Wellington is enormously exposed to loss from blackouts. We’ll suffer millions in losses from brown-outs and black-outs. We depend on our computers and broadband links. This is where the Peter Jackson industry sits, it holds the most creative of New Zealand’s IT and ICT clusters, and modern government can not function when the power is off.

National’s Energy spokesman Gerry Brownlee has summarised the paralells with the last crisis in 2003.

“The only reason David Parker appears to be holding off on announcing a conservation campaign is because it is election year, and Labour is entirely responsible for the $230 million Electricity Commission which was supposed to guard against these 1-in-60 dry year conservation campaigns.”

In mid-April 2003 lake levels were around 65% of average for the time of year. The winter taskforce called for a savings target of 10% led by a $2.6 million advertising blitz.  By the end of May the lake levels were up to 78% of normal, but the campaign for savings continued.By 6 June the lakes were up to 84% of average and Patrick Strange dropped the arm on the electricity risk meter from ‘extreme’ to ‘high’ and praised Kiwis for saving 10% over the previous couple of months.”

Labour’s election strategy is a ‘double or quits’ gamble, but our Council should not be tolerating that risk to our economy. They should be demanding an immediate conservation strategy. They should show leadership the governement will not show, by starting immediately their own conservation drive.

As Gerry Brownlee points out – “Hydro lake levels are now lower than they were leading up to the winter crisis of 2003, but by this time of the year in 2003, advertising and a full-blown conservation campaign were already underway”.

This city need not passively wait for disaster. It should step in where central government politicians are putting their re-election prospects above the interest of this city.

The DomPost headline suggests more than one Wellington City councillor has attacked Constable Gommans’ initiative in dressing taggers in pink. But the story mentions only Iona Pannett, and it does not explain how the Constable ensures his offenders accept the ‘punishment’.

It is probably a condition of diversion or otherwise dropping formal charges.  We need to know more, because progressive mayors all over the country are seeking effective powers for their local police, so that these experiments do not depend on the leadership of a few brave community constables.   TV 3’s “Make or Break” programme on Monday evening about the Wairoa ‘boot camp’ left the same unanswered question.

I’ll follow this up, but let’s consider Iona Pannett for the moment.

She demeans the Nazis’ victims. She equates their uninvited and undeserved suffering before horrible deaths, to minor embarassments for ferals who deliberately set out to make our city uglier and more crime inducing. I’m familiar with that Labour/Green technique in Parliament. Instead of arguing the merits they accuse their opponents of moral leprosy. For years it worked, to scare off support for their opponents.

On this issue it has ceased to work. Those of us who support Constable Gommans’ initiative need not and will not apologise.

On the collapse of civility the left have no answers, and no moral compass to look for answers. Ordinary people are fed up with the results of our 30 year criminal justice experiment in apologising to feral people. Shame is the first and most effective and mildest defence of every culture  against those tempted to take instead of making. Cheats and bullies are routinely discouraged in healthy societies by the shame they bring on themselves and their families. With name suppression and secret youth courts we’ve abandoned that first level restraint. So of course we’re now forced into debating more formal and harsh punishments in an attempt to restore respect for others as the prevailing norm.

Still, the insults will work for Pannett. She defeated the hard-working and sensible Alex Shaw by remorseless attention to name recognition. Enough voters will remember at the next election only that they’ve heard of her.

I wonder, nevertheless about her values. I’d hoped more of her. Many leftists consciously or unconsciously shrilly accuse others of their own fault (authoritarianism) to drown their self doubt as well as their opponents’ arguments. Their contempt for ordinary values is camouflaged by upping the rhetorical stakes, with a technique that simultaneously avoids engagement with the argument. Wasn’t it the national socialists who raised to an art the strategy of turning their opponents into moral lepers before eliminating them? She’s working in that fine leftist tradition though I’m sure she’s hoping for no more than an electoral elimination of her targets.

[For a sustained thread on this topic see Kiwiblog’s post and comments. I should have looked there first]

Wellington Rugby League crew at the Sportsperson of the Year Awards

I’ve been eating for victory this week with another outstanding dinner on Thursday at the Wellington Sportsperson of the Year awards.  These awards functions are vital in Wellington’s sense of itself as a distinct and vibrant cultural city.  The DomPost sponsorship of this and other events like the Wellington Gold Awards is a key element.

At the Sports dinner I enjoyed getting to know Hon. Winnie Laban’s husband.  Winnie (pictured above) had two tickets in the competition.  She is the patron of Wellington Rugby League, of which I’m chairman.  We were proud to have Wainuiomata Rugby League Club as a finalist in the Team of the Year category.  But it was with her other hat, as patron of the Titahi Bay Surf Life Saving Club that she had a winner, the men’s legendary boat crew.

With four sports-mad children, I appreciate what is behind each finalist at the Sports Awards – the sacrifices, triumphs, tears, injuries and friendships, as well as the coaches, families and other support.  We celebrated them all, but I must admit to pleasure at seeing one of our our surf life saving and swimmer daughter’s best friends, Tash Hind, being named Sportswoman of the Year and their coach, Gary Hurring of Capital Swim Club, honoured as a finalist.  Tash was Competitor of the Meet at the German Cup Surf Life Saving competition this year and would be going to the Surf Life Saving World Cup in Germany, except that she’s also made the New Zealand Olympic Swimming Team in the 4 x 200m relay.

Gary has coached them both at swimming since they were youngsters, Tash’s father, Steve Hind, got them up surfing at Lyall Bay and Mahia, and the wonderful Marilyn Moffatt of Lyall Bay Surf Life Saving Club saw their potential and pushed them into surf competiton.  They’ve both represented New Zealand at surf life saving in the pool in winning teams.  The only thing they haven’t done yet is persuade Steve Hind to lend them his VW Kombi van for a summer road trip.

I’ve just been told by Chinese friends that the amount raised by the Wellington Chinese community for the earthquake victims in China, at a fundraising dinner at the Grand Century Restaurant in Tory Street on Wednesday, was $12,500.  The money will go to the New Zealand Red Cross and then directly to the Chinese Red Cross, which has 20 million volunteers.

It was heart-warming to see how  many different Chinese groups, originally from many different parts of the region, including Taiwan, mainland China, Malaysia, Hong Kong and New Zealand,  came together to take tables at the dinner and contribute to the cause.  The food was excellent too.  As always, the Chinese make fundraising and eating well go together well.

It was a night for eating and drinking as I’d also been to speak at a Thank the Sponsors night for the Randwick Rugby League Club at the Chicago Bar.  I’ll follow up with Kevin Eder of Tradestaff  (the major sponsor) his proposals for improving modern apprenticeships.  His company Tradestaff is a major employer of young apprentices. 

The Economist picked the Anglo world housing bubble years ago. They’ve been tracking it, and the latest report identifies Australia and New Zealand as still dangerously overpriced (though the data seems to predate the recent downturn).

“Two other markets at risk are Australia and New Zealand. Since 1997 house prices have risen faster in Australia than New Zealand, but Goldman reckons that the latter is more vulnerable. Real house prices are 82% higher than they were in the last quarter of 1999, and have risen by 70% relative to household income, the biggest increase in all the countries Goldman has surveyed.”

The Economist does not point the finger of responsibility. Owen McShane is in no doubt – local government.

 “… local councils, here and around the world, that adopted Smart Growth or other policies which constrain the supply of land and promote high compliance costs, are largely (indeed almost entirely) responsible for the housing bubbles which have afflicted so many markets in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Consequently, those local governments and their agencies are equally responsible for the bursting of the bubble and the consequent damage to the financial sector, and of course to the dreams of millions of families who risk of losing their homes or their life savings.

“. An economy in recession depends on a flexible and responsive economy to allow people to begin to re-invest in their future as soon as they recover from their loss of confidence. Consequently, Councils here and elsewhere must reverse their policies and do everything they can to increase the supply of land and reduce compliance costs so that people do not need to take out a mortgage just to pay the costs of “manufacturing” a new lot, or of getting a new building consent. In cities and districts throughout New Zealand the costs of application, of consultants reports, of peer reviews, of reserve contributions, of roading and development contributions, and of testing and monitoring, typically add up to over $50,000 a residential lot. Many Councils want these fees, charges and contributions paid up-front, either on granting of consent, or prior to issuing any title, rather than out of sales.”

Our personal experience backs Owen.

We recently gained resource consent to replace our falling down garage with a new one, and a granny flat over, similar to one our neighbours built a few years ago. It has taken four years from the first approach to the Council, and $35k in fees, largely to experts we’ve been obliged to consult. Our neighbours have consented to each plan submitted. As well as the architects we’ve had a specialist traffic engineer, street designer, urban planner, and a consent consultant. That includes no lawyer costs, as I stayed out of the fray to reduce the chance that the objections came from “politics” within the Council.

That was simply to get the resource consent – only now is the architect doing the plans for the next stage, building consent.

The attack by Foreman’s lawyer, Bruce Squire QC, on the Police investigation into Jack Nicholas’ murder may serve Foreman’s interest in steering suspicion elsewhere, but mouthing now stinks when Foreman would not risk saying anything while the jury were listening. Foreman hid behind the right to silence at the trial.

He has the right to speak now, but we are equally entitled to judge from when he chooses to open his mouth, and when he does not.

A pity the jury did not draw their own conclusions from Foreman’s failure to risk being questioned on his behaviour the morning Jack was shot. The Court seeking the truth should have heard from the witness best placed to explain what he was up to.

There is a circuit-breaker Labour could use for this election, but will not.

If they acknowledged that welfare had warped from its founders’ dreams to become the destroyer of personal pride, of our national work ethic, of family strength, and even of race relations, and promised to provide only sustenance in kind (not cash) to able-bodied working age people without dependants, the effect would be like Dr Brash’s Orewa speech.

I wondered for a moment whether that was Dr Cullen’s cunning plan when I heard that he’d talked recently about benefits in kind (food stamps?) but I’ve seen no more signs of his kite.  The woeful government response to Dr van Herck confirms that in Labour, thinking on welfare policy has remained taboo since the ‘deserving’ became anathema under the 1972 government.

Such a dramatic u-turn by Labour would free hundreds of thousands of timid New Zealanders to say what they’d been thinking, as confirmed by courageous Dr Tom van Herck. It would re-capture for Labour many votes from the industrious immigrant communities who hate seeing their childrens’ values undermined by money with no strings. It would end the current situation where National does not need to announce policy, for it would only distract voters from Labour’s moral squalor. It would drag over that squalor the tattered blanket of the decency that drove the stern men who conceived the welfare state as help for the deserving poor, not the lazy and the anti-social.

I assume it would outflank National (though our policy is yet to be announced).

So National’s Judith Collins (who should justly be proud of her role in leading to the current Vietnam apologies) is not likely to be left to shout “told you so” as welfare policy is made a centre point of this election.

This morning’s editorial dongs Joris de Bres’ menacing of the Massey academic and the newspaper for daring to publish a research report casting doubt on the net value to New Zealand of Pacific immigration. It does not call for his sacking, but should have, for two reasons – incompetence, and conflict of interests:

• His incompetence is maximising the damage he fears from that research. It would die as a one day wonder without his PC indignation, because most authority figures who could give it oxygen are too pusillanimous to go near immigration matters. We never debate the policy issues that are now convulsing much of Europe. But now we have Joris. Nothing is more certain to give wider publicity to the research than a heresy trial. The church could end the debate by killing Galileo, but de Bres can’t have the last word that way. If he was not so PC dumb he’d have let the allegedly shonky research become yesterday’s news with no comment.
• Joris de Bres does not only have a race relations role. He is also a Human Rights Commissioner. Freedom of speech is one of their baseline concerns . Though largely comprising PC time servers the Commission did stand up against the EFA. Joris is now giving the country a lesson on just how freedom of speech (and academic freedom) can be threatened by the state. 

Plaudits for the DomPost. It fits with their courage in publishing the affidavit material on the Tuhoe terrrorist charges, and their criticism of the EFA.

Between them the Herald and the DomPost have resurrected a proud tradition of newspapers – risking state attack to stand up for freedom of speech.

Last night’s VUW Debating Society debate was a pleasure. I’m tired of “celebrity debating” and debates where witty insult crowds out genuine dialectic.

So it was good to see 6 people earnestly trying to persuade the audience of the rights and wrongs of parental choice in education.

For those against choice – John Minto’s envy and bitterness came through all his attempts to lighten up.  The Principal’s Association contribution led me to hope that they’ve given up the struggle and don’t mind being seen to go through the motions. Grant Robertson showed some debating talent until he had to go back to his dreary Party instruction notes, which did not seem to convince him either.

On the pro-choice side – Roger Kerr was informative, as could be expected and Heather Roy MP showed ACT’s usual creative use of props (vouchers were distributed, called ‘scholarships’).

The star was Stephen Whittington.  I’d love to see how he’d have gone taking the negative. Part of his effectiveness was  conviction, so it would be fascinating to see how much of that advocacy skill would survive arguing for a hopeless case.

The audience questions at the end probed (ineffectively) the tender spot in the argument on both sides – whether free choice would diminish or increase the assumed social cohesion effect of public schooling. That theory lay behind the US Supreme Court’s now discredited ruling in favour of school bussing.

The negative implicitly asserted that more choice would increase today’s divisions among schools on wealth lines. It is hard to see how. Education choice today is strictly on mortgage servicing capacity. What neither side teased out were the poosible effects on divisions on ethnic, religious or other class lines. Should parents be free to choose a Madrasseh, where the kids could learn little more than that killing infidels is the route to heaven?

The pro-choice speakers should have been forced by the negative to say whether they thought there was a legitimate  community interest in limiting that kind of market ‘specialisation”. On the other side the anti-choice team should have been forced to explain why, if that concern is  legitimate, they’re tolerating the disastrous current stratification on decile lines, and  the current education philosphy that simply excuses or disguises failure. 

I see no reason for our present state schools to claim they’re part of the solution to social splintering. Zoning is  energetically hacking at the foundations of our classless society. NCEA guarantees that the old school tie will gain increasing importance, as employers cease to rely on the “objective” credential. But even assuming that schools were maintaining our egalitarian socialisation, at what point should that objective transcend the parent’s right to choose what their kids learn, and with whom? That is the true choice question.

Judging from last night, the left, and especially the teaching establishment, is too poorly educated even to frame the questions, let alone pursue the arguments.

I was not aware until late last evening of a passing claim on Kiwiblog, that I had been a communist. DPF was wrong, though I can understand both his impression (because I went to Mao’s China in 1976 to try to experience life on a commune), and perhaps his feeling that having been communist would be just historical trivia.

But it matters a great deal to me. Then and now I regard(ed)  leftist dupes as dangerous and often unpleasant fools. When Warren Freer procured for my travelling companion Jenny visas for China for both of us, with terms and other conditions that even the dedicated worshippers in the NZ China Friendship Society could not get,  it was the first of many delicious ironies, for I’d always seen them as dupes, and most of them would have seen me as “unreliable” if not a “capitalist roader”.

I can understand that these distinctions may seem trivial to David Farrar’s generation. They’ve grown up after Reagan defanged the monster. For them Stalin and his successors, and  Mao are historical monstrosities. They’ve never had to fear them. The remnant Kim Il Sung II (Kim Jung Il)  is a cartoon dictator, scary in a ‘monsters under the bed’  way (maybe they exist and could really catch and eat children who can’t leap into bed over the end) but David’s generation missed out on feeling that particular evil could triumph. They can’t know how close it felt at times.

I saw the fear of many people obliged to speak to us in China. In my mornings with Rewi Alley in Peking he explained the soldiers at the door, and his long house arrest by the Gang of Four.

I’d always detested the supercilious certainty of the various schools of communist who contended to stand at the top of their intellectual dung heap. Though  I argued with my parents against the Vietnam war, and for Norman Kirk’s ohu scheme, and other Labour soft socialist policy, I did not regard ANZUS as superfluous. Until I went to China I could think that Maoism was a necessary phase to end a corrupt feudalist oligarchy there, but never that communism was for New Zealand or any other people who were not desperate.

I can remember only one Communist who I could like socially (Peter Wilson, VUW Student Association President who was later assigned by the Party to work in a car assembly plant and join the Territorials, then committed suicide when it all proved to be fruitless).

Among the earnest Strelnikovs who infested leftist university politics were Don and Peter Franks. We have no known family connection, but people got us mixed in their minds. They were hard left and in reality they had nothing to do with me because we were on different sides, even then.  I came to know Peter a little after University days, and like him, but still do not know Don beyond a social ‘gidday’. His clique shunned people they regarded as class enemies. Today he is more polite than then. 

David Farrar’s generation can only know intellectually about the era when it was a genuine security risk to have universities everywhere full of willing dupes of Communism ( their dreary successors’ instinctive collectivism now  is merely evidence of the intellectual quality problem in higher education). But at the time the distinctions between liberal left and communist were very important. It seemed at the time unlikely that the US intellectual right would face down their own and the European intellectual left.

I regard the difference as important still. To me, to have been a communist remains evidence of credulity and a weakness for power and cruelty.