Clinton-Obama isn't going to be

Barack Obama has decided he wont be vice president to Hillary Clinton according to the Daily Telegraph.

.

He said "You won't see me as a vice presidential candidate. I'm running for president. We have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton, and have a higher popular vote, and I think we can maintain our delegate count"

.

Clearly Obama feels he can sniff victory, and Hillary's desperation. She wont be deputy when she's spent a good period of her life being second fiddle to Bill.

.

Bleh, a curse on them all - all uninterested in the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all hungry for power.

Bit late isn't it?

According to the NZ Herald "The country's youngest killer, Bailey Junior Kurariki, is an articulate, intelligent young man, who appears genuine in his desire to live an offence-free life, the Parole Board said yesterday".

Of course the Parole Board doesn't meet many articulate, intelligent people presumably.

Meanwhile, in related news, Michael Choy remains dead.

.

Nice to see the Parole Board believes one of them deserves a chance after denying all of the chances of the other - in a cold and brutal manner.

.

An offence free life is a bit late now isn't it?

Little piggies in the trough

Yes, 2 Labour MPs (Marian Hobbs and Margaret Wilson), 2 National MPs (Brian Connell and Katherine Rich) and 1 from NZ First (Peter Brown), all engaging in a farewell hurrah tour to Europe - to perk up their airpoints, flying business class on Singapore Airlines to the political hub - Milan! I've calculated around 680 airpoints dollars per MP for that - not bad when you consider an airpoints dollar is worth a dollar to spend on future flights. Peter Brown as a rabid enthusiast for shipping ought to be sailing though.

.

Now I DO know that Singapore Airlines flights to Milan are not cheap, since they have the brand new business class onboard the Boeing 777-300ERs on that route. Stuff reports the fares alone will be little short of $10,000.

.

Brian Connell, a National MP suspended from caucus for 18 months, was suggested by no less than John Key for having one of the National "places on the tour".

.

So you see, National wont stop spending your money on pointless overseas travel by MPs.

.

Brian Connell's reaction was "It was very pleasant - a nice change of circumstances" . Marian Hobbs doesn't know why your money is paying for her to go to Europe saying "I don't know too much about the purpose. I think it's about MMP. I'm not sure." It's a jolly Marian isn't it?

.

Katherine Rich, who is meant to represent people who voted National in New Zealand said the trip would be a chance to represent Parliament overseas - because that is, so important, isn't it?

.

Margaret Wilson's office said "the trip was an opportunity to establish relations with countries that were part of an enlarged Europe". Um hello? What value is there in them establishing relations with outgoing MPs? Besides we already DO have diplomatic relations with Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Europe hasn't enlarged either, the countries have always been a part of Europe - the European Union isn't "Europe".

.

Peter Brown's office said "he's so excited to go on a big plane at last" (no I made that up).

.

So while Labour defends its "impeccable record" at being frugal, and National claims it will be more frugal - it's clear that while this is small fry, none have any such interest. How, as an MP, living off of the money taken from others, can you with clear conscience go on a trip that has no clear purpose?

.

UPDATE: Not PC suggests that we are better off with them taking jollies. Well I'd definitely like to see most of them go on a permanent jolly. They can't make laws while they do.

Sudan – kinder on bestiality than NZ

Whilst you would question whether women and children get much recognition for individual rights in Sudan, a BBC report suggests there is less question that zoophiles have far superior individual rights there than in New Zealand.

In New Zealand if you did what Mr Tombe did to Mr Alifi’s goat, you’d end up in prison. In Sudan you are made to marry the goat and pay a dowry.

In a case that, to be fair is actually about conversion of property, the man caught fornicating (a word some Christians say with the passion of a pervert) with a goat was told as he used it “like a wife” he should marry it such.

Given the owner was happy with the outcome, there is no reason to take this further. Certainly this is far more enlightened than the NZ way of incarcerating someone because it offends and upsets people. The very same people who in many cases would happily have the milk molested to provide milk for them! Of course getting oral pleasure from the bodily fluids of a goat is acceptable in one sense.

UK sends Iranians back to be executed

From the Independent (UK)

Mehdi Kazemi is Iranian, and came to London in 2004 to learn English. Mehdi Kazemi is gay. In April 2006 his boyfriend in Iran was executed. Under interrogation Kazemi's name was mentioned as a partner, as his father informed him by phone. Kazemi feared he too would be arrested, charged and executed - so he claimed asylum in the UK. He was refused in late 2007. As a result he fled to the Netherlands. He now faces a court in the Netherlands where he is also claiming asylum. If he fails, he will be deported to the UK - and there he faces almost certain deportation to Iran - to his certain persecution.

"According to Iranian human rights campaigners, more than 4,000 gay men and lesbians have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979."

Of course Iran is a horrid place by any human rights standards, not that you see too many protest marches in Wellington to the Iranian embassy, or Iranian flags burnt by those who claim to care about such things. No, funny that.

Now Pegah Emambakhsh, an Iranian lesbian facing a similar risk, is also facing deportation. Her partner is in custody facing fdeath by public stoning.

New Labour is so caring and compassionate isn't it? However, so is the lack of support from the so-called "peace" movement.

The sin of plastic bags?

The Sunday Times reports on how the great campaign to "ban plastic bags" now occupying the likes of great populist rags like the Daily Mail, is based on flimsy evidence.

"The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds."

The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Now you can choose not to use plastic bags yourself, but those who want people to not use them shouldn't use exagerrated false claims to do so. Frankly most people recycle them, using them as rubbish bags for household waste.

When did Labour first look to buy back the railways?

A while ago actually.

The Official Information Act request should be "All Cabinet papers, Cabinet Committee papers, papers for adhoc meetings of Ministers, notes and briefings to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Transport regarding the future of the railway industry, including options for government ownership and regulation since 2000".

See if the paper turns up, is released, is partly released, has everything but it's title suppressed or even its existence suppressed...

Better stuck in the 90s than the 30s

Idiot Savant thinks that the Nats are stuck in the 90s supporting the re-privatisation of the railways if Labour re-nationalises it.

Which decade was nationalisation about again?

Then again, he does think "The rail network is vital infrastructure, and it will only increase in importance in the coming years as oil prices rise and climate change policy force changes in transport modes." Which begs the question, if it will become more competitive and the government will "force" freight onto it - why he doesn't buy it?

Who would've thought

Dover Samuels could make more sense than the rest of the Labour caucus put together. As David Farrar points out, one of Samuels' best points was:

"The Treaty of Waitangi seems to be the antidote for everything from tagging to wagging school and colonisation which is absolute cultural bullshit."

He continues:

"You've got these culturally correct loony tunes who think everything's offensive come on, it's time to wake up.

"Even if the sun shone 24-hours a day there are some people some are in Parliament who will find the dark and find some sort of grievance. They want to take us back in history and blame somebody.

"Look at the Maori Party. Just on the surface of it, the branding is attractive people think `hey, I'm a Maori, I'll vote for the Maori Party'. There's a lot of people who think that way. But what have they got to deliver? I have seen the rantings and the ravings and other people's scripts being given in Parliament, but what are they going to deliver?"

Of course National will be willing to do a deal with that party, wouldn't it?

the standard of The Standard

Well this post says it all. It is about as factually correct as the Korean Central News Agency.

Take this:

“Toll has been a classic asset-stripper: buy a key piece of infrastructure that should never have been sold, take as much profit as possible with minimal investment, and force the Government to buy the infrastructure back to prevent further economic damage.”

For starters, Toll never bought the track, which this implies. In fact Dr Cullen and the Labour government did a cozy little deal with Toll to bid for Tranz Rail. The Beehive press release here makes it clear that Toll and Dr Cullen were acting hand in glove. The government was "never forced", Toll never bought the infrastructure. Utter lies.

.

Secondly, this “as much profit as possible” is rather hilarious. $34.7 million net profit after tax in 2007 is hardly raking it in on assets of $791 million. No wonder Toll wants out. The asset stripping is also a fascinating claim. How? What has been stripped? Maybe Steve Pierson knows better, or maybe he is interviewing Microsoft Word with his own manufactured delusions.

Thirdly, it claims that "lines have been closed". What? By the state? Only one line has been closed since Toll took over, the tiny Castlecliff branch in Wanganui (and it hasn't been removed). Even since privatisation the lines mothballed consists of Rotorua, Taneatua and Whakatane. Far more lines closed under government ownership in the 1980s (Kurow, Otago Central, Okaihau, Thames, Seddonville, Makareao). Not that this was wrong, but the implication is that services were dropped from those who used them - when in fact lines like Kurow had just two freight trains a week - hardly a reason to get excited.

So if the Standard has this standard of research and writing, you might ask what else it does well?

Muldoonism all round

Several blogs have commented, quite rightly, about Dr Michael Bassett's excellent column about the posturing on foreign investment by Labour. Bassett, as on of the more honourable Ministers of the fourth Labour government, clearly is non-plussed about his former colleagues being upset. Statements such as "the “whatever it takes” mentality that the Labour Party uses these days when they campaign for re-election" say a great deal.

Labour, having lost the votes of most businesspeople, much of provincial New Zealand, many Maori and most of those on middle to higher incomes, is now pandering to the Winston Peters crowd for votes. That's what Auckland airport is about, and the railways - the old Muldoonist crowd that is wary of foreign investment, the working class semi-literates who are easily fired up with xenophobic rhetoric.

Winston's Muldoonism isn't new. Back when he visited North Korea he was quoted as saying there is a lot for New Zealand to learn from North Korea. Funny how Labour chooses a man who is anti-foreign investment to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs isn't it?

Whatever it takes - Labour has spent the surplus up, to make tax cuts harder, but can also claim any spending cuts will "hurt health and education", forgetting that the increases have done little to improve either. Labour will scaremonger that National will hurt the poor and damage the fragile economic growth, that has been in decline in the last few years.

Stop worshipping the cruel NHS

The NHS is Britain's great fraud. You are forced to pay something called "National Insurance" which if it were an insurance scheme, would have been put out of business for fraud. The NHS is a politically driven bureaucracy that cares nothing for service and responding to consumers, but acts like an old fashioned eastern European Marxist-Leninist bureaucracy.

You see that in the latest news, when it denies one of its former staff eye surgery to stop her going blind. This is the sort of story you expect from those gloating how awful health care is in the USA - but no, it is socialist medicine in the UK. She is instead paying twice - paying privately £800 a shot for treatment.

So if it were suggested that under "National Insurance" you could stop paying it premiums and pay premiums for a service that works for you, the left would cry "privatisation" and "unfair" - meanwhile the system would let a former nurse go blind.

oh and the Tories wont do anything about it, because no one wants to confront the truth about the NHS - it performs abysmally. Hardly surprising, as it is the third biggest employer in the world. How can anything that big and state owned possibly be responsive?

Moral equivalency again?

Israel withdraws from Gaza - leaving it to the Palestinians to govern and manage.

Palestinians choose a government committed to engaging in aggression against Israel and destroying it - Hamas

Palestinians engage in a small scale civil conflict splitting the government between Gaza and the West Bank, leaving Hamas in Gaza.

Hamas decides to make Gaza not a haven for peace, development, economic growth and freedom, but a base to wage war against Israel - indiscriminately firing rockets into Israel proper (you know the country that is internationally recognised, not occupied territories) killing and injuring Israeli civilians.

Israel puts up a blockade against Gaza to stop entry/exit of citizens across the land border, and stops selling electricity to Gaza as retaliation. Gaza still has an open land border with Egypt.

Israel is accused of being unreasonable, against those who wish to destroy it and attack it.

Hamas continues its bombardment, Israel responds by attacking bases in Gaza from where rocket attacks continue, killing 120.

Hamas sends a gunman in to shoot children at a school in Jerusalem.

So who wants to defend those who execute children for political purposes again?

So where IS rail viable?

Now despite all the doom and gloom about the rail network, the truth is that SOME of it is commercially viable. To show this I wanted to link to a map of the network on Ontrack's website - Ontrack being the state owned enterprise responsible for the railway network, but it doesn't have one.

Wikipedia does though here >>>>

Now of that network, you can split rail into five main businesses: Coal, logs/wood products, containers, milk and commuter passenger rail. The long distance passenger rail services by themselves could never sustain any of the lines. There is other freight, but it also is of a far smaller scale than any of the others, worthwhile on a marginal basis but not on its own in most cases.

Coal is predominantly West Coast to Lyttelton, but also some from Southland to Timaru and within Waikato (Rotowaro to Mission Bush). The West Coast line is viable for coal and that's it. The other services rely on other freight to bear the cost of the lines.

Logs/timber traffic is carried predominantly Murupara-Kawerau-Mt Maunganui or Auckland. Also Kinleith to Auckland/Mt Maunganui. There is some activity in Northland and Wairarapa to Wellington. However, it is the Bay of Plenty timber traffic that matters. Despite popular misconceptions, logs are not important freight on the Gisborne line (nothing really is, despite some forecasts in recent years). There is certainly insufficient log traffic for any of the Northland lines to be viable, with only the Murupara-Kawerau-Mt Maunganui/Auckland, and Kinleith lines really retaining enough traffic to be viable.

Container traffic is essentially movements between main centres and ports. The viable routes here are the North Island Main Trunk line, and the main southern line from Picton to Christchurch/Lyttelton and down to Dunedin/Bluff, with worthwhile flows between Waikato and Mt Maunganui. Beyond that, there really isn't enough freight to Taranaki or Napier to sustain those lines for this traffic.

Milk traffic forms the last major freight traffic on the lines. These movements are mainly southern Hawke's Bay - Manawatu - South Taranaki, Southland-South Canterbury. Again, these largely use routes carrying other freight, but do help sustain them.

As far as commuter rail is concerned, in Wellington it has a future, although the Johnsonville and Melling lines are not at all viable, money is being poured into it all so is really a sunk cost. In Auckland it is a major waste of money, but again partly a sunk cost.

So what is left? Well surprisingly quite a lot of the network is probably commercially viable, but frankly there are quite a lot of lines that have no economically viable future, unless some major freight customer wants them:
- All lines north of Waitakere in Auckland (expensive to maintain, low capacity)
- Rotorua and Taneatua branches (simply no viable freight)
- Napier-Gisborne (with big questions to be asked about Napier south to Oringi).
- All lines in Taranaki except south of Hawera (some expensive to maintain)
- Masterton to Woodville (mainly useful as a diversion for the main trunk line!)

The reason others are worthwhile comes down to either a single major customer, or having enough general freight. The latter is really just the north-south main trunks in both islands. Now if the government could only swallow those closures (or simply opening lines Toll doesn't want to operate to others if they wish), then there might be a viable railway for the trunks and the few bulk commodities that rail can handle well.

What does THAT network look like? Well this:

Not so bad really, with dotted lines where lines probably should close in the next few years (Napier, Southland and New Plymouth). Beyond that if Solid Energy, Fonterra and the forestry sector want rail, they should buy it - since all of the lines outside the main trunk are almost entirely about them. There is no reasons for the state to subsidise their freight movements.

Certainly the track is not worth the nonsense "replacement value" capital worth on the Crown's books of NZ$10.648 billion as listed in Ontrack's annual report. Now this DOES include some prime real estate, like Wellington railway station. That is where there certainly is some value, but $5.4 billion book value for railway infrastructure is simple accounting sorcery. No one would pay that for it, not in scrap and certainly not to charge someone to use it. If the government offered it for sale, that is not what it would go for, nothing close. The $4.9 billion for the land is similarly so, given that most of the land is a sliver of a corridor.

Oh yes I did forget one thing, the ferries. They ARE worth a good bit of money - the only consistently profitable part of the railway system for decades.

Not the UN's approach to drugs

Camilla Cavendish in The Times today writes that instead of tightening up on drugs, they should be legalised and available through pharmacies like Boots and Superdrug.

Why?

She points out that part of the glamour of drugs is not with users, suggesting that those who go overboard like Amy Winehouse may put as many off it than otherwise, but with dealers. Those who can afford flash clothes, jewellery, cars and a relatively easy get rich quick lifestyle. That is the new ambition for all too many young people living in poorer British neighbourhoods.

Teenagers are being attacked and killed as the drug culture flows through much of British youth culture. She suggests that legalisation will achieve three goals at once, with only the one side effect to deal with.

Firstly, it gets rid of the drug dealer. No longer is a fortune to be made selling drugs at street corners or outside schools, but by being behind the counter in pharmacies. The link between crime and drugs ends - not only significantly reducing the violence involved, reducing pressure on prisons, but also recognising that drugs are no longer "special".

Secondly, those who are addicted could more easily and readily seek treatment without fear of persecution by the law. Many drug users are occasional recreational users, for relatively short periods of their lives - the true problem addicts are a minority, but they are the ones who need to feel free to access help.

Thirdly, as pharmacies would be responsible for what they sell, incidences of drugs diluted by other substances, anything from talcum powder to cleaner to ground glass, would end. People would get pure drugs, which would be less toxic than the black market offerings.

Yes there would be the issue of it being cheaper, increasing the opportunity to use it. However now, the price isn't a tremendous barrier. For starters, dealers are known to employ cunning techniques offering freebies and discounts, and they market heavily and directly. This would all end under legalisation. Those who want to take drugs find ways to do so, but once it is no longer forbidden or glamorous, without the criminal profits being made from it, the remaining problem could be far more manageable.

Alcohol for all of the problems arising from overuse, and use by those too young, is far more manageable than drugs. Laws can focus on supply to children, which should remain illegal.

However there is one huge barrier to any of this - it is the UN.

The UN, led by the US on this one, is adamantly opposed to legalisation. It is fighting a losing battle, but the war on drugs is lost. It is about time to switch the tables on dealers, and make life easier for those who want to use safely.

Sadly New Zealand is going in the other direction, despite the evidence, thanks to the efforts of the one man party, Jim Anderton.

Besides as I have said before, it is my body thank you.

Is "racism" the cry of the scoundrel?

Sadly, it appears to be the case in respect of Ken Livingstone's former chief race advisor - Lee Jasper. The litany of evidence building up about alleged conflicts of interest is serious damning, damning against him and Mayor Livingstone. While it is only one factor, it has certainly contributed to the narrowing of the London mayoralty race into what appears to be a dead heat between Livingstone and Conservative candidate Boris Johnson. The Financial Times now reports a recent poll showing a 5% lead by Johnson over Livingstone. So what has Jasper been up to?

Firstly, there have been allegations of Lee Jasper's improper involvement in approving funding for organisations that involve friends or associates of him, that include companies that are dormant or have gone out of business, or in one case funding a group that largely appears to put out press releases supporting Ken Livingstone.

Following that Ken Livingstone claimed the Evening Standard was embarking on a "campaign targeting black and ethnic minority organisations" - the race card to defend a scoundrel.

Now emails have emerged whereby Jasper (a married man) appears to be engaging in a very friendly relationship (sexually charged) with Karen Chouhan, a woman who runs community projects that Jasper has been responsible for approving Greater London Authority funding for. At the least this is failure to declare a profound conflict of interest. According to The Times the email informed Karen Chouhan "of his unbridled passion for her “feet, ankles, legs, thighs, bum and belly, arms, head and brain”. His feelings were particularly strong during “the first gentle dew on a golden summer morn”". He was involved in approving a £100,000 funding grant to the trust she is secretary for.

This is why he resigned, but he has also pleaded "it's a racist campaign". Apparently Lee Jasper thinks it is his race, not his behaviour that is at question - as if his race excuses what is an allegedly corrupt practice.

The Times also reported on how Lee Jasper, on £120,000 a year, lives in "state subsidised social housing at £90 a week for a four bedroom house in Clapham". This is utterly outrageous for a city and most importantly a Mayor that has spent so much attention and time on supposedly caring for the poor - when taxpayers are paying for highly paid officials to have bargain rentals. quick look at Find A Property shows weekly rents for a 4 bedroom house in Clapham start at £236.

Sorry Mr Jasper, taxpayers' money is not for you to dish out to your friends, associates or those who support Ken Livingstone. It is not racist to want transparency, no real or apparent conflicts of interest or accountability in how funds are spent. In fact, when you defend yourself by throwing such words at it, it is no defence at all. It's not YOUR money, it is Londoners money you got through force.

When Robert Mugabe is criticised for decimating Zimbabwe's economy, rigging elections, killing, destroying property, confiscating land and oppressing opponents, he calls it racism.

It's about time that such allegations were clearly seen for what they are - worthless cries in the dark by scoundrels.

Greens worship at the altar of rail with your money

Worshipping at the altar of a railway line. The Greens are advocating forcing taxpayers to pay to bail out a foreign company that owns the provision of railway services - Toll. A party that tends to be at best sceptical of capitalism and loathes foreign companies is seeking to give it a free ticket out of New Zealand with a big hand out of taxpayers' money. What an incredible sell out all to worship the altar of the railway.

The Greens love railways more than any other mode of transport. So even in an age when oil prices are at a record high, when rail cannot compete for most freight efficiently, there are major problems with rail freight being competitive for most freight in New Zealand. This puts paid to notions that "we need" railways in an age of expensive oil - it seems that it STILL isn't cheaper to send most freight by rail for all sorts of reasons (e.g. double handling, speed, inefficiency of compiling trainloads of wagon or less than wagon load lots).

Sadly the Greens are woefully ill informed about the railways at all. Jeanette Fitzsimons claims there isn't the revenue to pay for upgrades and “Nowhere is this more apparent to the public than in the state of Wellington’s commuter rail services". What rubbish. For starters, the Wellington commuter rail services get around half their revenue from taxes - whether road taxes through Land Transport NZ, or rates from the Wellington Regional Council. Secondly, with comparatively new trains recently introduced on the Wairarapa line, and all of the older electric units recently refurbished (and a major upgrade of the track, signal and electrics infrastructure underway), the Wellington system is hardly in a poor state. Toll Rail's revenues are about freight, not passenger services. So she is either poorly informed or lying to get the public's sympathy.

She claims Toll "cannot afford to pay the track access fees that were always part of the deal with Government". Really? Does she have access to Toll's accounts? Could it just be gameplaying with a government that is soft on rail?

The government is already spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars on upgrading the rail network, but even that isn't enough. Why?

Well that is the question the Greens should answer. It isn't because trucks are underpaying to cover road maintenance costs, generally they aren't. It isn't because trucks have far higher environmental costs per tonne km than rail, because the government's own study points out that it varies considerably by route (in some cases rail is lower in some cases road is lower).

I suspect it quite simply is because - notwithstanding the low cost of RUNNING a train to carry a lot of freight, the handling of freight to load and unload a train, the time/cost of warehousing freight (effectively) in assembling/disassembling a train, the high capital cost of railway equipment, the limitations on the NZ railway network placed by many low tunnels (and almost always a slower alignment than roads), rail can't compete for most freight. It can compete for hauling bulk commodities, such as coal and milk, and to a lesser extent logs. It can compete for long hauled containers, but that's about it. Rail is a very heavy, capital intensive mode with its own corridors that, by and large, get little use compared to roads. For example, the Napier-Gisborne railway on average has one train each way every day. Imagine the road having one truck (or even the dozen or so that would replace the train). That one train would have to carry the full cost of maintaining and operating the line, whereas the road has many vehicles to spread the cost over.

Passengers are a peripheral activity, unlike the UK, in NZ long distance passenger rail is about scenic tourist trips by and large.

So the Greens might have to look beyond the altar of rail and dispassionately ask why it isn't working to do what they want. Given the very high cost of diesel, the notion that rail can "save the day" when it clearly is failing to do so, seems spurious. Similarly, as the environmental costs of road and rail freight are not that dissimilar, the alleged "green" benefits of rail freight seem equally spurious.

so when will the Greens stop worshipping rail, and start supporting evidence?

Bill English says Nats might sell railways, again..

Remarkably, after reports that Dr Cullen is looking to spend some of your money on making you buy a railway, National's Finance Spokesman Bill English shows that he has some principles and courage as he has been reported by the NBR as saying that "If the purchase was completed then a National government would get out of the business as quickly as possible."

First he says "We certainly wouldn't be buying Toll. The worst thing for our railway network would be for the Government to take it over using the OnTrack company". Ok...

then seeking to get out of the business as quickly as possible, although then he flip flops a little "We would go out and look for an operator and then you would have to decide whether they come in to operate it and the Government retained ownership or you sell it to them".

Why would the government retain ownership? How does that do anything for the taxpayer?

Of course Winston Peters wants to buy it back, it's not his money after all. He thinks it is a "buyers' market" - well go on Winston, make a bid with your money and those you can convince. Ask the Greens to help. Although the test of most nationalisers is that they will never risk their own money to do it. Funny that.

Abolishing income tax?

No Minister has posted about how the UK Libertarian Party has proposed abolishing income tax, by simply cutting government spending to where it was 5 years ago, given how high VAT is (17.5%).

He asked in relation to New Zealand "How much scope is there for a radical overhaul of our tax structure? Perhaps this is a task for Peter Cresswell and others to consider. How detailed are the NZ Libz with their policy prescriptions? Or is abolishing income tax 'pie in the sky' here too? Does ACT offer anything here?"

Well the Libertarianz (NZ) DOES have detailed policy on tax, on the party website here. It actually proposes the OPPOSITE tax reform, with all OTHER taxes being abolished other than income tax, which would be set at a flat rate of 15% with a $10,000 tax free threshold. This would be a transitional measure which itself would be phased down.

Why leave income tax and abolish others? Well it is a matter of two things.

Firstly, other taxes are largely invisible to the general public. GST, residents' withholding tax and various duties are paid, and the public treats these as part of the cost of goods or earning interest at the bank. It would be far preferable to notice that the cost of government is transparent and you pay that, rather than it hidden in multiple other taxes.

Secondly, abolishing all of the other taxes will lower compliance costs for businesses, end the "black economy" nonsense about paying under the counter for goods and services, and dramatically simplify tax arrangements overall.

How would this be paid for? Well by dramatically shrinking the state. Libertarianz has proposed alternative budgets for some years.

Now I remember Sir Roger Douglas proposed abolishing income tax in his book Unfinished Business, and it was originally ACT policy (he replaced income tax with compulsory health insurance, superannuation and education). ACT policy has been flat tax and more recently two step income tax. I'd be interested to see if ACT revives flat tax for 2008, but for now Libertarianz is the low flat tax party.

Don't want to buy a railway?

Tough - Dr Cullen is going to make you, if he can get away with it.

Not satisfied with spending $81 million for the Auckland rail network, when Treasury valued it at best at $20 million, not satisfied with spending $1 for the rest of the national network.

Not satisfied with spending from general taxation:

- At least $450 million to upgrade the Auckland rail network (track, signals and platforms) from 2005;
- $100 million per year for six years from 2007 to upgrade Auckland and Wellington rail networks;
- $25 million in 2008/09 and again in 2009/10 to upgrade the national rail network;
- $100 million upfront in upgrading the national network from 2003, and $25 million annually from 2004 to 2007.

Noting than absolutely none of that spending will boost the net financial value of the rail network at all (it is unlikely to be able to be sold for the amount being spent on it), now he wants to spend $500 million buying the whole lot according to Stuff. Toll wants $700 million, but presumably Dr Cullen will threaten "the state is sovereign" to force a compulsory nationalisation.

Toll is already paying the government $9 million per annum less than Ontrack (the Crown company which owns the rail network) is charging for its use. You might think Ontrack could simply tell Toll to stop trespassing, or to tell Toll that it will invoke the rail access agreement which means other companies can provide rail services on the network if they drop below a certain level. Yes, in case you didn't know, the "ownership" the Crown has of the track also gives Toll a monopoly on the use of the track, as long as it maintains a minimal level of service on the track.

Now a business minded government would take Toll to court to pay what is owed, or start confiscating rolling stock for part payment of the track access charges. After all, if a trucking firm doesn't pay road user charges to use the government's state highways, it faces being fined and the unpaid charges recovered, likewise airlines using airport.

No, after pledging to spend over $1 billion on its OWN assets, it wants to spend over $500 million buying the company that uses them which doesn't even pay what the government charges.

What this will mean is we will be back to the days before privatisation, when the railways lost money - and either were subsidised heavily (1982-1988) or getting bailed out regularly (1982, 1988, 1990).

Maybe the truth just hurts too much, maybe the government needs to give Toll the rail network back and say - make a go of it, and if you can't, then sell it to whoever wants it. While it's at it, it could sell the state highways as well, now that WOULD be worth a fair bit.

but what would John Key do?