liberation

The drinking age

Kiwiblog has put together a list of the minimum alcohol purchase age in OECD countries. They are: 
14 years: Switzerland
16 years: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey
17 years: Cyprus, Luxembourg
18 years: Australia, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, UK
19 years: South Korea
20 years: Iceland, Japan
21 years: USA

If NZ shifts from 18 to 20 then we will be at the more socially conservative end of the OECD spectrum on this. Sometimes I wonder whether a minimum drinking age is necessary at all. I understand that in many countries where there are no such age laws, there are no significant negative consequences (if not the opposite). And as kiwiblog points out in an earlier posting, in New Zealand there ‘is in fact no age restriction on when people can drink alcohol if done on private property.’ So, do we really need to restrict who drinks in a supervised public venue?

Trotter turns left in wanting Labour to go left

Chris Trotter has made a turn to the left in suggesting in his latest column that the Labour Party should make a turn to the left. After months spent defending the party in trouble, Trotter now gently suggests their government is doomed if they don't come up with some radical vision. He points out that all of Labour's so-called policy trophies actually originate from other parties' influence, and pinpoints "H1" and "H2" (Helen Clark and Heather Simpson) as defeating any leftwing forces in Labour's orbit while supporting a drift to the right. Trotter suggests a few unlikely policies that Labour could (but mostly wont) adopt to revitalise social democracy. I don't think Trotter has come to terms with the death of social democracy. And his belief in the existence of an energetic leftwing amongst 'a whole layer of young party activists in Labour's ranks' is also extremely unconvincing.

Labour parties in decline

With the Labour Party in New Zealand slipping to 13 points behind National in the latest TV One News poll, it's interesting to note that here in Britain the latest Guardian poll puts the British Labour Party at their lowest point in 20 years, with only 29% support. Although voters are very positive about their National Health Service, it's interesting that only 25% think the NHS has improved under Labour, while 30% think it's got worse and others think they've made little difference. While Labour has doubled the NHS budget, only 14% believe this money has been well spent - much has gone into private firms. Note also, that Labour has moved further to the right in adopting a xenophobic and unworkable ban on Bulgarians and Romanians (both now in the EU) working in Britain.

[political finance] Party political staff under examination

While most politicians complained that the Auditor General’s report on unlawful parliamentary spending interpreted the rules too tightly, I would argue he actually interpreted them incredibly loosely.  First, limiting the interpretation to only three months leading up to the election is arbitrary and pointless (but more on this in another post).  Second, in only examining the use of parliamentary resources used in the area of advertising/publicity, the Auditor General took a simplistic and very narrow approach to resource use. In my thesis chapter on the use of state funding, I looked in detail at how staff resources are being very widely used for non-parliamentary party political activity. And so now, all the parties are starting to point fingers at various staff employed by the parties for electioneering - in particular, Heather Simpson is in the spotlight (see here and now here), and Brash’s chief advisor’ Bryan Sinclair has been under gun from Labour (see also here). All quite rightly too.

[political finance] The dodgy Parliamentary Services Commission Rules

The scandal over the unlawful use of parliamentary funding continues, now with revelations that all spending from the Parliamentary Service budget since 2000 may have been unlawful because of their failure to get the Speaker's written authorisation for it. If this whole area of rules about party spending seems incredibly disorganised and muddy, it’s because it has been purposefully designed to be so. All of the mess is not due to oversight or incompetence, as some politicians and commentators maintain, but due to the fact that the parties in Parliament have consciously designed this scheme under their control to allow them to milk the state to carry out party political functions without ever making rules that clarify this covert funding. It is telling that the parties have made the Parliament Service exempt from the Official Information Act.

For more on how the rules work (or don’t), read more below from my PhD about the nature of Parliamentary Service Commission rules:

Heather Simpson - the 'H Bomb'

The Sunday Star-Times has run a feature on Heather Simpson of the Prime Minister's Office. This is interesting, as my recent NZ Herald article on state funding cited Simpson as the epitome of a state funding party hack, and now this article goes on to investigate issues relating to this. The theme of the piece is that Simpson is the most powerful unelected person in New Zealand. It quotes Clark as saying 'I might be Number One but Heather is Number Two and she's more powerful than me.' Many Labour MPs are furious with Simpson due to her role in the unlawful spending fiasco and probably more generally because of her political influence on the party and government. And while Simpson might be an unpleasant person in politics - by many accounts - the problems with her shouldn't be seen as a personal one, but relating to the anti-democratic nature of her role and influence. Under the current system of significant backdoor state funding, all the party machines will have such forces involved with them.

The liberal-conservative spectrum and drinking laws

Further evidence that today’s party system doesn’t simply operate on a left-right continuum, but also on a liberal-conservative spectrum, is the issue of the drinking age. Roughly it seems that you have the socially liberal parties support a more open law on drinking (Greens and Act) and the socially conservative ones wanting to restrict drinking (NZ First, Maori Party, and Progressives), with the Labour, National and United Future parties split somewhat down the middle.

[political finance] Bulk funding of parties - a bad idea

Following the scandal over the misuse of parliamentary funding, it beggars belief that he Parliamentary Service officials have put forward proposals to increase the parliamentary parties control over their use of taxpayer resources. One of three options presented in a confidential report by the Parliamentary Service (ie parliamentary officials) to the Parliamentary Services Commission (ie the political parties), was to bulk fund the parties in parliament. All the moves in the direction of bulk-funding are essentially attempts to convert indirect state funding into direct state funding, albeit bringing in a new funding regime through the backdoor. Converting parliamentary resource allocations into cash resources that have few restrictions on their use would allow the recipients much greater freedom in how they utilise the resources. Inevitably, MPs would use such cash resources in an even more party-political way than they currently do. Furthermore, the parliamentary wings of the parties would be likely to centralise these resources even further. As an example, the Act party have long advocated simply allocating each party leader $500,000 for each of their MPs and letting them spend it however they like. I hardly think that any move in this direction is likely to have public support.

Sedition and free speech

The Law Commission is to be applauded for wanting the law against sedition to be scraped.  As the Commission says, the law goes against any democratic principles of free speech, and unfortunately the 4th Labour Government never got around - despite its intentions - to abolishing it.

NZ soldiers to stay on in Afghanistan

The NZ government shows no sign of lessening its support for the War on Terror, with Defence Minister Phil Goff yet again looking to extend NZ's military involvement in Afghanistan. I seem to remember that the public were initially told that the invasion would be a short-term project, but NZ is now up to it's nineth rotation after more than 100 troops left for the war yesterday. NZ seems to be getting bogged down in one more war-without-end.

Update: I notice that the commander of the British forces in Afghanistan says that they might need to be there for the next 20 years! The article has some other interesting info about the resurgence of Opium cultivation under the occupation.

[political finance] The Auditor General’s report

I’m very glad to see the Auditor General’s report finally published. I’m currently still processing all of the issues, and will write much more about it. But it's initially pleasing because the whole matter of party use of parliamentary funding was a central concern raised in my PhD, but I never expected that it would turn into such a huge public issue. In my thesis I pointed out that when the media talk about election spending they normally completely fail to include any details of the spending of state funds, even excluding the Electoral Commission allocated broadcasting expenditure, and I said it was a misnomer that parties are officially prevented from using these funds for electioneering, but that the Electoral Commission officially tells them that if they do they must declare it.

Jarvis' political pop

I've just downloaded Jarvis Cocker's current single - 'Running the World', and I love it. Read more below.

Tribal business

Some people - especially on the left - seem surprised that the Maori Party and Maori businesses want Ukrainian fishers working in New Zealand to be paid a pittance. The Treaty of Waitangi settlement model and the Maori Party have always been about enriching a Maori elite, and it should be no surprise that Tariana Turia is now adamently opposed to a plan to raise the hourly pay rates of foreign fishing crews to $12.75. Such workers are contracted to catch 80% of the Maori fishing quota, and it's therefore in the interest of Maori capitalism to keep wages of these very exploited people as low as possible. But it shows just how reactionary people like Turia are, that they oppose any measures to improve these people's lot. A recent report apparently showed that some of these workers are being paid as little as $195 a month in New Zealand.

Greens climb aboard anti-Asian immigration bandwagon

Have the Green Party joined NZ First in their anti-Asian immigration bandwagon? The new Green co-leader, Russel Norman - although an immigrant himself - has warned against further immigration, in this case saying that Chinese labour 'threatens wages'. This nationalist stance, couched in concern for 'working conditions', naively and perhaps unthinkingly pushes the Greens once more further to the right.

Trotter on political extremism

Chris Trotter recently wrote an opinion piece on rightwing blogs - you can read a copy of it here. I think Trotter produces some excellent analysis (and has been particular valuable in challenging many leftwing shibboleths), but occassionally his stuff can be bizarre, and lately it all seems to be a bit strange. Read more below:

When the colour RED = bad politics

There's something deeply irritating about Bono et al's appropriation of the colour red for their 'capitalism with a conscience' venture. The latest element - the American Express RED card - is the worst so far. Check out the billboards showing the super model Giselle with the African woman whose life she is saving through spending money with her Amex.

Daniel Ben-Ami has written a good crititique on this fraudulant ethical consumption. He quotes the model Giselle saying, 'We can all start shopping more, and feel good about it. No more guilt!' This sums it up really. And in the meantime, while the Red credit cards and white 'make poverty history' wristbands make some in the west feel good about themselves, the issues surrounding tackling global poverty are pushed further away from consideration.

[political finance] Retrogressive electoral law reform coming

The Government is looking to institute a number of electoral law reforms - all of which are likely to be retrogressive. They revolve around the key issues of: donations, state funding of parties, expenditure caps, and third party funding. As the Herald points out, unfortunately there is unlikely to be an inquiry into the 2005 election - as correctly demanded by many.

Evil?

It's quite extradinary that the level of debate in New Zealand politics has dropped to the point that politicians such as Pita Sharples call arguments they don't agree with 'evil' - in regard to Don Brash's view that there are no full-blooded Maori left in NZ and that a distinct ethnic group of Maori still exists. For what it's worth, I think Brash's points are probably correct and hardly that controversial. I'll provide some arguments and links to back up such an idea soon.

It's also interesting to remember that the Maori Party pronounced themselves above personal criticisism, but now label their opponents as 'evil'!

Update: The Sunday Star-Times has published scientific research that showing that on average Maori are at least 43% European. Clearly most Maori have a large amount of pakeha ancestry.

Dirty fighting for no real purpose

The recent increase in 'dirty fighting' in New Zealand parliamentary politics is quite bizarre when you consider the lack of real political differences between the parties involved. If they were arguing over significant issues of principles the public might be less disturbed.

This is also a similar conclusion to that of Tracy Watkins writing in the Dominion Post, who correctly points out that it's a puzzle as to why anyone would want to buy an election as the differences between the outcomes are so meagre: 'The divide between the Left and the Right in this country, as represented by the two big parties, is hardly a chasm. On fundamental policy and direction, the two parties have been largely in agreement over the last decade or so.'