ACC deficit shows monopoly failings

ACC has a statutory monopoly. Labour claimed this is the most "efficient" way of insuring personal injury by accident, yet it has proven incapable of managing its own finances in a way that doesn't mean taxpayers and levy payers have to bail it out.

No other country has the socialist style no-fault statutory monopoly state insurance scheme New Zealand has. The claims by its advocates that it is "lauded" the world over seem very empty when no others follow, and this sort of news comes to light.

I've written before on how to change this, individualise the whole system so everyone buys ACC cover for non-work accidents, open it up to competition, so the risk is spread among multiple insurers (coverage for past accidents would either remain with a legacy ACC or tendered among competitors), and then return the right to sue between insurers and let people choose not to be insured. Care would need to be taken to ensure tort law was based on objectively reasonable criteria, but if it came about after a culture of personal insurance, the risks of aggressive tort claims could be minimised. Besides, if you insure yourself against what others do to you, then you have little to complain about.

Of course at the same time, road owners could demand drivers be insured before using their roads, as could others when you use their property, but overall the risk would be spread and shared. Those who undertake risky behaviour would pay, those who don't, wouldn't.

The monopoly has failed, miserably, once again. The measures National are announcing are trying to patch up a system that is breaking. It's time to move fast to open the employment and motor vehicle accounts to competition as a first stage, then individualise the whole system. Then those paying to cover the liabilities of past poor decisions end up being those the system carries the most risk for.

Obama gets unwelcome supporter

Fidel Castro said of Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize "I must admit that in this case, in my opinion, it was a positive step" according to the Daily Telegraph.

The best sentiments I've noticed on this, is that Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been mooted for the prize, has been imprisoned, tortured, beaten up repeatedly, lost his wife in an accident, and STILL decided for peace in Zimbabwe, to form a joint government with the murdering gangsters of Zanu-PF.

Apparently that wasn't good enough. Not good enough for an African man in Africa at the front line of essentially civil war and insurrection, in a truly bankrupt economy, to risk himself so much to bring peace and justice to Zimbabwe. He may have been able to do much for Zimbabwe with the US$1 million prize.

Instead, a group of Norwegians worshipped words not deeds. Obama did not need encouragement to pursue he soft approach to international relations, and did not need the money to give to charity.

It is enough now that the Nobel Peace Prize has been discredited umpteen times in the past, next year I can't wait for the latest joke to come from the Nobel committee. Maybe Oscar Wrigley can win the prize for science, because no doubt he has great potential.

Prince Charles frustrated using Youtube

Well I'm guessing that's whats going on.

Imagine being Prince Charles. Never a worry about where to live or how to afford to do anything really, never a concern about being unable to generate publicity, and then not actually having a coherent philosophy about anything at all. More recently, this man with many a car to his name, called on Britons to drive less and walk more - the height of elitist hypocrisy if ever it could be.

Now he wants to make Britons pay so that rural folk can have broadband, presumably because he sits on one of his estates unable to watch funny videos on Youtube because of a lack of broadband access at prices he is willing to pay.

He is fighting for rural Britain, which he could well do with his own ample resources and fundraising. Good luck to him doing that. However he's more concerned about farms going to the wall when subsidies drop in 2012:

"Quite frankly, the fear that many of us hold is that after 2012, when support from the E.U. will alter so dramatically, it may be simply impossible for our family farmers to continue – particularly in the remote uplands, where farming is at its toughest. If they are to stay on the land they will need all the help they can get, and denying them broadband, and effectively cutting them off from the Internet, will only be more likely to drive them off the hills and into the towns and cities taking with them generations of inherited knowledge. "

Yes Charles, where farming is uneconomic, where the environment should be left to be as it was. Nobody denies them broadband, they just aren't willing to pay for it. It could be available via satellite and other means, but people in cities, who pay much much more for living space, face chronic congestion and overcrowding on roads and public transport, don't expect a subsidy for their high costs.

A better approach would be to encourage farms to consolidate, become more efficient and to attack the one tax that hits rural areas unfairly - fuel tax. Fuel tax recovers four times what is spent on roads in the UK, and given rural areas disproportionately face relatively low road costs (getting little capital investment), it should drop or be replaced with road pricing.

Charles, farmers are struggling in many countries. Farmers in Europe are among the most feather bedded in the world, and if they were so efficient they'd have nothing to fear from reduced subsidies, as their European compatriots would face even tougher conditions.

Of course, given you're own status as one of the bigger receivers of EU subsidies for your own properties, you can excuse someone for claiming that this is a hint of vested interest in this.

To say "the stakes could not be higher" shows how incredibly out of touch he is, peculiarly so. Farmers in Australia and New Zealand were weaned off of many and all subsidies respectively a couple of decades ago. It's time to grow up, and to find stakes that are higher. I'd have thought the living conditions of children growing up in homes of violence, neglect and poverty would be more important a charitable cause than subsidised farmers who find it hard to use the BBC iPlayer or video porn.

Herald on Sunday so wrong about TV

The Herald on Sunday has joined the chorus of defending TPK (read "your taxes") paying for the Maori Television Service to bid for the free to air broadcasting rights to the Rugby World Cup.

For some it might be petty minded racism, but for me it's simple.

It's anti-competitive and grossly unfair. It gives a state owned broadcaster an advantage over privately owned broadcasters using money taken by force.

If those interested in Maori broadcasting think it is "money well spent" then spend your own money. That's what the shareholders of Sky Television in the early days (when it was primarily owned by NZ entrepreneurs) did. It is what regional broadcasters across the country wish they could do as well. What a shot in the arm it would be for them to get such rights for their regions, but don't expect that to be considered special - and quite rightly so.

You see TVNZ does NOT spend taxpayers' money bidding for sports broadcasting rights. It is financially self sustaining, and the only taxpayers' money it gets is essentially the same as the Maori Television Service is entitled to, funding for specific programmes through NZ On Air (Te Mangai Paho for the MTS).

To quote TPK's remit as "to contribute to "Maori succeeding as Maori, achieving a sustainable level of success as individuals, in organisations and in collectives ... Our investments in Maori development build resources."" is facile. TPK takes from Maori as much as it gives, it spends money taken money from people who succeed and dishes it out, whilst taking a share for its own staff.

It's this blatant inability to acknowledge where the money came from, and that MTS's competitors do NOT get the same privileges, that is at issue here. For you see, if MTS borrowed the money and won the rights, then made money from it, then at least at a time of budget deficits there would be less reason to be concerned.

When Chris Trotter is partly right

From Bowalley Road:

"As New Zealand’s leading conservative party, founded in 1936 to restrain state power and protect the rights of the individual citizen, National should be the most avid defender of the ancient rights and privileges of the people. Sadly, on matters of law and order, National long ago surrendered to the irrational populism of the Mob."

He's not entirely correct, some of the "irrational populism" is a genuine sense of frustration at how repeat offenders get the opportunity to create new victims, but he's right. National shows precious little interest in restraining state power.

I don't share Trotter's view that "a huge number of otherwise sensible and compassionate people are no longer able to see that, for all but a few moments of life-transformingly bad decision-making, most lawbreakers are indistinguishable from themselves", which minimises when people DO use violence, rape or break and enter a property as being a "bad decision", rather than a violation of the rights of another, but he is indeed right that the presumption of innocence is fundamental.

However, whilst in principle he is right, is he right about the proposals he listed?

- Tougher bail laws when the issue is a person being a likely threat to public safety is not inconsistent with protecting individual rights.
- Abolishing the right to silence is not quite what it seems, it is in fact allowing it to be mentioned in court in evidence that the accused used the right and the Jury can interpret it as they see fit. The state should not force someone to speak. I hope I am correct in the interpretation.
- Cutting back on legal aid is essentially a welfare matter, but in essence nobody should be without defence counsel in court.
- The use of "teleconferencing" should not be ruled out because Trotter is old;
- Finally, the right to a jury trial, which Power intends to restrict only to offences where one faces 3 years in prison or not, IS fundamental. Power also suggests an inquisitorial approach to rape cases. This is a fundamental change to the entire criminal justice system, for one crime. One should tread carefully before considering this.

Jury trials are expensive and slow, but they are critically important. Though to be frank, I doubt I'd choose a jury over a judge if I was accused.

Note Power also talks about a "positive definition" for consent in sexual crime cases. At its extreme this would mean a signed form for sexual encounters to say you consent, which of course wouldn't obviate a last minute "no" for whatever reason. Rape is an inherently difficult crime for the justice system because it involves the greatest physical intimacy combined with violence, and too often includes people who already know each other, and circumstances that allow reasonable doubt to be presented.

However, that is not a reason to destroy that assumption.

So Trotter is somewhat right.

You see Simon Power's biggest error is this claim "The people in our prisons right now are there because they committed crimes against other New Zealanders.". For many he is right, for a few he is dead wrong. Not all crimes in New Zealand have victims. Remove victimless crimes from the books and he would be right.

However he made the point in a wider context in that the high prisoner population "is primarily a symptom of a much more fundamental problem – crime itself."

So the focus COULD be on removing victimless crimes from the books, emptying the prisons of those with such convictions, and focusing on real crimes with real victims.

That WOULD be a reason to celebrate law and order reform.

Obama Nobel Peace Prize?

Yes, Reuters states Obama has won it.

For what? You might ask. Have tensions with Iran eased? Has he improved the situation in Iraq? Have the Taliban been defeated? Has North Korea agreed to stop calling for seas of blood in South Korea and Japan? Has Russia stopped seeking to dominate its neighbours? Has the risk of Islamist terrorism dramatically reduced? Has the Arab-Israeli conflict lessened? Has Sudan stopped oppressing the people of Darfur?

Well given the Nobel committee gave it to Al Gore two years ago, one can see the value of this prize deteriorating rapidly (although Martti Ahtisaari was deserving last year).

The list of all Nobel winners is here on Wikipedia.

Of those, surely the deserving ones are the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, John Hume and David Trimble, Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk, Sadat and Begin, Lech Walesa and Norman Borlaug (not an exhaustive list).

However, Barack Obama?

Surely, even his greatest enthusiasts would struggle to say anything substantive has been achieved in a matter of months.

UPDATE: Benedict Brogan at the Daily Telegraph is damning.

"President Obama remains the barely man of world politics, barely a senator now barely a president, yet in the land of the Euro-weenies (copyright PJ O’Rourke) the great and the good remain in his thrall. To reward him for a blank results sheet, to inflate him when he has no achievements to his name, makes a mockery of what, let’s face it, is an already fairly discredited process (remember Rigoberta Menchu in 1992? Ha!). That’s not the point. What this does is accelerate the elevation of President Obama to a comedy confection, which he does not deserve, and gives his critics yet another bat to whack him with."

Even the usually pro-Obama Guardian online poll is 2 to 1 against him winning it.

It's not easy stopping P

There is little that need be said about the crackdown on P purchasers and suppliers that hasn’t been said before. Many users of P may be nihilistic and destroying themselves, and causing heartache for those who love them or depend on them, but criminalising them and the suppliers of what they seek will not change that.

Legalising P is the long term answer, but in advance of that much else needs to be done, in order that people become responsible for their own actions, and suppliers having to consider product liability. However, as there are already links on this I’d like to suggest something else that is more important, and nothing directly to do with politics.

Culture.

Most people take illicit drugs because they make them feel better, feel good. It is for pleasure. That, in itself, is not necessarily bad. However, it is clear that excessive use is about something else, escaping reality.

Whilst escaping reality is seen as a legitimate way to cope with overwhelming emotions, it is hardly a solution. Regular use of P helps people escape reality, with the logical consequences of abandoning reason – self destruction.

The decline through the 1950s to 1970s of the Christian-oriented basis for how many people saw life and existence saw holes filled with a range of philosophies. One of those was a nihilistic approach to life “there is no point”, “nothing means anything” etc. A destructive attitude that sees the only point to life the immediate satisfaction of pleasure, with the inevitable need for more of the same, greater, faster, longer, bigger, until ultimately you wake up from it all needing to eat, wash and find money so you have somewhere to live and pay for all of it. Whereas people once found solace in religion to cope with grief, relationship stresses, anxieties and the trials of life, some found solace in escaping it all.

None of this is new of course. Alcohol has a long history of supplying such escapism, but P has a completely different level of intensity. The problems attributed to both have the same source – philosophy.

The answer is to have a personal philosophy of embracing life, applying reason and enjoying existence for what it is. Enjoying your potential in whatever fields you get passionate for, whether business, the arts, sport, science, travel, social activities or anything else. For reality can be a pleasure of the senses, and a reason to live. The point to your life being to live it, enjoy it and share it if you wish with whoever shares your vision and values. The only limits being reality and respecting the same rights in others.

If the dominant cultural meme was like this, the prevalence of escaping reality would reduce, and then people would focus on assisting loved ones or others who needed help through difficult times. Criminalising those seeking to escape reality is likely to increase their willingness to escape reality. Making people responsible for their actions, through the health care system, welfare reform, criminal justice system and reform of ACC/tort law would be a step along the way to addressing it. These are all ways drug users escape the reality of any consequences of their actions (and indeed everyone else).

It is clear the status quo has both failed and is immoral. National is perpetuating it in the vain hope it will make a substantive difference, when the main effect will be to inconvenience people with cold and flu symptoms, and to harass tourists bringing in now restricted medications.

Meanwhile, guess how many pharmacies will have such medications in short supply by the end of the week?

Bono appears at Tory conference

After years of ingratiating himself with the Blair/Brown regime, Bono decides if the electorate likes the Tories "I will follow". In the hope that with David Cameron two hearts beat as one on aid, he wants to save people living in cities where the streets have no name. You see talking about helping Africa, spending other people's money to help Africa is even better than the real thing to him. Bono believes sometimes you can't make it on your own, so he needs the support of the incoming government to continue his campaign (yes I know, enough of the song "humour").

Sadly he undoubtedly will get vertigo if he actually learns about the problems of Africa, how much it is to do with poor governance, a lack of individual right protection and property rights, how much the protectionism of the EU on agriculture impoverishes, and how the solution to Africa's problems is to look at other continents that are far more prosperous and see that it's about capitalism, it's about government that protects rights and is impartial.

So Bono asking that the UK government spend 0.7% of national GDP on aid, is not just morally dubious, it simply wont work. It is good money after bad. Aid has made Africa addicted to other people's money, addicted to the notion that its problems can be solved if only other people wiped debt and paid it more money. It's simply wrong.

Bono has good intentions, I don't doubt that, but he needs to understand that the causes of Africa's relative poverty are multifaceted, and perhaps the biggest external limit on Africa is trade policy. If he embraced free and open trade he'd be embracing trading out of poverty. However, beyond that Africa needs good small government, it needs a culture of respecting individual rights and rejecting mysticism, tribalism and socialism. It needs the rest of the world to stop providing any form of comfort and support to the gangsters who run too much of that continent.

Who is the thief?

Let's say the mafia strongarms money out of you and your business regularly, say it does so to "protect" you, but is not very good at it.

Let's say your much bigger neighbour finds ways to evade the mafia strongarming so much money out of his business, quite successfully.

Then is the fact the mafia got less money from your neighbour, because your neighbour hid its money in clever ways, means your neighbour has effectively stolen from you (because the mafia might have taken less had it had what it thought it should have got from your neighbour)?

Just a way of looking at this.

In rebuttal to this.

No service means no subsidy

Again, rare for me to agree with Idiot Savant, but whilst NZ Bus services are suspended due to strike action, it shouldn't be getting subsidies for services not being provided.

Funny how the ARC Chair Mike Lee is pointing this out, but admitting that ARTA, which is a branch of the ARC, is still doing it.

Does he not realise how this strengthens the case for the abolition of the ARC?

Indeed it strengthens the case for abolishing bus subsidies. I'm neutral on the industrial dispute. That is between two groups of people negotiating payment and conditions for the provision of services.

However, part of the leverage in that dispute is that NZ Bus loses fare revenue when services are not provided. Yet, when it gets subsidies of, on average, $2 a passenger trip from ARTA, regardless of whether services are provided, then the main losers are Auckland ratepayers (who pay 60% of that subsidy) and motorists/commercial road transport operators (who pay 40% of the subsidy through fuel tax and RUC). It used to be that around half of all bus services in Auckland were fully commercial, in that fares more than covered costs and that the market was open to competition.

Now the proportion is much less, I have heard an estimate of around 20%, but it isn't clear. ARTA has "contracted over" commercial routes, so that one subsidised operator is paid to provide a set of routes. This effectively shuts out competition, which ARTA can prohibit if it undermines a contracted service.

Now, if NZ Bus relied wholly on fare revenue it might seek a settlement more quickly, as the business would be dependent wholly on pleasing customers, not a bunch of transport planners.

Daily Telegraph headlines this morning

Gay man 'tried to poison lesbian neighbours over three-legged cat feud'

Female predator pedophile stalked public lavatories

The pill gives women a taste for boyish men like Zac Effron

German banker used fake documents to work as a surgeon

Get the sense that Britain really IS about tabloid headlines?

French Minister of Pedarasty?

So you defend Roman Polanski.

Then someone reads your biography from four years ago where you say:

"I got into the habit of paying for boys . . . The profusion of young, very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire that I no longer needed to restrain or hide"

"All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously ... the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire."

Let it be clear the age of these boys is not clear, they may be legal age.

However, it is a big oops.

He COULD come out and say the boys were legal age, I have no shame about exploiting prostitutes from developing countries who consented and were (young) adults (!). There is no proof he has broken any laws.

However defending Polanski does not make for a good look. Polanski no doubt was excited enormously and was in a state of desire, so he drugged and raped a young girl.

It is THAT that denies his moral authority for certain, whether his rapacious hedonism also does so is something we may not ever know.

TVNZ is not a Taonga

Brian Rudman is sad that TVNZ is to broadcast programming of a wide appeal, which he describes as "lowest common denominator pap". He ignores, like all of the elitist snobs in the cultural subsidy industry, that the very people he claims to give a damn about - the poor, the less well educated, the needy - are in fact the broad mass of people who like what he calls "lowest common denominator pap". They are, the lowest common denominators. Those celebrated by the left are also sneered at, for their cultural (lack of) taste, in preferring cheaply made entertainment to local content, American sitcoms to documentaries about the union movement in the 1950s.

They wont admit it, but the overwhelming attitude is supremely condescending, like a ruling elite intellectual class that knows what's best for those poor unfortunate souls that capitalism has rendered victims of its heartless system. Woe is they who must watch TV of such low brow that we must tax them and force them to pay for what is good for them.

To fix the appalling choices of the proletariat, Brian Rudman calling for TVNZ to get special taxpayer money for New Zealand programming (which is also a breach of CER and a breach of New Zealand's GATS commitments). He thinks TVNZ is a treasure and harks back to better days at TVNZ, when it had programming he liked.

He is right that news and current affairs were better, but not by much of course. He then misrepresents considerably the TV licence fee, which ceased directly funding TVNZ in the 1980s, as NZ On Air was created and the licence fee was used to fund programming to all broadcasters on a case by case basis. Indeed all of the licence fee money was replaced by taxpayer funding when it was abolished in 1999, much to the chagrin of those who wanted rid of NZ On Air altogether. The statement "Government was supposed to make up the $100 a household licence fee but that never eventuated." is dead wrong.

The Ministry of Culture and Heritage, which has a demonstrable vested interest in maintaining and expanding this role, said "Important parts of our cultural life would simply not be present without intelligent intervention from the government."

Important to whom? People unwilling to pay for it? The suppliers who couldn't get people to pay for what they provide if given the choice?

Public broadcasting makes cultural elitists feel good, and the left like it for providing more in depth news and current affairs that inevitably has a statist bias. Why? Because by being forcibly funded by the state, such a broadcaster can find it difficult to build a culture to challenge the role of the state in that and other arenas. How CAN you question state funding of businesses, health, education, welfare and the like if YOU are a beneficiary of it?

Public broadcasting becomes a creature of the status quo and an advocate of statist solutions. How often on Radio NZ do you hear someone arguing for less government against one arguing for more government, rather than 3 all talking about different ways of having more government to resolve an issue of the day?

No. TVNZ is not a Taonga. TVNZ is a commercial broadcaster that seeks to maximise audiences, it is no more special than TV3. The fact it thinks it is, is a good reason to shut it down.

Maori TV offended - so what?

I didn't see the TV3 sketch obviously, I don't care whether I did or didn't, but notwithstanding that TV3 should have a right to free speech. It is privately owned, you don't have to pay for it or watch it. If its customers are offended then they can pull advertising if they wish.

There is no right to not be offended. It doesn't matter if you didn't find it funny.

In a free country nobody else is required to please you.

After all, the Maori Television Service is highly offensive to those who don't want to be forced to pay for any TV channels. I have never considered TVNZ to be anything to do with my values or my culture, for example.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority is increasingly anachronistic when anyone can easily obtain video and audio content from across the world via the Internet, not that international broadcasting is new. It is time to wind it up, and for people, parents especially, to be reminded that:
1. Owning a TV is voluntary. I know of at least two families who deliberately do NOT.
2. Turning the TV on is voluntary, and you can turn it off too.
3. What is broadcast by television is the choice of the broadcaster. If you don't like it, don't watch it.
4. Unless a broadcasting is inciting commission of an actual crime, the broadcaster is party to a crime, engaging in defamation of an individual or breaching copyright, there should be no legal remedies against it.

So next time TV3 offends you, turn it off. Next time Maori TV offends you, turn it off.

Shame you can't stop paying the state when it offends you.

Helen sends UNDP back into North Korea

Despite a major report outlining questionable UNDP practices in North Korea before (such as hiring North Korean staff selected by the regime for sensitive job positions), the UNDP is back.

UNDP Watch notes:

The regime employees filled such critical jobs as UNDP finance officer; program officer slots that helped to design and oversee UNDP projects in the country; technology officer, who maintained all of UNDP’s internal and external communications and servers; and even the assistant to the head of the UNDP office, who presumably was in a position to see much, if not all, of the boss’ paperwork.

The staff were paid in US$, and the capacity for fraud and diversion of aid for political purposes was enormous. $9.13 million was paid directly from UNDP to North Korean government agencies for projects approved by UNDP.

Who says the UNDP is back? Well the Korean Central News Agency. All other reports rely on that coverage. So who knows how true it is.

The Heritage Foundation is outraged for a very good reason. In a totalitarian state, any aid given is approved by the regime and benefits it. The regime's top priorities are:
- The tightly knit senior leadership surrounding Kim Jong Il and his non-estranged family;
- The military and secret police; and
- High ranking party members.

By NO means can money or aid going to North Korea that is used by its own government agencies ever be verified as having delivered assistance to those in need. It would be like funding Concentration Camp commanders to assist their captives.

So how is Helen Clark justifying this? Or is it just plus ça change... ?

I'm sure the New Zealand mainstream media are working hard to investigate this one, like they did before entered the role.

Pictures from a nearly car free society

The Times has a new photo-gallery of, where else?

(and yes it is a trolley bus not a tram)

Police accountability

I'm astonished that I'm going to agree with both David Garrett and Idiot Savant, but maybe there is a bit a belief in individual rights that can be nurtured?

Garrett describes a case as follows "Last month, while attending a call-out in Khandallah, police used force against a teenager they mistook for a gatecrasher at an out-of-control party. During the incident, the teenager suffered broken vertebrae in his neck after being struck with a baton. When he asked for the officer's badge number, he was told to 'eff off' – in direct contradiction of long-standing and established police guidelines"

Idiot Savant, beyond some cheap nastiness about Garrett caring about "rich kids", agrees. The question I would have is whether both men can ever possibly be consistent on this. Garrett after all has little history about caring about individual rights, Idiot Savant of course thoroughly embraces the thieving leviathan of a socialist state.

The fundamental problem with the Police, as I have described before, is that the separation of powers between the law enforcement, judiciary and legislative arms of the state means that the Police believe themselves to BE the law, and not accountable to those who pay for them, but most of all that their attitude to civilians - you're a suspect until we're satisfied otherwise- just wont do. The Police attitude to criminal justice policy is telling.

The Police exist as an extension of our own rights to self defence, they are paid for that purpose. When they turn on people without warning they are going completely against that.

Both myself and Trevor Loudon have presented options for Police reform. It would be good if some government would consider them.

Nanny Tories to tax alcohol more

Why be surprised? It is in the school prefect, oh "the working classes as so incompetent we must save them" holier than though attitude that the party sadly personifies too often.

You see the problem isn't the drinkers, it is apparently those who sell to the drinkers. Well you shall not do that, of course young bankers who get bladdered on champagne wont be affected, after all drunk upper class people are just funny aren't they?

Nice cheap way to excuse not focusing the criminal justice system on real offenders.

Tories announce cuts

Conservative Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, presented his plan to cut spending to eliminate the budget deficit at the Conservatice Party conference. Is it bold? No. Is it acceptable? Just. Is it enough? Not by a long shot.

His ideas are:
- One year pay freeze on all state sector employees earning more than £18k a year, excluding the Armed Forces (this includes teachers, doctors and the police);
- £50k cap on pension payments for state sector employees;
- Reducing "size of the Whitehall bureaucracy" by a third;
- Abolition of "baby bonds" and welfare tax credits for those earning over £50.
- Increase state pension age to 66 from 2016 (for men);
- NOT to abolish the forthcoming 50p tax rate on earnings over £150k;
- Increase inheritance tax allowance to £1m.

To be fair he laid it into Gordon Brown saying:

“The Iron Chancellor has turned into the plastic Prime Minister. Free social care. Free hospital parking. Free child care places. We would all like those things. But where is the money coming from? He is treating the British people like fools,”

Quite right, but whilst this is a start, I still think far more can be done as I outlined before:
1. Abolish all corporate welfare, stop trying to pick winners;
2. Lead a call to cut the EU budget at Brussels;
3. Sell Channel 4, Royal Mail and the tolled bridges/tunnels of the highway network;
4. Cancel plans for a high speed railway, no new taxpayer spending on rail infrastructure;
5. Scrap the ID card scheme;
6. Scrap a wide range of government IT projects;
7. Scrap subsidising rural broadband;
8. Abolish regional development agencies;
9. Fund Scotland on a per capita basis, forcing it to make budget cuts;
10. Eliminate additional welfare payments for those on welfare who have extra children;
11. Negotiate an end to EU welfare tourism;
12. Freeze NHS spending, introduce charges for "no shows" at appointments and charge for more than 1 GP visit a year for those between 18 and 65;
13. Freeze all public sector pay until there is a budget surplus;
14. Terminate public sector pension scheme membership growth;
15. Abolish all NEW agencies established since Labour was elected.

So far we have only number 13. 1 out of 15 George, must try harder.

and I wasnt even being libertarian.

Is Maori TV rugby bid a breach of WTO obligations?

New Zealand is bound by the General Agreement on Trade in Services to have no limitations on market access in the audio-visual services sector and no limitations on national treatment. This was a commitment signed up in 1994 under the previous National Government. It has effectively stopped local content quotas being introduced on television and radio.

Whilst there remain no limitations on market access, it is the commitment to no limitations on national treatment that is at issue here.

National treatment means that you treat foreign owned suppliers on an equivalent basis to domestically owned suppliers. In practice this means NZ On Air cannot discriminate between broadcasters on the basis of ownership, and it does not. However, it becomes a little more complicated when we talk about Maori broadcasting.

New Zealand limited national treatment for Maori broadcasting as follows:

"The Broadcasting Commission is 3)directed by the Government, pursuant to the Broadcasting Act 1989, to allocate a minimum of 6 per cent of its budget to Maori programming. From 1995 all public funding for Maori broadcasting will be controlled by Te Reo Whakapuaki Irirangi (Maori Broadcasting Funding Agency)."

However, Te Puni Kokiri is responsible for the money being given to the Maori Television Service to bid for the broadcasting of the Rugby World Cup free to air. Not Te Reo Whakapuaki Irirangi (commonly known as Te Mangai Paho). Indeed you might ask whether bidding for broadcasting a rugby match is "Maori broadcasting" but it is moot.

That limitation does not apply as the money has not gone through the right agency. So the exception doesn't work.

Is there a potential breach of New Zealand's WTO commitments?

The state granting funding to a broadcaster that would not be available to a foreign owned broadcaster, for the same purpose, would appear to be so. Subsidies, you see, are meant to have national treatment.

TV3 and Prime should be entitled to national treatment, and be eligible for the same funding for a similar purpose, but are not. Indeed, one could not even begin to argue that there was a process to allow them to apply for such funding.

The foreign owners of both broadcasters could, theoretically, get their national governments to formally complain to the New Zealand government of this breach. Indeed, they could go to a WTO Disputes Panel and thoroughly embarrass the government as a result.

Wouldn't this have been picked up? Well no. You see Te Puni Kokiri is hardly versed in trade agreements. The Ministry of Culture and Heritage, which is responsible, was not actually responsible for broadcasting policy and GATS at the time it was signed. It was the then Ministry of Commerce (now Ministry of Economic Development). The institutional knowledge about this is not located in the Ministry of Culture and Heritage nor TPK.

I also doubt whether anybody thought it was necessary to get Ministry of Foreign Affairs sign off on this funding.

So the Parliamentary Question is:

"Has the Trade Minister received any advice as to whether the Te Puni Kokiri funding of the Maori Television Service to bid for free to air Rugby World Cup broadcasting rights is in compliance with New Zealand's international trade obligations? If not, why not?"

Supplementary:

"How does the Trade Minister reconcile New Zealand's commitments to national treatment in audio-visual services with the granting of a subsidy to a New Zealand owned broadcaster to acquire broadcasting rights that could not and would not ever be available to a foreign owned broadcaster?"

UPDATE: This also applies to CER. New Zealand is bound to offer national treatment to Australian broadcasters. So there could be a breach of CER as well.