The story is not online for some reason, so I’ve reproduced the first few paragraphs below:

Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson has ordered an investigation into her department’s advocacy role – a move that has alarmed conservationists.

Criticism from farming groups and others about the Department of Conservation’s (DOC) involvement in resource management hearings prompted the review, Wilkinson said.

“I feel that I want to see if that criticism is justified or not,” she said, just weeks after taking over the conservation portfolio from Tim Groser.

There was no time line for the inquiry, but officials were already working on it, she said.

“I don’t have a feeling for which way I want to go. I just have a feeling that it should be looked at.”

Any moves to curtail DOC’s advocacy role would be extremely concerning.

DOC plays a key role advocating for our environment in resource consent hearings all over the country.

It is uniquely placed to do this, because as a government department it has the resources and scope to take environmental impacts all over the country into account holistically in a way that groups and individuals in local areas cannot.

It’s also not something the Minister can just review willy nilly. DOC’s advocacy role is enshrined in the legislation that establishes it and its functions, and to change this would require a law change and the select committee consideration that goes along with it.

We’ve heard nothing about this review – what its terms of reference are, who is involved, whether external stakeholders will be consulted – and the Minister needs to front up. I’ll be asking some written questions of the Minister in the next few days and will keep you posted.

It’s a real worry that the new Conservation Minister seems to be being swayed by private interests to undermine the public value of her department, especially so soon after taking over the portfolio.

[Update 5.10pm The story is online now here]

Most of it makes good sense.

• Oil price spikes relate strongly to Iran, Iraq and the price of food.
• Fiscal crises are tied up with asset price collapses (subprime in 2008, Alt-A in 2010 – 2011, most likely) and the US dollar.
• Climate change is the green cluster on the right, and those are all inter-related and prey heavily on food price and health.
• Underinvestment in infrastructure has weak links to nearly everything
• The Chinese economy is recognised as a big factor
  

To a great extent it reflects the attitudes of it’s creators (’retrenchment from globalization’?! oh noooes, ‘burden of regulation’, aaarrrgh!!), but it’s an interesting mind game anyway.

The original version of this map on the World Economic Forum web site is clickable and you can zoom in to each circle and whatnot, which is fun for a while. But in the end I found the broad overview most useful.

This week’s podcast features the lovely sounds of Urban Tramper again. Thanks guys!

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All of this in brilliant sunshine surrounded by watermelons and waka, fry bread and feisty korero. Being a minority culture is rich experience which all Pākehā should experience and after all Te Tiriti o Waitangi is about us, it gives us a place to stand.

Great rivers of history and culture meet at the two marae at Waitangi every February 5th and 6th. It’s great to jump into the river and try to anticipate rapids and detect what currents are moving under the surface. The currents often turn into whirlpools that have less to do with the Prime Minister’s speech than is widely reported.

One of the powerful currents this year was the korero on constitutional change. Some of it happened off site at the Haruru falls but some of it happened in a large open tent where tangata whenua people without invitation to be “leaders” talked about their issues. Some of the most influential thinkers in this country’s constitutional development spoke in the political forums over several days. Moana Jackson, Annette Sykes, Mereana Pitman, Margaret Mutu to name but a few. A book was also launched entitled “Weeping Waters” edited by Malcolm Mulholland.

After years of discussion the issue remains how to create a constitution based on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and what that might look like. Tangata whenua are moving on this issue and the challenge is how we respond. Then there is the necessity to replace the Foreshore and Seabed Act with a strong Te Tiriti based law that upholds customary rights and looks after the coast for the benefit of all people. John Key’s fluffy comments at the pōwhiri did not inspire confidence on this issue. Mike Smith showed his film on the effects of climate change in Aotearoa and many people spoke about poverty, environmental degradation and the impacts of domestic violence.

There were fantastic stalls on organic agriculture, Te Wananga o Aotearoa and massage as well as clothes, food and music.

The most powerful moment for me was the ceremony acknowledging the tino rangatiratanga flag, the wahine toa who designed it and all the struggles of the activists. A most amusing speaker in impromptu debate was Metiria Turei describing what politicians do “to, not for” the people. I am always glad not to be Labour or National at Waitangi, even though being Green includes being challenged about our consistency and performance on Te Tiriti issues. But we are truly fortunate to have a place where these dialogues can be held and the wero can be laid down to politicians.

See you there next year!

She compared the current unemployment and sickness/invalid’s benefit figures with those in 1999, the last time unemployment was at its current level of 7.3%, and came up with this bar chart:

She then concluded that for a good many people a sickness or invalid benefit is merely a de facto unemployment benefit.

Wrong!

Despite the same unemployment rate, the employment situation in 1999 was quite unlike that today.  In 1999 unemployment levels were just starting to decline from a ten year period of high unemployment.  35% of 1999’s unemployed had been unemployed for 6 months or more.

Today’s situation is very different.  There has been a rapid rise in unemployment over the last year after a sustained period of low unemployment.  So many more of today’s unemployed are likely to have a partner who is still in employment and be ineligible for unemployment benefit. Many others are likely to have their own resources to live on and have no need for an unemployment benefit, at least yet.

Mitchell should have considered this graph prepared by the Ministry of Social Development before jumping to her conclusion:

Source: DSW Annual Reports or Statistical Information Reports and MSD SWIFFT data.

It shows no surge in sickness and invalid’s benefit figures to correspond with the plummeting  unemployment benefit figures between 2000 and 2006. It just shows the gradual increase in sickness and invalid’s benefit figures consistent with the inflow to those benefits being significantly greater than the outflow – only 12.5% of sickness and invalid’s beneficiaries manage a sustained exit to employment within 3 years according to Ministry of Social Development research.

I guess she ignored it because it doesn’t fit in with the conclusion she had already made.

Here he is condoning an act of state terrorism in New Zealand:

And our Prime Minister has nothing to say:

Prime Minister John Key last night refused to wade into the stoush and said he had no comment on the matter.

Not good enough, John.

There was a weird Nielsen poll published by the NZ Herald this morning.  Among its results:

Those in favour of national standards:
YES – 73.2%
NO – 13.8%
DON’T KNOW – 13%

The effect of national standards on your child:
GOOD – 53.9%
BAD – 36.5%
NONE – 9.5%

That makes no sense at all.  If the poll has any validity, it means a significant number of people support National Standards despite believing they will have a bad effect on their children.  Must be all those bad parents who want their children to fail!

The response to this question is even more strange:

Do you understand how the new system works?
FULLY – 11.9%
PARTIALLY – 61.8%
NOT AT ALL – 26.2%

That’s an incredible indictment of Minister Tolley’s competence in selling the policy.  Only slightly more than one person in 10 claims to fully understand it – despite it being a flagship National Party policy which has been vigorously promoted over the last 18 months.

Yet over 70% supposedly still support it.  Go figure!

The NZ Herald also ran a lengthy story from an interview with Professor John Hattie, generally regarded as a conservative educational academic, who has worked closely with both the previous and current Governments on education policy and is cited by Tolley as providing the inspiration for the Government’s National Standards policy:

Hattie replies that he supports the concept of standards-based learning but not the system the Government has introduced – in fact, given the chance, he’d scrap it and start again…

Hattie’s first point is that, despite sweeping claims of failure by Key and Education Minister Anne Tolley, the New Zealand school system is in good shape, especially compared with the rest of the world.

National standards, he argues, are usually the catchcry of countries where the education system is in serious trouble. They have been introduced in the US, Britain and Australia but none of these countries have been able to show any overall improvement in student achievement.

Ouch! The full story is worth a read.

Tolley could do worse than heed Hattie’s advice.  Scrap the current shambles and start again.

There must be thousands of people … who own a house, flat, apartment which is their way of saving for that extra to help them with their retirement and good on them too.

I have told them that I have no inside information and know just what they do from the public record.  They all feel put upon by the implication in the papers and from the commentary that somehow they have been gaming the system, ripping off taxes and are somehow directly or indirectly to blame for the “imbalance’ in the tax system.

These people have all worked hard.  They have saved hard, forgone big holidays and other excesses in order to pay off their first house and then save for their second property, their retirement income.

All well and good, but what he omits to tell us is that they pay no tax on the capital gain on their investment property.

He also omits to tell us that there are others who own multiple rental properties which run at an operational loss and they offset that loss against their other income, thereby minimising their income tax, and often minimising their child support, and/or qualifying them for Working for Families as well.  Then they make a whopping tax-free capital gain when they sell one of the properties.

I don’t agree with some of what the Tax Working Group has proposed, but I do agree they have identified a gaping hole in the tax base here that needs to be plugged.

Barker and the people he says he’s been talking to just don’t seem to get it that when you work hard and save you should still pay tax on your earnings!  Why should one form of income be tax free? Why not wages too?

There is a Save ACC rally at Parliament on 16 February to fight back against National’s cutbacks. The good people at the CTU have got these ads running at the Sevens: 

You can check out all three videos here

That’s all well and good. Maybe they do taste good and maybe there would be a market for them, and maybe it would increase (captive) Weka numbers. Maybe they’ll even submit to sitting in a nice cage, like chickens…

But what I find a bit laughable is Roger’s assertion that farming Weka would benefit the species and save them from extinction:

If we want to make sure wekas are not threatened or endangered we should farm the lot because no farm species has ever died out.

Yeah, that’s worked really well for wolves. They became domesticated, and now there are wolves everywhere! Right? No, actually. Wolves are very endangered in most parts of the world, while a shadow of their former selves do pretty well as dogs.

Imagine this: We set out to farm Weka, so someone makes an inventory of all the wild Weka and chooses a (sub) species that look especially tasty or large or whatever other criteria we prefer. All the other species of Weka get left to go extinct, and may even find that their habitat is reduced to make room for the farmed Weka. We then breed millions of our selected Weka, and over time we favour the traits that make them more suitable to us – bigger breasts, more eggs(??), docile behaviour, tastier meat while eliminating the traits that make them ‘wild’ – aggressive, curious, adaptable, fast runners, loud cries to communicate, whatever. The species changes and becomes weak, they pick up parasites from other farm species, they start to require antibiotics and so on.

Look around you at other domesticated species. Bulldogs that can barely breath, Sheep with so much wool that their shit gets caught in it (leading to death from flies), Alsations with back legs that barely work and vegetables that require daily defence lest they be overrun by wild plants. None of these animals bear any resemblance to the species they are descended from. Do you think your white floppy eared rabbit would survive for 5 minutes in the wild? Does it even know how to have babies without leaving them to starve (ours didn’t. Then some dogs ate it)?

One day we find that we haven’t saved Weka, we’ve enslaved a slow, obese, lazy and dependent decendent of what used to be Wekas.

So sure, go ahead and farm them for their meat if you must (think of the children economy!), but don’t pretend you’re doing the Weka or biodiversity a favour by doing so.