I’d reconciled myself to missing skiing this year.

Hope of 18 October had faded. The traditional lifts closing date would have left  Labour Weekend for a rejuvenating ski trip after a campaign ending on 18 October.

An unprecedented 5m snow base would allow for liftless ski touring anyway, but I may not be fit enough after weeks of yak yak yak.

Now Turoa lifts will work till 16 November to take advantage of that base. That will leave one week for Cathy and me to go spring skiing after the election on 8 November. 

There are some upsides to climate change.

Try Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution string for a time lapse set of snaps on the Sarah Palin phenomenon.

It starts with the failure of prediction markets to anticipate McCain’s choice of  VP. Sophisticated discussion about the information impounded in a prediction market’s pricing, segues into gossip. By the end of the string, still going strong, after 15 days, it has become a platform for good ol boys, and gun nuts., or had when I last looked.

Then I got trapped into watching Fox’s 9/11 Presidential forum with extended interviewing of McCain and Obama. Trapped by awe at the respect for  intelligence (of subjects and viewers) in the programme, the skills of both candidates and longing for something similarly dignified here.

Congratulations to Maria English of Marsden School in Karori who has just led the New Zealand Secondary Schools Debating Team to be runners-up at the World Debating Championships in Washington D.C.

They lost 4-5 to England early this morning, after winning 11 debates in a row to make the Grand Final.

Maria has had a spectacular year.  She has just come back from touring Brazil and Argentina as a member of the N.Z. Secondary Schools Choir, where the kiwi students helped out with a slum music school in Rio as well as performing concerts. 

She then spent several weeks in Ireland on an all expenses paid trip as her prize for winning the 2008 Rodney Walshe Essay Competiton.

What a talented student and she’s only in Year 12.

We’ve now conducted four  "placard waving at traffic" celebrations.  A few of the signs asked supporters to ‘toot’.  From the heartening horn-blowing we can now draw a few conclusions.

• Our most demonstrative supporters drive red or reddish cars.
• We can expect the most predictable support from trade vehicles.
• If Maori and Polynesian drivers are representative it would be unsafe for Mike Williams to sponsor them to polling booths this election.
• The big end of town (drivers of luxury cars) have gone left (or they’re too stuffy to support undignified street politics).
• SUV drivers (other than late or luxury models) like us (or at least feel we do not despise them).

Only the last fitted any preconceptions.

The high level of Maori/Polynesian support was especially appreciated, as was the "air pressing" of the horn button on several of the many Ministerial cars that passed, the consistent taxi driver tooting, the bus drivers who gave tiny blasts (presumably to reduce the chance of complaints to the boss by Labour passengers) and other official vehicles I will not describe in case it starts a witch hunt. 

The red car effect was so strong our team speculated on the possibilities. Red car drivers are probably indifferent to their car colour as a statement of politics, or their allegiances have changed since they bought. Whatever the case Labour has no brand monopoly on red.

Should National mount a take-over? In the US the Republicans have red. It is a great colour for action (and Maori and Chinese voters).

Perhaps we should grab both blue and red and let Labour look for another!!. 

"I believe Damien (approriate name) Hirst should be imprisoned for fraud and gross indecency or some sort of of obscenity charge.He has made perversely large fortunes without creating the art himself. His fortune and assets shold be seized and donated to worthy causes. Genuine artists should combine their creative talents and lynch Damien Hirst and display his corpse in a gallery., or as the article suggests, at an auction to cut out the "serious" (serious money wasters) collectors."
 

That’s the first ‘blog’ comment on the Economist’s report of Hirst’s upcoming auction, which begins Monday.

The Economist piece is long , but the concept is simple – auctioning new work instead of selling it through galleries. Here’s the summary:

"To mount an auction of new work by a single artist and in such quantity—223 lots estimated to bring in at least £68m ($120m)—looks like bragging. Yet on September 15th, in the early evening, Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s youthful international specialist, will bring down his gavel on the first lot, a colourful triptych of butterflies and diamonds entitled “Heaven Can Wait” that is estimated to sell for up to £500,000. The auction is so big it will take two days to get through. The accompanying catalogue comes in three volumes, and is encased in its own slipcover. Such a sale has never been attempted before.

The report led me to wonder what would happen if some of Wellington’s annual Affordable Art offering was auctioned. The Economist describes the risk

"Only the brave sell at auction, for it is impossible to control who buys or what price they will pay. Some of Mr Hirst’s pieces will sell easily, especially if several bidders descend on the same work at once; others will be knocked down more slowly. Mr Hirst is flooding the market, but he hopes his prices will rise, thereby challenging one of the basic laws of economics. At the same time, he is breaking the art market’s traditional rules. For nearly 20 years his dealers have nurtured his career, placing his work in high-profile museums and in the hands of carefully selected wealthy collectors. "

What would a new issue auction do for the Wellington art market. Surely it would not remain vibrant if the galleries are starved. The Economist notes the threat to galleries in Hirst’s auction :

"By going down the auction-house route, Mr Hirst is now preparing to cut them out. “The final frontier protecting contemporary art galleries from the relentless encroachment of the auction houses has been emphatically breached,” wrote Roger Bevan, an art historian and critic, in an editorial in the Art Newspaper when the sale was announced last July."

The initiative reminds me of the debate over IPO and new issue share marketing. Company owners often toy with the idea of simply offering their shares on an exchange, to let the auction process set the price, because normal IPO procedures can leave great gains on the table for the buyers. 

Issuers can also resent  underwriters’ fees. Their new shares are priced to create excess demand and a premium for the lucky buyers. So what risk are they underwriting? The answer is that the fee is frequently just an endorsement or validation charge, not a fee for a genuine placement risk.

One reason why auction pricing is rarely used for new share issues is securities law. Prospectus rules assume that the offering will be vendor priced. They usually require documentation to go to buyers, whether buyers want it or not.

My Chapman Tripp colleagues and I included reform of this stupidity in a list of 15 "low hanging fruit" reforms we presented to a recent securities law conference.

To return to the art market – in case any Wellington gallery owner is worrying, on the bright side for you, Judith Tizard’s Bill to send underground the secondary market in art will probably lapse. It has not got to second reading. To continue past the dissolution of Parliament it must be included in a carry-over motion. Look for that not to happen with the  Copyright (Artists’ Resale Right) Amendment Bill . 

A supporter in Karori

Students in Kelburn

And Oriental Bay!

The election is called and we’re ready.

Drivers give their support on the street corners near Parliament.

Go National!

Does Labour have a hidden agenda for a capital gains tax?

I’ve now heard from several sources that the Labour candidate for Wellington Central told people at a cottage meeting he favours a capital gains tax to redistribute wealth.  One person (who assured me she is not necessarily a National voter) says he also talked of the reintroduction of death duties, presumably for the same purpose.

The Wellington Central candidate is pretty close to H Clark, so what are they planning? From within her office before last election he developed the student loan bribe, over Michael Cullen’s passionate objections. So his envy of wealth can not be dismissed as mere juvenile burbling.

Remember, we did not know Labour was going to drive through an anti-smacking bill, or abolish our access to the Privy Council before earlier elections.

The Privileges Committee is pathetic. If it was ever composed of fearsome interrrogators determined to uphold the integrity of Parliament, across party lines, they’d gone by the time I got there.

I sat on it considering a complaint against Peters. Matt Robson in the chair was scared of him. So were the rest of the committee. They would not ask the elementary questions I proposed to get at the truth. Instead they looked desperately for ways to let it go away.

It did.

Janet Mackey, who laid the complaint with the unanimous support of our committee, had warned me I’d be on my own if I did not go along with pretending Peter’s breaches did not matter. She was deeply cynical about the competence of her own side, and mine, but even more about their courage and determination.

I criticised the Committee whenever I got the chance while in Parliament. See for example this criticism is in Hansard.

So I was sorry for Simon Power in the Chair last night. However well he performed the process was not going to let him make the hearing uplifting. The middle of a proceeding where the ruling clique want the process to fail is no time to try to develop robust new processes.

At least they did not have Peter Williams battering away with his non-sequiturs, though perhaps it helped Peters too for him not to speak. No honest lawyer member needs a criminal QC to help him to tell the truth to a committee of his own club where nearly half the committee members are desperately on his side

The Committee should look to the US Senate Committee procedure. They should hire an experienced lawyer to do the examination, in consultation with the members on the questions they want answered. The committee members would then sit in effect as the jury. They should allow enough time.

Last night Peters just had to bluster for an hour. It would have faded if he’d had to maintain consistent lying for 4 hours.

The Committee is laughable. It  did not ask obvious questions. It meekly accepted his refusal to give a source for his claim that Glenn’s lawyer had manufactured ("coached") Glenn’s evidence. That allegation alone is so serious they should be vigorously investigating it.

Mercifully I have not seen recently the media cliche references to the "Parliament’s almighty Privileges Committee". It has been seen for what it is – a toothless old tabby to its insiders, though it can still bully outsiders.

I thought I’d offer a heading you thought you’d never see from me.

A decision delivered on 1 September by Judge Carruthers deserves praise. The special significance of the decision for me I’ll explain below.

First – the Board’s reasoning includes: