It’s the day after the Budget and Parliament is sitting in urgency to debate new tax legislation. The Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill is apparently so important that National have:

• Deferred the main Budget Debate;
• Removed normal select committee review;
• Imposed a retrospective effect.

So what is this tax bill about?

Is it the secret “base broadening measures”; National’s supposed answer to Labour’s future focussed capital gains tax?

Is it the closing of the major loophole by which half of the wealthiest 100 New Zealanders avoid being on the top tax rate?

Is it reinstatement of the Labour Government’s research and development tax credits, the key tool which was stoking our businesses’ engines of innovation?

Er, no, no and no.

The centrepiece of this Bill is picking the pockets of paperboys and papergirls.  Urgently taxing toddlers, if you will.

It’s laughable that National’s top economic priority is retrospectively stealing the pocket money of 68,000 kids.

But it’s incredibly sad that this is what government in our beautiful country has come to.

National has wrecked New Zealand’s economy.  Just yesterday they unveiled a horrific 17% plunge in exports.  But instead of getting a real plan to deliver a brighter future they’re plotting to tax toddlers.

The zero Budget of 2012 is yet another wasted opportunity for a country desperate for change.  It’s an insult to ordinary Kiwis who are working harder and longer for less and less.  It’s a slap in the face to law abiding families and small business owners who pay their taxes, and who deserve to get ahead instead of being pickpocketed.

New Zealand is losing 1,000 Kiwis every single week.  That’s 50,000+ a year.

Unemployment is up by 50,000+ since National took office.  The number on benefits is up over 50,000 too.

A zero Budget means zero hope for them, and all New Zealanders.

It also means zero pocket money for paperboys and papergirls.

The Guardian has written a good editorial about the role of parliament in holding the government and its Ministers to account. I would hope that our parliament sees its role in a similar vein.

Check out our website on this and take a minute to email John Key and tell him what you think.

The Australian Government has begun secret talks with carriers on proposals to enhance the security of Australia’s telecom infrastructure which would, in part, mandate a penalty-backed requirement on operators to secure their networks against external threats and require risk assessments of key infrastructure upgrades, modifications and procurement decisions.

CommsDay also understands that the government is highly concerned by the offshore dissemination of Australian citizens’ private data and calling information for use by customer service centres in locations such as India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. This could lead to a requirement for all data to be housed onshore. The recent discussions likely explain the timing of the revelation last Saturday that Huawei Technologies would be barred from supplying the National Broadband Network.

In recent weeks, representatives of major Australian operators were called to a confidential roundtable meeting with government officials from the Departments of Attorney-General and Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy to discuss the proposed measures. These include a notification process of infrastructure purchase decisions and upgrade or modifications to networks which may have national security implications. Infrastructure builds would potentially be subject to scrutiny or what is termed “risk assessment” under the arrangements with a key focus on details regarding suppliers. Existing infrastructure may also be subject to the reporting process.

The Prime Minister, the ICT Minister Amy Adams and her predecessor Steven Joyce are directly accountable for the actions and inaction of New Zealand to respond to warnings and advice from our security agencies.

The security and integrity of our telecommunications and new broadband infrastructure is a matter of utmost national importance. Cyber security is the new frontier and all countries take it extremely seriously. Despite the lip service paid to it by our government, it appears they have ignored advice and this may have the potential to undermine and compromise our infrastructure.

There are questions to be answered. John Key and Amy Adams must answer whether they received advice comparable to the advice given to Australia, when they received that advice and what actions they have taken since. Steven Joyce is also accountable in his former role as ICT Minister.

I am not party to the advice. But as the Opposition spokesperson for Communications and IT I am raising what I think are valid questions. Why has our approach to this issue been so markedly different to Australia’s? Surely alarm bells must be ringing in the government. What are they doing about it?

Yesterday I would have asked this question in the House to the Acting Prime Minister had Winston Peters not chosen to withdraw his question given John Key was not present.

Does he agree with The Australian newspaper’s Foreign editor Greg Sheridan who said today that if David Irvine, the head of ASIO, Australia’s intelligence service, and who is a former Australian ambassador to China,  had authorised a judgement to be cautious on Huawei, then it was certainly sound. And if so, did he receive the same advice and why hasn’t he acted on it?

It’s worth reading Greg Sheridan’s piece.

Paul Maley’s piece in The Australian is also worth reading . He revealed yesterday that:

BRITAIN’S intelligence services were forced to erect a costly, resource-intensive auditing structure to ensure Huawei did not steal secrets after the Chinese telco was allowed to take part in a British broadband project.

Given that New Zealand defence analyst Paul Buchanan has made some very strong statements in recent days about the importance of these issues the Prime Minister needs to answer this:

When did he become aware of what defence analyst Paul Buchanan has described as the “collective view of the security community”  in the US, Britain and Australia that Huawei is almost certainly a front for Chinese intelligence services, and  what actions has he taken as a result of hearing this view?

Today, Australian PM Julia Gillard is reported as sticking up for Australia’s national interest. I wonder what ours is doing?

“I’ve stood up for Australia’s interest. I know the opposition is standing up for the interests of a Chinese company,” she said while in Sydney for an announcement on the NBN.

“We’ve made the decision in the national interest. Any suggestions this is in breach of our trade obligations is simply untrue.

“We’ve got a strong, robust relationship with China. We are deeply engaged at every level, we have a strong economic relationship, we have increasing ties at every level — diplomatic ties, multilateral ties, and you will continue to see our relationship with China strengthen and grow.”

A former National MP allegedly punched another customer in the face as shocked tellers looked on at an inner-city Wellington bank after an argument over a parking space.

Wellington police yesterday confirmed receiving a complaint from a man alleging he had been assaulted by another man on Monday last week in Courtenay Place. They said the incident was still under investigation.

Westpac spokesman Chris Mirams said there was an incident in the bank’s Courtenay Place branch that day and said Westpac was co-operating with the police.

The Herald has spoken to the victim of the alleged assault who said the incident arose from a disputed car park outside the bank.

The man, who did not wish to be named, said he had parked his car in a space outside the bank which another motorist had been intending to use. Words were exchanged, and while he was retrieving items from his car the other motorist, who had by that stage parked his vehicle elsewhere, tried to shut the car door on his legs.

Although “it didn’t really hurt at all”, the man said they exchanged further words when both were in the bank a few moments later.

However once the motorist completed his transaction “he just turned around and gave me a good old whack … a swinging right arm across the face”, the man said.

I’m not sure when former MPs deserve the protection that members of the public get while their cases are being investigated – but the problem with this story is that dozens of former MPs are implicated. While it is unlikely that Simon Power or Simon Upton were involved they are in that group of male former Nat MPs. I didn’t mention Don McKinnon because the suspect was driving and Don seems to be driven these days

The Herald should have named the suspect.

And if the suspect is on the Nat list John Key should get on the phone and tell him to do the decent thing.

The Committee has indicated a willingness to travel to hear submissions – so ask if you want to be heard either in your home city or in Wellington.

The link to the parliamentary site is here.

The question now is why John Key didn’t take decisive action earlier. He promised to set high standards for his ministers, yet yesterday he was claiming Smith had done nothing wrong.

As late as this morning Keywas reported as saying if he sacked every Minister who made an error of judgement he wouldn’t have many left. Hardly a way to show his confidence in his own team…

1. Setting targets for the public service

It’s a good thing to set clearer targets for the public service, but Ministers can’t abdicate all responsibility by placing all the onus on departments to achieve them. Ministers set the budgets, sign-off the strategies and plans, and have a huge amount of say over the directions the public service will take when seeking to achieve those targets. They are still responsible. We also need to recognise that some of the targets we set will have long lead-times. For example, getting more 18 year olds with at least NCEA Level 2 starts when those very same kids are 2 and 3 years old, if not before.

2. Capping the core public service at a lower level

As I’ve noted before, this is an ‘input’ measure and cuts against John Key’s stated intention of focusing the public service on ‘outcomes’. It’s also pretty arbitrary and can lead to unintended consequences. For example, if a govt agency needs to take on new people in order to deliver on one of the outcome goals, but they’re up against their quota of staff, they could end up hiring external contractors or ‘outsourcing’ at a higher price than they could deliver the same outcome for internally if they didn’t face such an arbitrary constraint.

3. Creation of a new ’super-ministry’

Restructuring is often seen as something you do when you don’t have a clear sense of what you’re trying to achieve but want to look like you’re ‘doing something’. I agree with what John Key said “Few problems are solved by significant reorganisations – in fact, many more tend to be created. It is easy to underestimate the amount of energy and inspiration soaked up by institutional change, as well as the loss of personal and institutional knowledge”. Shame he didn’t stick to that.

The public service can continually be sliced and diced in the never-ending search for ‘natural synergies’ but what we should really be focused on is getting the whole of government working more effectively together. Constant uncertainty and restructuring doesn’t achieve that.

So overall impressions? We’ve seen enough action plans, strategies, and targets from National. This latest list follows on from the six-point plan in 2010, the revised six-point plan in 2011 with 41 actions, and 2012’s 120-point plan. Time to start making some progress. About the only ‘progress’ they can point to so far is more people out of work.

Tonight TV3 have gone one better and unearthed video footage of him speaking to the PSA Conference back in September 2008. Not only does John Key rule out asset sales, he makes a compelling case against them.

“There’ll be no asset sales in the first term of a National government, and there may never be asset sales in the years ahead… Nor am I hell-bent on selling assets actually. I personally think it’s not the issue that the current economy faces. In the world of making the boat go faster, actually I don’t think selling off state assets is going to make the boat go faster.

Labour has been arguing all along that asset sales will not make us a richer country. We’ve been consistent. John Key and the National government have done a complete u-turn and have now placed asset sales at the centre of their economic strategy.

“The Crown’s dividend streams from the Meridians, the Mighty Rivers of the world is large, so on both motivations we don’t have a debt problem, they’re acting, I think, highly effectively as companies, and they’re making money. There is no motivation to sell assets.

Once again, Key is borrowing the line that Labour has been consistently arguing for over a decade. The SOEs are highly profitable. They make more money than we would save in debt repayment costs if we sold them. Also note Key arguing we don’t have a debt problem (Bill English also made similar comments both before and after the 08 election). Interesting how after 3 years of a National government debt seems to be the biggest issue we face…

“So there’s no agenda to sell assets.

This is perhaps the most damning quote. Although Key was careful before the 2008 election to qualify his no asset sales pledge with “during the first term” he gave New Zealanders the very clear impression that he wouldn’t be selling assets long-term either.

“What we are saying is we’re not going to cut jobs, we’re simply capping at 36,000.

That commitment didn’t even last a term. Now he’s promising even more job losses during National’s second term. Nothing about that in their manifesto for 2011.

“The second point is, no we’re not borrowing for tax cuts.

So if they’re not borrowing for tax cuts, and New Zealand didn’t have a debt problem when they took office, why are they now arguing we have a major debt problem and need to sell assets to fix it?

John Key has built his political career on telling people what they want to hear. Eventually that strategy always catches up with people, and it’s catching up with Key big-time.