Labour has a strategy of looking for media chances to jump on things that interest people where they can not be connected with any responsibility, and hiding from those where they could be questioned about what they’ve done.

Note the contrast between the eagerness of H Clark and R Dyson to comment on the sad rest home mouth taping (long before any investigation of the circumstances) and their absence (until they could jump on liquor licensing) after Police risk aversion probably killed the shot store owner. 

Annette King has been nowhere to be seen while the Police, her responsibility, are deep in trouble. No doubt she’ll re-emerge when they have a good news story.

What an example of loyalty, leadership and  integrity. 

Murray McCully’s weekly newsletter is not web-published, so here is his latest bulletin (only change the MFAT link)-

Clark for UN Human Rights Role???
The announcement that New Zealand has declared its candidacy for membership of the United Nations Human Rights Council raises a number of interesting questions. Like why are we doing this? And what do we hope to achieve? A website was launched to support New Zealand’s candidacy last week. And no doubt some considerable sums of cash will be sunk into MFAT lobbying. All in the cause of winning election to one of the more disreputable institutions to be spawned out of the United Nations in recent years.

The UN Human Rights Council was established in March 2006 to replace the totally discredited UN Human Rights Commission. That organisation had morphed into an assembly of dictatorships, terrorist sympathisers and outright whackos (including such human rights luminaries as Zimbabwe, Syria, Libya and China). The final straw was the uncontested election to the Commission chair of Sudan, the home of ethnic cleansing. Even the United Nations was embarrassed to own them.

The new Council of 47 elected members was designed to establish a credible UN assembly to focus on international human rights issues. But the track record to date has not been promising. Devoting much of its efforts to regular criticisms of Israel, the Council voted down (22-20) a resolution calling on the Sudanese Government to prosecute those responsible for killing raping and injuring innocent civilians in Darfur.

Britain has recently been the very fortunate recipient of the Council’s wisdom. A Sri Lankan initiative was passed calling on Britain to abolish the monarchy and have a written constitution. Sri Lanka, it would be fair to say, has less than an unblemished track record on human rights issues in recent times. But so busy has the Council been persecuting Israel and dealing with pressing human rights issues around the British monarchy that human rights abuses in Tibet, China, Zimbabwe, Burma and a variety of other places have not attracted the Council’s interest, let alone condemnation.

Last week, the Human Rights Council elected Nigeria as Council chair for the next year. An interesting call since Nigeria has been the subject of more than a little comment on the human rights front. Minor matters like gross irregularities in recent presidential, governorship and assembly polls. And the odd bit of armed thuggery and murder against opposing candidates and their supporters. Then there are the examples of extra-judicial executions that Amnesty International reported in the Niger Delta. Oh, and the reports of intimidation and harassment against journalists and human rights activists. Clearly these are just the guys to be heading up the UN Human Rights Council.

So why, we wonder, has New Zealand decided to use valuable MFAT time and money campaigning to join this illustrious body? The United States has just made the decision to pull out of active participation. But hey, if New Zealand does win a seat around the Council table from 2009 there is one very significant benefit. Hopefully by next year Helen Clark will be freed up from other duties and available to become our Permanent Representative. A few quick tales on her excursions with the Electoral Finance Act  and she would be bound to win any ballot for the chair. The perfect retirement role for our UN-centric Prime Minister.

This Economist book review on the threatened mustang makes me want to be up in the Wairarapa on my weekend land.

My parents used the chance of seeing wild horses (and tanks) to keep me and my brothers and sisters focussed outside the car and off the back seat fighting and feeling sick as we crossed the unsealed Desert Road to Lake Taupo.

The few times we saw the horses were enough to keep us kids straining for another sight, for what must have been precious minutes of peace, every time we did that trip.

So when the Kaimanawa Horse Trust asked me to keep a few on our land in the Wairarapa last year I was delighted to have space for them. A dozen arrived at the beginning of the drought. They’ve become accustomed to our movements tending the beehives. We can get to within 20m before a family group thunders a couple of hundred metres away to settle down again.

I’m not sure how long we’ll have them.  I don’t want to have to deal with the ecological dilemmas of a wild herd expansion in the regenerating large paddock they’re in.

Still I’m looking forward to having the time to enjoy the couple of young horses we’ll be keeping long term.

 Cars with stickers are more  likely to show road rage says recent research reported in the Telegraph.

Oh dear – does that mean the  bumper stickers for my campaign will be associated with bad behaviour? It’s hard enough already making sure I don’t offend anyone inadvertently in my highly identified car.

Apparently the drivers of personalised cars behave more aggressively. Intuition might have told us that but now its research-established.

Drivers of cars covered with stickers and trinkets (known as territory  markers) are 15% more likely to respond to provocations such as being stuck in traffic (when their ‘territory’ is threatened)  by flashing lights,  tailgating and blocking other drivers. The more markers a car has, the more aggression. The content of the stickers — even  "Baby on Board" — did not make a difference.

Drivers who do not personalise their cars get angry too but they fume and mentally call the other driver rude names, instead of acting out their anger.

Another study, from the University of Maryland, suggests that road rage type people also also get worked up on the touchline at children’s sporting events. That study called it an "ego defensiveness" factor.

Most of us would have been astonished if they’d not found that link.

So the PM says she will get the Governor General to order that a postal poll be held next year.

Parliament can stymie that scheme too. Section 22AB allows a majority vote in Parliament to require that the last day of postal voting be the date of the general election. The words are clear:

  (7) In the circumstances described in subsection (6), the date on which the voting period closes is polling day"

To have a postal referendum poll close on election day would be almost as good as holding it with the general election, in terms of reminding people of her arrogant interference in ordinary lives and decisions. Only downside would be the $millions wasted on the postal poll, instead of combining it.

John Armstrong’s piece in this morning’s Herald pointed out that the whole 1984 snap election was organised in 4 weeks.

Clark’s reasons are now like a strip tease veil. More amusing and attention-getting than nakedness. A simple "it will be separate from the election because $10m and the criticism are still less to me than having my short-memory voters being reminded of my contempt for their values" would scarcely gain as much attention (and now ridicule).

H Clark’s arrogance could be countered by a vote in Parliament.

As the DomPost reports it – "Asked yesterday why [the referendum] could not be held alongside the election, which must be held by November 15, Miss Clark replied: "Just in terms of sheer organisation, I do not think that is possible."

Parliament could call her on her contemptible lie. Under section 22AA (5) of the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993, if:

• (a) a general election must be held on a date that is within 12 months after the date on which the indicative referendum petition is presented to the House of Representatives (because of section 17 of the Constitution Act 1986); and

• (b) the House of Representatives passes a resolution requiring the indicative referendum to be held on the polling day for the general election.

[Tomorow] I am to speak to the AGM of the Wellington Housing Trust . They’ll be genuinely concerned about housing our poorest .

If Bernard Hickey’s post  is right, perhaps our poorest will be able to squat in empty homes in a few years. The Baby Boomer generation’s economically contributing children are being ejected (those with iinternationally valued skills). They put down roots and make lives elsewhere. They won’t be here to buy the Boomers homes at their artificially inflated values. 

Nor will they come back to share a land with their uneducated peers not valuable enough to be wanted internationally, when the voting Boomers are still trying desperately to find enough taxpayers to support their age subsidies and services.

Bernard’s post is vintage stuff.

The unprecedented housing boom between early 2002 and November 2007 has essentially triggered an enormous intergenerational transfer of wealth. The few  in the 18-45 generation who managed to take on enormous debt to buy a house must now live with it for decades. It will cripple their lifestyles until they retire, particularly now other costs such as petrol and food have risen sharply to wipe out any meagre cushion of spare disposable income some may have had. The rest who couldn’t afford to buy are now locked out.

Yet the Baby Boomers who already owned houses with low debt have seen an enormous increase in their personal net wealth because of the rise in house prices. The chart above shows that the value of New Zealand’s housing stock rose around $350 billion to around $600 billion over that five-year period of the housing boom.

The guts of the story is this. Baby Boomers got rich at the expense of some of the next generation taking on enormous debt and at the expense of the rest of that next generation knowing they will never know what it is like to own their own home.

If the grandparents I’m meeting as I canvas Wellington Central were adept on the internet. I’d urge them to read it to understand who’s causing their sorrow over the oceans between them and their grandchildren –

In essence, central and local governments arranged a brace of policies and tax incentives so that the value of the assets they personally held rose sharply. The opening up of new land for housing was restricted to protect the value of existing housing, boosting land prices. New building regulations were changed and the debacle of leaky buildings increased new home construction costs sharply.

The coup de grace was the introduction of the 39% tax rate, which sparked a frenzy of property investing through family trusts and LAQCs (Loss Attributing Qualifying Companies). These structures and that investment was aimed at avoiding the new rate and was bigger than any other investment craze seen in the history of this country.

And Bernard’s prescription –

First, they need to pass a capital gains tax on investment properties. Let’s stop mucking around. It distorts our investment appetites. It is unfair that we don’t have one. It should be imposed. The collective groaning, wailing and gnashing of false teeth will be enormous.  But it must be done or else (I’ll talk about the “or else” later down).

Second, the highest personal tax rate, the family trust tax rate and the company tax rate should be equalised to a single rate. My pick would be 30% longer term, but find a single rate and stick to it. That would end this nutty obsession with family trusts and LAQCs at the stroke of a pen, sucking some of the false demand for residential investment property out of the house price bubble.

Finally, the government, city and regional councils must aggressively open up new land for new housing and fund the infrastructure of roads, rail, parks and schools needed to support those new houses. We need a supply shock to help drag these house prices lower."

Comments on Bernard’s post take issue with some of his prescription, including the capital gains tax, contributing to a worthwhile discussion.

Is there a "breakthrough" on the Transmission Gully route, or just in Annette King’s political communication strategy? After months of being missing in action with her Police portfolio in flames, she’s broken through to the front page with a good news story, without even needing any news.

I’ve been keenly interested in the Gully project for years. I’ve read the reports and analysis released by Transit over those years. I can’t see what has been ‘broken through’ in today’s DomPost front page story.

Annette King and Darren Hughes seem to have persuaded the paper that some design changes are worth trumpeting, but until there is enough money to do  the upgrades elsewhere in the region with much higher paybacks (and urgency in terms of traffic delays) it is unlikely that the local Mayors will reach a consensus on spending everything on the Gully.

I’m intrigued nevertheless. I’ve walked the length of the proposed route. When the estimated costs jumped from under half a billion to $1bn it was not easy to see exactly what had changed, other than the evironmental gold-plating.

I wonder whether that is what is altered in the secret re-alignments.

Our 1955 VW makes people smile wherever we go, including in Kelburn yesterday while I canvassed door-to-door.

 An anonymous enthusiast left a note steering me to the website of John, the expert who restored our Kafer to its pristine condition.

Here’s a gallery page of photos, including one of the commemorative toy that inspired John’s colour scheme. The toy was issued in 1955, the year of registration in New Zealand of our car, to mark the production of the 1,000,000th Kafer.

The car has also attracted the attention of  "skinny" the photographer who noticed the American provenance of the ‘typical kiwi family’ in H Clark’s recent "To-the-Householder. 

 Someone also took the trouble to leave on the car a Kombined VW Club Wellington card.

Cathy was surrounded by VW Beetles in university days (four at one flat). I did the ‘Round Europe OE trip" in a Kombi, and we had a family Beetle for a while, but I had no idea of the depth of enthusiasm they still command.

Before the swim (red shorts)

After the swim.

Must do it more often……not.