David Farrar has already demonstrated that the Police are back on about speeding again. The Police briefing for incoming minister has asked for them to get a lot more money and people, surprise surprise. This is something the public tend to LIKE, but is also fraught with danger.
Now, as everyone says, the Police have a hard job, but politicians have a harder job making them accountable. The Police are not easy for accountability, partially because:
1. Most people love them, they perform duties few of us would want to do ourselves, and they are essential to a peaceful and free society – and they know it and they know how to pull on public heartstrings. Much of the time they do their job very well;
2. It is a highly unionised profession, meaning they stick together to protect each other. This is a mentality that suits the job they do, but means when anyone is out of line, there is some willingness to cover each other’s trails. This is not a place to be too independently minded.
3. Management of the Police is in house. In other words, military like, every level of the Police hierarchy is managed by cops – not managers. Companies run by the core staff are often far from successful – airlines used to be run by airline people until it was realised that professional managers were needed – people who are not sentimentally attached to parts of the operation and who can ask the hard questions. Hospitals are the same by the way, they shouldn’t be run by GPs.
4. There is no competition or threat of competition.
Having said that the NZ Police are light years ahead of many of their overseas counterparts, although in some cases that hasn’t been hard.
The main risks that the Police present are:
1. Poor performance: Not responding to what the public – taxpayers- demand of them. This is responding to incidents that threaten themselves, their families or their property. This does not mean sending for a taxi for a distressed woman or not responding to 111 calls. The flak over this is a systematic lack of performance incentives – and the union and organisation will say this is too hard.
2. Lack of budget control: What the Police want, the Police get. The INCIS project is the classic example, no proper management and money just going down the plughole to IBM for a system that ultimately was not delivered. Anytime a politician considers making the Police more efficient, the Police stick together and say “that means removing a community constable from Manurewa” or whatever. The Police always say budget cuts affect the frontline, so the administrative overheads continue to blowout.
3. Police threat to individual liberty: As the frontline of the monopoly of legitimised state violence, the Police have powers to initiate force against New Zealanders. They should, of course, do this very sparingly, with priority on cases when there are victims or potential victims – and not at all in other cases. The Police always claim they enforce the law, but for many many years they have done this selectively. They are tough on drugs, but I don’t see them following around teenage girls to check if their boyfriends are 16 and over and breaking the Crimes Act with them. They ceased routinely enforcing the law against homosexual acts a few years before it was repealed. The Police can change their law enforcement emphasis – but all in all, they always advocate more power and discretion. If the Police had their way we would all have ID cards, electronic tracking devices attached to us at all times that they could check up on, and CCTV cameras on every street corner. The Police would also change the burden of proof so you are guilty till proven innocent. Don’t have any doubts about it, the term Police state isn’t something many of them think is a bad thing, and if you spent half your day dealing with lowlifes, you might have some sympathy for that.
So what have the cops asked for?
A need to increase frontline response and investigator numbers.
Attrition is 350-400 a year, so the Police propose double that recruitment rate per annum. Of course the actual numbers needed are not suggested, so that the numbers could presumably grow ad infinitum, along with the budget. Of course, they could stop enforcing victimless crimes, though Libertarianz is not in government.
A need to reduce staff safety risks, bolster field supervision and improve investigation file quality for Court with more sworn positions at Sergeant and Senior Sergeant level.
These are several different things, but this means more money to promote experienced cops.
Considering next steps in areas of road policing enforcement alongside education and engineering options
Here the cops take the easy out – lowering speed limits, blood alcohol limits and more use of speed enforcement and tougher sanctions. Now given Transit and the Police recently admitted that in one location (Tokoroa-Taupo) speed wasn’t the key factor, it seems that as speed enforcement is really easy, they want to slow everyone down.
My view is that the biggest road safety problem comes down to punishment – people who kill others on the road due to stupidity should be banned from driving, for life. If you can’t stay on your side of the road, or obey a red light – then tough – and if you are caught driving again, you get imprisoned, for trespass. In a world of private roads, an unauthorised driver would be trespassing – but in New Zealand, it is a far bigger offence to be smoking cannabis than it is to be an idiot driving a car and killing someone. Speeding is an issue, on some roads in some conditions, but it is an attitude in New Zealand that you can’t punish bad driving – but you can punishing breaking rules. I don’t care if this means underprivileged stupid people are in prison for reckless driving causing death – better that than them being in prison for having the odd joint!
and the Police? Abolish victimless crimes, to give the Police more chance to follow real crimes -and make them locally accountable. Split the Police into several dozen precincts, each individually accountable to an electable sheriff - maybe not as many precincts as there are local authorities, but somewhere around 40. Then bulk fund according to the local population, let the Police pursue the local priorities, and anything that goes across precincts can remain the purview of a centralised investigation unit. Now that would be a change!
21 November 2005
19 November 2005
Wellington: Paremata congestion gone
Stuff reports that it seems that the much maligned Mana highway upgrade has done the job – morning and evening peak congestion has been eliminated. After much criticism that the $24 million upgrade was a waste of money and it should have been spent on the cargo cult called Transmission Gully – the $24 million upgrade works! A bit cheaper than the $1.1 billion price for Transmission Gully, but then the advocates of Transmission Gully have almost a social credit view of economics. The Mana upgrade had a benefit cost ratio of over 5:1, Transmission Gully is around 0.5:1 - it is obvious which project is a good investment.
The upgrade was based on a simple premise – the problem is that two lanes of free flowing traffic merge into one for several kms. So the solution was fairly straightforward – ensure two lanes flow between those points. The bridge was duplicated to create two lanes each way, and the road widened from Mana Esplanade to the 4-lane highway north of Plimmerton. In between those points parking is banned at peak times so an extra lane can operate in one direction. Five sets of traffic lights ease the flow from side roads, improve local and have not hindered the flow. In fact, the cops are concerned about speeding along the road now!
Who needs a 27 km hilly 4-lane motorway to fix this problem? Only stupid central and local body politicians addicted to spending other people's money promote this, along with a small number of local residents who will benefit from their properties not being on such a busy highway.
Now this wont be a long term solution, Transit says ten years and traffic growth will have filled up the road capacity. In the meantime, some consideration can be made about how to plan to fix that - a bypass at Mana is the best answer at around $220 million.
Ten years saving $1.1 billion on Transmission Gully (or $220 million on a Mana Bypass) is worth a good bit of money – at 5% interest a year, minus inflation it is still over $200 million in net savings from NOT building Transmission Gully. It is time to stop building roads well in advance of them being needed – if Transmission Gully or a Mana Bypass are to be built they it shouldn't be before 2015-2020 – and by then there may be congestion pricing, which could mean nothing need be done. The money can be used for something else.
So the pressure should be off – Paremata is no longer a traffic bottleneck, for now – another reason why politicians shouldn’t decide road building based on media driven popularity contests – I doubt if any Members of Parliament given a list of roading projects could decide what are the best ones.
The upgrade was based on a simple premise – the problem is that two lanes of free flowing traffic merge into one for several kms. So the solution was fairly straightforward – ensure two lanes flow between those points. The bridge was duplicated to create two lanes each way, and the road widened from Mana Esplanade to the 4-lane highway north of Plimmerton. In between those points parking is banned at peak times so an extra lane can operate in one direction. Five sets of traffic lights ease the flow from side roads, improve local and have not hindered the flow. In fact, the cops are concerned about speeding along the road now!
Who needs a 27 km hilly 4-lane motorway to fix this problem? Only stupid central and local body politicians addicted to spending other people's money promote this, along with a small number of local residents who will benefit from their properties not being on such a busy highway.
Now this wont be a long term solution, Transit says ten years and traffic growth will have filled up the road capacity. In the meantime, some consideration can be made about how to plan to fix that - a bypass at Mana is the best answer at around $220 million.
Ten years saving $1.1 billion on Transmission Gully (or $220 million on a Mana Bypass) is worth a good bit of money – at 5% interest a year, minus inflation it is still over $200 million in net savings from NOT building Transmission Gully. It is time to stop building roads well in advance of them being needed – if Transmission Gully or a Mana Bypass are to be built they it shouldn't be before 2015-2020 – and by then there may be congestion pricing, which could mean nothing need be done. The money can be used for something else.
So the pressure should be off – Paremata is no longer a traffic bottleneck, for now – another reason why politicians shouldn’t decide road building based on media driven popularity contests – I doubt if any Members of Parliament given a list of roading projects could decide what are the best ones.
18 November 2005
Post Election Departmental Briefings
Having been involved in a couple of these over the years, they are interesting exercises. Departments/Ministries choose whether to give free and frank advice that may – to some – show ideological colours – or they dish out pablum - something plain and boring, which doesn’t represent a challenge to the status quo. Some of these briefings have been out this week and reported. A GOOD department will step aside from current policy and talk about outcomes, the current situation and what should be done to improve outcomes. This is a carefully calculated briefing about moving forward, rather than criticising past policies. Government departments can’t be seen to support or oppose previous policies, but simply advise on what they believe – professionally – is best.
Now the cynics amongst you will say this is highly political – there is no way that Treasury will NOT say cut spending and tax, or that the Minister for the Environment wont say tax pollution, regulate activities and spend money on green things. There is some truth to that – but I think that is the difference in flavour among many in the public sector. The difference between the statist and the economic rationalists, and each government department has a greater or lesser number of these.
For example, you are less likely to find some socialist statist nutcase working for The Treasury than an Austrian school free-market advocate – some would say like attracts like, I would say that this is simply good old fashioned commonsense. Treasury also, mostly, attracts highly skilled intelligent hard working people – the crèm de la crem of the public sector. This is one reason why Treasury gets involved in most areas of the public sector – not only does it have to advise on spending, but it actually contains high quality analysts generally. New Zealand could do worse than have the government run by The Treasury (though it could do better too). See much of what Treasury does is stop money being wasted and stop bad ideas from being implemented – so it attracts people who have the brains and the balls to say “wait- why are we doing this? What’s the evidence this is worth doing? Prove it!”. I can say that, on average, 4 out of 5 Treasury officials I dealt with were very smart people who I could engage with intellectually about issues. They had to go to Health, Education, Te Puni Kokiri, Environment and Social Development and say no – or ask questions of those who wanted to spend your money on their ideas. Treasury provided a brake on spending, and many times it would offer alternate recommendations in Cabinet papers which opposed what other departments were proposing- and it was really up to Dr. Cullen to take or leave that advice, and convince his colleagues if he took it.
On the flipside, the kooky useless nano-kleptoMinistries (Pacific Island Affairs, Youth Affairs, Women’s Affairs) tend to attract, mostly (I say this because I get surprised when the occasional intelligent rational person I know somehow gets hired by these agencies), lefty post-modernist deconstructionist types, or simply the vacant “I wanna help people” crowd who sleepwalk their ways from largely useless university degrees. These are the ones who see government as this great moneybin which Uncle Scrooge (Treasury) guards, and they want to save the world- they think that with the money taken from the productive, they can someone make a difference. They think that the country would be worse off without these little tags on the skin of the country, when in fact many of us can remember before they existed and would be happy to see those tags surgically removed. It would hurt the people there, but we would all be better off. These nano-kleptoMinistries could all be gone tomorrow, and virtually nobody in the country would be worse off, or miss them.
More disconcerting are the mega-kleptoMinistries – Education, Heath, Social Development, and many others, which constantly suck up large amounts of money, and play on the political heartstrings of MPs. They are driven almost entirely by socialists of some variety, who think what they do is so important and the only reason it isn’t done as well as it could be, is lack of money. Having convinced most New Zealanders that their health care and education is a matter for nanny state, they want to spend more, intervene more and regulate and tax more. They are the ones living it up under Labour, and they hate National governments. They are from leftwing academic, professional or union backgrounds and have every excuse in the world as to why they shouldn’t be accountable for performance – after all health is about people dying, and education about children – and what heartless soul would cut money for that!
I recommend you read post election briefings from The Treasury at least, and any other department you have a particular interest in. The media wont report on these critically – as New Zealand has precious few journalists, just reporters that take as given what departments say – except Treasury, because journalists are wary of anyone talking economics – they don’t understand it.
Now the cynics amongst you will say this is highly political – there is no way that Treasury will NOT say cut spending and tax, or that the Minister for the Environment wont say tax pollution, regulate activities and spend money on green things. There is some truth to that – but I think that is the difference in flavour among many in the public sector. The difference between the statist and the economic rationalists, and each government department has a greater or lesser number of these.
For example, you are less likely to find some socialist statist nutcase working for The Treasury than an Austrian school free-market advocate – some would say like attracts like, I would say that this is simply good old fashioned commonsense. Treasury also, mostly, attracts highly skilled intelligent hard working people – the crèm de la crem of the public sector. This is one reason why Treasury gets involved in most areas of the public sector – not only does it have to advise on spending, but it actually contains high quality analysts generally. New Zealand could do worse than have the government run by The Treasury (though it could do better too). See much of what Treasury does is stop money being wasted and stop bad ideas from being implemented – so it attracts people who have the brains and the balls to say “wait- why are we doing this? What’s the evidence this is worth doing? Prove it!”. I can say that, on average, 4 out of 5 Treasury officials I dealt with were very smart people who I could engage with intellectually about issues. They had to go to Health, Education, Te Puni Kokiri, Environment and Social Development and say no – or ask questions of those who wanted to spend your money on their ideas. Treasury provided a brake on spending, and many times it would offer alternate recommendations in Cabinet papers which opposed what other departments were proposing- and it was really up to Dr. Cullen to take or leave that advice, and convince his colleagues if he took it.
On the flipside, the kooky useless nano-kleptoMinistries (Pacific Island Affairs, Youth Affairs, Women’s Affairs) tend to attract, mostly (I say this because I get surprised when the occasional intelligent rational person I know somehow gets hired by these agencies), lefty post-modernist deconstructionist types, or simply the vacant “I wanna help people” crowd who sleepwalk their ways from largely useless university degrees. These are the ones who see government as this great moneybin which Uncle Scrooge (Treasury) guards, and they want to save the world- they think that with the money taken from the productive, they can someone make a difference. They think that the country would be worse off without these little tags on the skin of the country, when in fact many of us can remember before they existed and would be happy to see those tags surgically removed. It would hurt the people there, but we would all be better off. These nano-kleptoMinistries could all be gone tomorrow, and virtually nobody in the country would be worse off, or miss them.
More disconcerting are the mega-kleptoMinistries – Education, Heath, Social Development, and many others, which constantly suck up large amounts of money, and play on the political heartstrings of MPs. They are driven almost entirely by socialists of some variety, who think what they do is so important and the only reason it isn’t done as well as it could be, is lack of money. Having convinced most New Zealanders that their health care and education is a matter for nanny state, they want to spend more, intervene more and regulate and tax more. They are the ones living it up under Labour, and they hate National governments. They are from leftwing academic, professional or union backgrounds and have every excuse in the world as to why they shouldn’t be accountable for performance – after all health is about people dying, and education about children – and what heartless soul would cut money for that!
I recommend you read post election briefings from The Treasury at least, and any other department you have a particular interest in. The media wont report on these critically – as New Zealand has precious few journalists, just reporters that take as given what departments say – except Treasury, because journalists are wary of anyone talking economics – they don’t understand it.
Privacy and the Motor Vehicle Register
I see that it has been reported in Stuff that “thieves track cars on vehicle register”.
You see you can, for a small fee, find out the name and address of any owner of a registered motor vehicle in New Zealand – useful if someone runs you over and you can recall the rego number, but also useful for marketing companies and stalkers. Although in some parts of the country the register is not exactly up to date, because the Police aren’t too keen on enforcing the law on such matters where it is rough.
Transport officials are drafting a Cabinet paper that would stem abuse of the system, including protecting against the disclosure of vehicle owners' personal information.
This is very old news, as Cabinet agreed in 2002 to tighten up privacy of the
Motor Vehicle Register it is about time – it simply hasn’t been a legislative priority since then.
Of course if roads were not run by the government there would still be a Motor Vehicle Register run collaboratively by the road companies, as there would be a need to ensure that there was a consistent level of information for charging vehicles, and enforcing conditions of using roads (currently traffic laws).
You see you can, for a small fee, find out the name and address of any owner of a registered motor vehicle in New Zealand – useful if someone runs you over and you can recall the rego number, but also useful for marketing companies and stalkers. Although in some parts of the country the register is not exactly up to date, because the Police aren’t too keen on enforcing the law on such matters where it is rough.
Transport officials are drafting a Cabinet paper that would stem abuse of the system, including protecting against the disclosure of vehicle owners' personal information.
This is very old news, as Cabinet agreed in 2002 to tighten up privacy of the
Motor Vehicle Register it is about time – it simply hasn’t been a legislative priority since then.
Of course if roads were not run by the government there would still be a Motor Vehicle Register run collaboratively by the road companies, as there would be a need to ensure that there was a consistent level of information for charging vehicles, and enforcing conditions of using roads (currently traffic laws).
North Korea's new soulmate - Turkmenistan
If you thought the North Koreans were nuts then check out the imitator – Turkmenistan under President for life Niyazov, who took the ending of the Soviet Union as a chance to go back to Stalin – he calls himself Turkmenbashi and has written his own philosophy in the Ruhnama The BBC has an article about it here .
Or you can go to the Turmenistani government website yourself here and work it out for yourself. Make sure you have a firewall operating – websites of authoritarian governments are notoriously nosey on people’s PCs.
Or you can go to the Turmenistani government website yourself here and work it out for yourself. Make sure you have a firewall operating – websites of authoritarian governments are notoriously nosey on people’s PCs.
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