by a Sparc dominated selection panel) with quiet satisfaction. I’ve helped to restore effectiveness and local mana in the administration, but it is time now for a Chairman for whom the game is a passion.

While I enjoy the game that is not enough to continue long term. The game needs a local leader who shares the obsession of the families that keep the clubs strong.  My satisfaction and delight instead comes from getting organisations working effectively, with internal rules and systems and cultures that turn prickly egos and strong opinions to advantage instead of disadvantage.

Despite momentous uncertainty at national administrative levels, our local Club League has had a strong season. Junior strength is rebuilding. The upcoming college series will showcase that. There are enough strong Clubs at senior level to make every weekend’s results interesting. A severe drop in pub charity sponsorship has been a worry for my Board, but the Clubs have just got on with the job. Jason Hemson’s good-humoured investment in relationships deserves some of the credit.

Clubs that last year were worrying the referees with player and sideline aggro have really improved their discipline. When everyone involved became convinced that the rules would mean what they say, it became much easier. Though it drew mockery at the time, I welcomed the chance to show the new policy in action last year by making no exception to the rules, even for Jerry Collins, when he was played without complying with the rules.

Of course I risk punch-up headlines next weekend with this comment, but I can not forbear noting that this year’s match violence and unsporting behaviour headlines have all come from Rugby Union.

Now to make sure that the college games here do not degenerate to Grammar v Kelston levels. Alex Smits has thrown himself into growing the college game. His extraordinary enthusiasm and organisational skills deserve to be repaid with an outstanding tournament.

The Pacific Cup tournament should also provide good entertainment, with nine teams entered.

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I support the Judge who sentenced the sad whanau who killed Janet Moses.

Our criminal law developed to punish wickedness, or guilty intent, not unfortunate outcomes. There is all the difference in the world between moral content of a death in a car accident and a calculated murder.

The evidence in the Moses trial showed a whanau benighted in superstition, trying to do some good for a woman who was clearly unhappy. 

If I was looking for people who should be punished for the cruel stupidity of what they attempted I’d look for those who’ve re-legitimised such superstition in our secular state. Trevor Mallard is among those who should know better. Now he is alleging racism. Perhaps it is an element, but what did he do to uphold Labour’s proud tradition of secular humanism when his government was busy revitalising superstition and paying its practitioners?

His cabinet should have been in the court alongside that tragic whanau.

What is so strange about trying to expel devils in a world where:

•  our government routinely flies bent and bewildered kaumatua around the world to bless and cleanse our diplomatic buildings,
• senior officials even in science institutions (like Te Papa) must rise at dawn to welcome and invoke spirits to guide their work,
• judges solemnly insist that elected councillors must take seriously concerns that the mauri or spirit of the Waikato will be offended if its waters are mixed in the Manukau, even after passing throught the bodies of Aucklanders,
• a taniwha in a swamp can force ordinary taxpayers to spend an extra $10m on widening an existing bridge instead of building a better new one alongside.

Need I say more?

Yes – go and find and denounce the prigs who put their "anti-colonialist" credentials above all else when trumpeting the 1962 repeal of the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907. I’ve heard Treaty worshippers cite that law as an oppression, a breach of the Treaty, notwihstanding that is was sponsored byMaui Pomare and supported by Sir James Carroll. The Young Maori movement wanted that law for good reason – because tohungas hurt people. They held power and abused it. The fear they inspired was holding Maori out of the rational world.

A modern political fear of seeming unfashionable has restored standover money power to people who should instead be mocked for their superstition.

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Great to see the NZX investing some of its entrepreneurial gains in an area of core competence – building a platform for a global dairy futures market.

All power to them, though they should not risk its potential by sticking to an Agrifax index if the Fonterra auction process is in fact a better price indicator.

The proposal is building pressure on the MED, considering requests for government action to strengthen NZ settlement systems. The Reserve Bank system is robust – but can they develop it commercially? Can we sustain two competing systems?

Without being privy to the complexities, I hope someone is considering the most simple measure to uphold honesty and strengthen our repuation for regulatory integrity.  Just abolish Contract Law’s hostility to private organisations having the power to enforce penalties under rules voluntarily assumed.

Systems in many areas would then be more flexible. Enforcement would be more reliable. When complainants, including the governors of industry bodies as diverse as clubs and horticultural export quality agencies, have to get a government body to place enforcement of industry codes and  rules above more politically sexy offenses, industry rules will nearly  always lose.

I should also have praised previously the NZX decision to drop its indefensible 20 minute delay in passing on listed company announcements.

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I had not noticed that the Australian Labour Party is pushing through new donation reporting requirements for "amateur" participation in democratic debate. Here is the summary of CIS’s Andrew Norton of the effect of changes now waiting for Senate consideration.

"To reduce the influence of private money on politics, the federal government plans to significantly expand regulation of political donors. Anonymous donations exceeding $50 would be banned outright. Gifts of $1,000 would have to be disclosed, down from nearly $11,000 now.

It’s a mistake to think that ‘dollars and democracy’ are necessarily opposed. Private donations to NGOs are a vital part of Australia’s democratic political system. Without these gifts, many views would go unexpressed, many voices would never be heard, and many criticisms of government would never be made. Plans to ban or deter NGO donations have no place in a democratic society. "

Law restricting campaign donations and spending are classical tar-babies. 

All over the world they only work, even moderately, if they are amended constantly to block new "loopholes". The amendments soon prove to be not enough, so complication gets piled on to complication.

The ingenuity of democratic parties and supporters quickly creates new ways to evade the law but outsiders to the political establishment are even more problematic.

Why are these laws so hard to write and to enforce?

Because the "balance" that the political professionals want to ‘protect’ from ‘resource imbalances’ or ‘distortion’ can never be achieved if outsiders are allowed to speak freely to their fellow citizens.

Citizens have the effrontery to believe that elections are their chance to tell their rulers what they value and what they do not, by persuading each other (not the rulers) who to sack and what to support or to oppose. This is the opposite of politician thinking. Political insiders think that elections are for them. Election time is when they get the attention of voters who usually have better things to watch, read and listen to. The professionals want to make sure their game is played on terms they control.

Rude and enthusastic outsiders disrupt that game, especially if they are passionate enough to want to be effective, and so are willing to pay to communicate with their neighbours and fellow citizens. 

But the politicians can not say openly what they really want to ban. To work they really need to ban unauthorised and unoficial participation in democratic debate. It upsets the "balance" the ruling politicians want to ‘refine’ with their spending and donation limits.

A  direct gag would be too obvious. It would outrage even those innocent academic fellow travellers with the politicians,  who think that their wiser friends can ‘fine tune’ restricitions without seriously imperilling the persuasion rights that are the justification for free speech. 

 When law has to be written to say lots about things you do not want to happen but can not say directly what it is really about it will be expensive, and constantly discredited by evasion and misuse. So we have seen in the last decade a parade of democratic leaders charged with campaign finance law breaches. Far from enhancing confidence in the democratic process these irruptions damage it. We’ve seen the Presidents of France, Germany, senior UK leaders, President Clinton all tangled in campaign finance scandals that are equated with ‘corruption".

Pressure to exploit ‘loopholes’ is inevitable all over the democratic world where campaign spending limits are in place. The most high-minded and sincere politicians may feel most compelled.

The solution is to confine the law to what it can do, and what should be its focus:

a) – the unequal use of tax money and state assets by incumbent politicians to campaign to retain power,

b) – exposure of funding influences from  sources which could be indifferent to the interests of New Zealand as a whole (so I support attention to foreign donations); and

c) –  factually false claims in powerful media very close to polling when there is no opportunity for normal democratic challenge and debate to correct them.

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Presumably that’s a gag. Or did Weta studios really go to the extent of preparing an artificial carcase and bloody skin for Archie in this country of 30m dead lambs per year?

We were absorbed by this film, from start to finish. Critics have suggested that the great one liners distract from its ‘from all sides’ illustration of the temptations and costs of adultery.

I disagree. Without the laughs it would have been too intense for enjoyment despite all its penetrating gorgeousness.

A must see.

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The Australian Business pages report a statistical study of the impact on companies of women Board members. The report is in the Financial Journal of Economics which I haven’t accessed, but the study has been causing mirth on Fox News.

The Fox team said the study drew on figures from 87,000 companies.

Have I been lucky in my experience on three Boards with women directors? All have been valuable and none have nagged management.

Lockwood Smith trounced Paul Holmes this morning (Q & A) in defending the MP allowances system. Whoever chose Lockwood for Speaker knew him much better than me. I feared he would get chewed up by graceless MPs taking advantage of his good manners. 

Cathy (Franks) was particularly grateful for his spirited defence of MP’s families, the best she felt since Jonathan Hunt gave the new MP’s spouses avuncular advice..

Perhaps it is easier for Katherine Rich (and me) to put up our heads to defend MPs than it is for others – because as MPs elected after the reforms driven by Rodney Hide’s perk-busting we were too late for the free travel perk (after leaving Parliament) and the gold-plated pension. 

The stupid pressure to turn allowances into increased salary (for sacred ‘transparency’) would have suited me as a Wellington based list MP, and it would have suited the singletons (no family to placate or to try to include in an activity). It would also suit the lazy MPs and the greedier ones. They would simply pocket the increase and ignore the visit requests. They’d say "sorry I can’t" to those who expect you to get a rental car to reach their meeting, or take the last expensive seat home after waiting to hear another sad sack voter story.

In other words for those who think that there is great privilege in free travel, or an accomodation allowance when you have to be away from home, there will an huge own goal if they are transmuted into a salary increase. At least to qualify for the ‘privileges’ you have to do something. In effect they are piece rates. You have to be busy, or where you are supposed to be, to qualify. Turn allowances into salary and the undeserving benefit while there is a financial incentive to be one of the  lazy passengers in Parliament.

My income as an MP was a fraction of what I earned before. I never whined about that. I knew it in advance and no one was going to feel for a lawyer moaning that his income had come down. But Cathy and the kids had not made my choice. Fortunately after a few months sulking Cathy recovered her normal pragmatic common sense and became an unpaid but essential part of our team, as part of her Majesty’s loyal opposition. 

I had one of the highest travel costs in our party, without going overseas, because I worked hard. When I did go overseas on two study trips I took Cathy, by cashing in the business fare for two economy. I also paid the extra for one child. Cathy accompanied me to most of the meetings. She was with me to talk to officials and to watch Courts in France (I studied how victims take part in criminal trials). Her MA in French came in handy. She helped stimulate sessions with officials in Amsterdam and the Hague, Strasbourg, New York, LA, San Francisco. Not all partners would be as interested, but I believe we should encourage MPs to involve their spouses in what they do. Marriages fail partly because one partner is growing intellectually in Parliament, while the other is not.

They also fail because of the loneliness of politics. When you’re taking bruises you need a confidant, someone unequivocally on your side. Colleagues are not necessarily comrades and it is risky to confide even to those who you think are comrades. If a spouse is not handy then someone else will fill the spot. Naomi Lange should have put aside her aversion to Wellington and brought her family down.

I also risk the view that we should encourage all MPs to travel overseas, on Parliamentary delegations with members of other parties at least every couple of years. They should travel economy, and get cheap accomodation, but have interesting and challenging meetings set up, and be forced to go by making it a use-it-or-lose-it "privilege". Trips should last at least two weeks.

I was shocked by the limited world awareness of some MPs. There is nothing quite as educative as feeling lost among teeming millions who’ve never heard of you or even your country or party, and have not even a polite interest in hearing your views. That kind of humbling is invaluable for someone who has come to feel that the world revolves around them and theirs. Many on the left have opinions formed and reinforced by determined confinement to their own politically correct circles. Alliance MPs apparently got into trouble if they were even seen talking to us ACT MPs (so we delighted in pretending to be in animated conversation with those we caught on their own in corridors or as lift doors opened).

There are probably also a number on the right who would benefit from more world perspective, though most had travelled extensively. Waking to newspapers full of other preoccupations, and none of yours,  is mind-opening.

The other reason for sending our MPs on walkabout together is so that they remember what we share. Parliament, and in particular MMP party politics, continually focusses the MP on drawing and magnifying the distinctions between themselves and others. If you do not you disappear from a media that wants punch n judy fights for entertainment and little else.

But when MPs get off a plane together in a foreign country, suddenly they are kiwis together. They share more in common with each other than with most of the people they meet. Over a week or two of travel you get to know your fellow MPs in a way that is simply impossible in Parliament or in New Zealand. Perhaps it was different in the days when Parliament was a boys club, where Bellamy’s bar and the billiard room were common meeting grounds. But in the modern Parliament there are no neutral common rooms.

It would be a cheap investment for New Zealand to send them all away in randomly selected groups from time to time, to remind them that what we all share as New Zealanders is more important than our differences. One shared rule could be that what goes on tour stays on tour.

It means a lot in terms of reaching practical accomodations back here. I never thought I could find common ground with Winston Peters, for example. Our first Select Committee meeting together had him leaving in a huff after yelling "toothy twat" at me, for pressing my objection to his breach of standing orders. He was used to people letting him get away with whatever he liked. But Winston was great company. After travel together it was easier to approach him for common causes. He agreed to our joint defence (with Wayne Mapp) of New Zealanders’ access to the independent judges of the Privy Council.

Cathy and I got to know Keith Locke in Geneva. That did not make us friends, but I can respect his courage and decency even while remaining convinced of his nuttiness. We cooperated several times to force Bill changes on Labour, and we voted our party votes together in Parliament (unsuccessfully) against parts of  the stupid bill that later tripped up the Police who brought the Tuhoe terrorism charges.

So here’s to more spending on overseas airfares for MPs, as long as its on tour.’

[I’ve not been a regular watcher of Q & A. I’ve been weaning my self off politics. But I must watch more. Gerry Brownlee was impressive on Q & A on the tricky topic of electricity industry regulation, and Andrew Geddis was perceptive in areas well outside his academic specialties]