Bright Wings

Safe National Wairarapa seat challenge

Sitting Wairarapa MP John Hayes will need to look to his laurels with the possibility of multi-million dollar investment banker Alistair Scott challenging him for his seat.

According to Stuff, National sources said Mr Scott, 44, made no secret of his interest in the seat at the recent National Party conference.

At the last election MP John Hayes was, I recall,  the lowest ranking sitting MP on the National Party list (number 50), and his performance in the Wairarapa - an area with huge potential - has been somewhat lacklustre.

The Wairarapa needs strong and influential representation in Parliament.  Alistair Scott, with a strong international business background, may be just the person to lift local business investment and development.

Mr Scott lives in Wellington, but owns Matahiwi Estate Winery, north of Masterton,  in which locals believe he has invested $30 million.  He also sits on the Wairarapa Regional Irrigation Trust  and the Wairarapa Development Group.

He is a former top manager at Credit Suisse.

Special needs funding to be maintained

The Herald reports that funding for special needs children with physical disabilities is to be maintained for those children who currently in the funding scheme. Minister of Education, Anne Tolley, has restored funding following representations from parents, schools and sector representatives. No new children will be added to the present scheme.

This is a victory for Dalefield School principal, Kevin Jephson, who has been campaigning on behalf of Wiki Tamihana (see my earlier post).  Wiki's high health needs funding - which paid for a teacher aide so she could attend school -  had been withdrawn.

Worthwhile reading

A couple of interesting items on Stuff:

Michael Laws on How MPs rort a nation - the perks of being an MP.

Contrast this with the work of Julie Helson, who is providing practical support for children in need through her charity KidsCan.  This charity meets children's most basic needs - a raincoat, shoes, socks and food through 100 schools in New Zealand.  TV3 is holding a Telethon to support this practical initiative next month.

Rogernomics rebranded

Chris Trotter observes the National Government is revisiting neo-liberal reforms.

The political challenge confronting the present National Government is to convince New Zealand voters that the economic and social models guiding government policy for the past nine years have become [similarly] exhausted, and that the case for striking out in a bold new direction is unassailable.

Rogernomics has been dusted off and recycled.

The Government’s advice-stream, coming as it does from many of the same people who ushered in the first round of Rogernomics, is as narrow as it is familiar: increase the flexibility of the labour market; slash government spending; further deregulate the economy; and extend privatisation into health, education, welfare and housing. Unfortunately, such policies – essentially Rogernomics, Round II – are wildly unpopular with the voters, whose memories of Rogernomics, Round I, are mostly extremely unhappy ones.

It may have been an exceptionally silly expectation, but a majority of New Zealanders really do seem to have believed that, in voting for the Key-led National Party, they were voting for a government committed to pursuing all the usual economic objectives: full employment; rising living standards; enhanced social security; in a new way.

But, the Government’s so-far-unassailable popularity will not endure if the electorate looks at all the recent signs: the Business Roundtable’s promotion of a privatised welfare system; the Treasury’s advice to civil servants to slay themselves, or be slain; the appointment of Don Brash to lead a study into productivity; and concludes that the supposedly rehabilitated National Party is actually hell-bent on achieving economic recovery the old way.

Read the full story here

Folic acid

Every news report about the folic acid debate is accompanied by footage of thousands of loaves of white bread on their way through the factory.

One of the better health initatives of the Churchill government during the Second World War was to ban flour refining. Everyone had to eat wholemeal bread/cakes, etc.

While the beleaguered British were doggedly chomping through wholesome wholemeal products, they were also getting their share of folate, and other nutritional goodies.

Up and down the country nutritional experts decry white bread as "empty calories."  How about a long-term programme to encourage people to eat wholemeal bread?

Over 20 years the culture of smoking has changed from being acceptable everywhere, to the miserable few huddled in the cold at outside tables.  Changing eating habits will probably take as long.

For a start, how about suggesting to pregnant women that they try Vogel's instead of sliced white?

NZ First resurrected in Wairarapa

You have to admire the determination of the Wairarapa Branch of New Zealand First. 

The Times-Age reports

Wairarapa supporters of New Zealand First have the wind in their sails and are gearing up for another crack at winning the seat now that founder and party guru Winston Peters has emerged from political obscurity.

The party machinery in Wairarapa has kicked into full gear with branch chairman George Groombridge, who is also party president, pledging a full-on drive to bolster membership and to try and wrest Wairarapa away from incumbent National MP John Hayes.

Chris Trotter provides thoughtful comment on Winston Peters' impeccable timing in emerging from the political wilderness just as the Foreshore and Seabed argument is being revisited.

The vexed question of imprisonment

Dame Sian Elias' speech to the Wellington Branch of the Law Society - the 2009 Annual Shirley Smith Address - has generated a media circus.

Her speech chronicles the change in thinking about the penal system - from earlier attempts at rehabilitation to a more punative system, to placing victims at the centre of the judicial system.

So, who is our typical inmate?  Dame Sian quotes Lord Bingham, a former Chief Justice of England:

He is usually male, and often of low intelligence, and addicted to drugs or alcohol, frequently from a young age. His family history will often include parental conflict and separation; a lack of parental supervision; harsh or erratic discipline; and evidence of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

At school he will have achieved no qualification of any kind, and will probably have been aggressive and troublesome, often leading to his exclusion or to truancy.

The background will be one of poverty, poor housing, instability, association with delinquent peers and unemployment.

Dame Sian adds that in New Zealand

prisoners have been found to have significantly higher rates of mental disorder than the rate to be found in the community.

It is 25 years this week since the Lange Government took over from Muldoon, and much protected industry was decimated by removal of import restrictions and the move to a market economy.

Prior to that it was okay to leave school at 15 because a job in a factory - for life - awaited the minimally educated.  Dad was home by 4.30 pm and Mum had tea on the table at 6, unless they had a big bill to pay in which case Dad did a bit of extra overtime.

Society was relatively stable. Wage rates reflected the prevailing  "Jack's as good as his master" philosophy and the Protestant work ethic ruled.

The decimation of the manufacturing industry led to huge numbers of unemployed who had few marketable skills.  Some of these became the long-term unemployed and their children, and their children's children, have grown up in dysfunctional homes where parents have little grasp of parenting skills, and where addictions and violence is the norm.

Maternity units went from somewhere where a mother (who may not have attended ante natal classes) could spend 10 days or so learning baby husbandry, feeding, and bonding with her baby, to mothers leaving hospital within 24 hours of birth with no skills or strategies for coping with endless, crying babies.  The National Government is - thank goodness - planning to address this issue with longer stays.

Enraged, high P addicts are beyond reason and - no matter how punative sentencing becomes - are not going to carefully weigh the consequences of a violent attack against the sentence they're likely to get.

There are no easy answers and both the Police and Justice system have an unenviable task.

It would be nice to think the various viewpoints on how we deal with those who commit crimes could sit down and listen to each other. I suspect that's not going to happen.

Foolish behaviour by Masterton Councillors

The Wairarapa Times-Age has a disturbing report about a formal complaint laid against Masterton District Councillor Brent Goodwin.

Aratoi director Marcus Boroughs has laid a formal complaint, accusing Mr Goodwin and other councillors Roddy McKenzie and Chris Peterson of intimidating the temporary female worker at a meeting at Café Strada.

Mr Boroughs said the girl had arranged to meet Mr McKenzie to talk about a temporary job on his Mauriceville farm and first assumed the other two men were farm workers.

Mr Goodwin has admitted he offered the worker free movie tickets in exchange for "accurate" visitor counts at Aratoi, and has also claimed full responsibility for the approach, stressing the other two councillors are innocent.

Irrespective of whether the formal complaint has any basis, it is never a good idea for councillors to meet junior staff members of an organisation which has a contract with the Council behind the back of that organisation's management.  Whatever the reason.

Councillors need to remind themselves of one of the key planks of their own Code of Conduct which states:

Honesty and Integrity - Members should not place themselves in situations where
their honesty and integrity may be questioned, should not behave improperly and
should on all occasions avoid the appearance of such behaviour.

According to the Code of Conduct, complaints are to be heard by the Conduct Review Committee. The results of their findings will be awaited with interest.

Primary principals fear school ranking

Primary school prinicipals fear ranking by media if publication of school literacy and numeracy results planned for next year goes ahead.

Stuff reports

New Zealand Principals' Federation president Ernie Buutveld yesterday told his national conference in Palmerston North that principals were "deeply concerned" by the standards.

In a federation survey of 1000 primary school principals, 77 per cent indicated they would withhold figures if releasing them meant the media could produce tables ranking schools.

Only 2 per cent had no problem with the standards, Buutveld said.

Publication of secondary school NCEA "league" tables has caused huge dislocation and problems within the secondary sector. 

A primary school in a leafy suburb is always going to get good results. Some schools in more economically deprived areas are up against a high turnover of pupils caused by parents struggling to find on-going accommodation, parents who can't help students with homework because they can't read themselves, students who come to school hungry, students with learning disabilities, family dysfunction, etc.

Nobody disagrees that children should leave primary school without a good grasp of literacy and numeracy, but for schools in deprived areas, who are already struggling, this must sound like beatings-will-continue-till-morale-improves.

No hope for those at the bottom of the education heap

"Cabbage" unit standards may be dropped from NCEA in an effort to improve the NCEA's status as a respectable education qualification. In future NCEA will be based on curriculum subjects, although schools can separately offer non-curriculum subjects as unit standards.

This is great news for all the kids - and their parents - in higher decile schools with good NCEA pass rates, but not so good for those at the other end of the economic spectrum.

Some years ago I worked with a "transition" class in a Decile One school; those who had attempted - and failed - some School Certificate subjects.  A well-meaning teacher had helped them prepare CVs. As the template was designed around trumpeting academic success, these CVs screamed "Failure!"

I asked the class to identify in turn the individual qualities of each class member. The skills they identified in each other included the "soft skills" increasingly required in business today, such as always completing a task, completing tasks on time, focussing on the task in hand, encouraging and supportive of teammates, and a friendly and approachable manner.

We then re-wrote their CVs with bullet points outlining their qualities. At the bottom of the CV we noted that they had "sat" various subjects. These kids suddenly saw themselves in a more positive light and several of them landed jobs shortly afterwards.

It is perfectly possible for a student to get excellent grades in curriculum NCEA subjects, but be sadly lacking in ability to communicate effectively or work as part of a team.  We need to find a way to measure these skills as they are the ones business needs.

Texting truckies

With the Government advocating heavier trucks (see my earlier post), I hope there's no truth to rumours I keep hearing about truckies texting to pass the time on long trips.

44 to 50 tonnes of truck and trailer hurtling down the highway, with the driver's attention diverted elsewhere, doesn't really bear thinking about.

Bigger trucks not the answer

Transport Minister Steven Joyce appears to have picked up and run with an international campaign by the trucking industry to increase truck size from 44 to 50 tonnes.

The US Coalition for Transportation Productivity is currently lobbying Congress for a similar size increase.

Stuff reports that Steven Joyce as saying that

allowing truckies to carry heavier loads on some roads could boost GDP by up to $500 million a year.

He notes that trials were undertaken during 2008 and that carrying bigger loads

could boost productivity by 10 to 20 percent, reduce trip numbers by 16 percent and see fuel use drop by 20 percent.

Joyce's assertion of economic benefits fails to take account of a couple of key infrastructural issues - an expensive-to-maintain, winding, narrow roading system in New Zealand which is ill-suited to large trucks, together with an under-utilised rail network.

I'm the first to agree that rail isn't the answer to everything but - leaving aside urgent deliveries, livestock and some perishable items - a goods train, with one locomotive and one driver, can move an awful lot of stuff at once.

Wairarapa residents are only too aware of the problem of large trucks. The "inland port" at Waingawa is under-utilised, while logging trucks carry large and precarious loads over the Rimutaka Hill. They deposit logs right alongside the railway siding on the Wellington wharves.

If Waingawa was used as intended - as a transport hub - local truckies could pick up and deliver much currently wearing out the Rimutaka Hill.

I'd have liked to have seen results of the 2008 heavy truck trials - and comparison with the economics of using rail - but the NZ Transport Agency site only contained technical details of the proposed change.

Different media standards for Churchill

Working out the cost and value of each trip undertaken by Cabinet Ministers and MPs is an ongoing occupation for the media. Woe betide anyone who appears to be using an overseas trip as an opportunity to do some tourist stuff.

I've been reading Richard Hough's biography Winston and Clementine: the triumph of the Churchills (1990).  This puts current travel excesses by modern politicians completely in the shade.

In 1911 Churchill was given the Cabinet post of First Lord of the Admiralty.

With the job came the Admiralty Yacht, The Enchantress, a 3500 ton ship.  Winston and Clementine, together with a huge party of family and friends, used the boat for a lengthy touristy tour of the Mediterranean and to have a look at various naval bases.

Clementine loved it, not only for its comfort and the attention she received from the yacht's company, but because she could entertain as lavishly as Winston could wish at no expense to themselves.

While some naval business was discussed, this seems secondary to tourist activities, such as visiting Napolean's house on Elba, touring Pompeii, entertaining guests and playing bridge.

As this beautiful yacht, stocked with the finest provisions and wines, provided with every comfort, manned by a picked crew, cruised from island to island and port to port, each passenger followed his or her inclination.

The media today receives a lot of criticism, but their assiduousness in tracking politicians' overseas travel activity may well be saving some taxpayer money.

Insight into Richard Worth saga

David Farrar (Kiwiblog) has cut through the political who-said-what and media hype surrounding Richard Worth in a good backgrounder in NBR, The fall and fall of Richard Worth.  

When news of his resignation broke there was speculation on a number of fronts as to the reason:

The sad reality for Dr Worth is that there were so many things it could have been. It could have been about his Indian business dealings. It could have been about the high profile defamation case he is a witness in. It could have been about his visit to a crime victim, despite knowing the assailants’ family. It could have been about his Korean business dealings. Or it could have been something to do with a woman.

He ends:

Until the exact nature of the criminal allegations are known, it is premature to say he will definitely go as an MP. But I have to say it is hard to imagine he will ever attend a National Caucus meeting again.

Ratepayer apathy challenged

The Wairarapa Times-Age reports Councillor Jeff Workman is on a mission to improve communication between the Masterton District Council and ratepayers.

This is a real challenge.  As a former staff member for a metropolitan local authority I understand his frustration.  Local authorities spend a small fortune telling their ratepayers what they're planning to do (consultation) and seeking feedback.  And getting almost none.

Much of the essential work of a local authority is around infrastructure; boring, uninteresting things like replacing sewers, sealing roads. Even putting in a new sewage treatment facility.  

Residents may grizzle when their rates rise to cover the cost of some essential infrastructure service, but few put pen to paper, or attend public meetings.  

The Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) is an expensive and time-consuming exercise local authorities must undertake to ensure that they are thinking and planning ahead in a way that will meet present and future needs of their community.  It is my experience that it is terribly difficult to interest the public, despite a council's best efforts.

People will react much more strongly to something where there is an emotional attachment.  The saga of the Greytown Town Hall, where locals fought tooth and nail to retain the building as a town hall - even though it was so run down that it was only used a couple of times a year, is a case in point.

The Masterton District Council website is worthy, but boring. A branding exercise for Masterton District Council, with new logo and style guide - and a makeover for the website - would help.  Carterton District Council is leading the way here with a smart logo and impressive, modern website.

Maternity upgrade

Discussions on the $103 million upgrade to maternity services on Checkpoint - and Homepaddock - included the suggestion that better use is made of the old concept of "lying-in homes,"  where mothers with new babies spent a couple of weeks getting breastfeeding established, gaining confidence in managing the baby and - most importantly - having a bit of a rest.

Greater contact with the mother - both during pregnancy and after delivery might also give lead carers and GPs an opportunity to spot any family dysfunction that might need to be addressed, particularly with unplanned teenage pregnancies where the young parent(s) are unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with a young baby.  It might even prevent some cases of abuse of young children.

The picture is of a 1950s bed jacket, typically knitted for young mothers to wear while they were in the maternity home.