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Posts Tagged ‘NZ Herald’

Mondayising ANZAC Day and Waitangi Day

Posted by Grant Robertson on May 29th, 2010

As I have raised previously here I think there needs to be a serious debate about ensuring that New Zealanders get the 11 public holidays a year that they are entitled to under the Holidays Act. The issue is back in the spotlight this week after the EPMU have raised it as part of negotiations. Interestingly the NZ Herald waded into the debate in their editorial yesterday, and came out in favour of Mondayising.

By international standards, New Zealanders work long hours and do not enjoy an inordinate number of holidays. In the interests of fairness and uniformity, they should enjoy the full fruit of what they get.

This is exactly right, and should be the basis from which the discussion about public holidays flows. The biggest issue that has been raised with me since my earlier post is the question of undermining the sanctity of the days. However I think the Herald has this exactly right as well when discussing the RSA’s concerns about any change.

The RSA is right about the increased sanctity of Anzac Day, but that is the precise reason it is wrong to fear that might be lost if the day were Mondayised. People understand the importance of April 25 and February 6 as the exact dates of important historical events. They want to commemorate those events on those days. That will never change. It is, therefore, no reason to deny the statutory holiday that usually falls people’s way on those days.

I think the best of both worlds is possible where the actual days are given the respect that they absolutely deserve, but on occasions when they fall on the weekend the statutory holiday allocation is retained.

The biggest issue for me in this matter is the changing nature of the working week. Mondays are in fact a common regular non-working day for those in hospitality and retail, and therefore they miss out in terms of public holidays, especially when we consider that other holidays such as Labour Day and Queens Birthday always fall on Mondays. This may mean a different kind of amendment to the Holidays Act, either separately or in addition to dealing with the ANZAC/Waitangi issue.

Anyway, I am keen to hear your views, and whether this is something people in your workplace have talked about or are concerned about.

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Filed under: Employers, labour, workforce
7 Comments

Super city a crime says Herald

Posted by Phil Twyford on April 21st, 2010

NZ Herald - Crime

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Filed under: Auckland, humour
20 Comments

Has Joyce got the bottle?

Posted by Clare Curran on March 20th, 2010

Was going to post this last week. For various reasons didn’t. Still very relevant, especially given Joyce’s interview on the new TV3 The Nation programme this morning. Joyce is smooth, I’ll give him that. But he’s still untested.

This is the first of a few pieces I will write about Joyce and the big decisions facing him.

Interesting piece from Chris Barton in the NZ Herald last week titled Joyce near high noon of communications portfolio. Important piece.  And I agree on a number of things, but not on others.

It is high noon for Joyce. On two fronts; whether he decides to regulate on mobile termination rates and who gets to roll out the big ticket $1.5 billion ultrafast broadband scheme.

Joyce, who seems to be more assertive in his other portfolios, continues to hold his cards close to his chest.

Barton is right that both decisions will take guts, determination and strength. Will be interesting to see Joyce’s mettle.

On the evidence available to date, I think the time is right to regulate on mobile termination rates and said so last week. Circumstances have changed. There’s a serious third player in the market and people want certainty and not to feel they’re being ripped off. A regulatory solution right now is more robust and trusted by the public and the market. Two things to say about Barton’s piece though.

David Cunliffe was a decisive Minister of Communications. He brought lasting change to the industry and faced down Telecom.

Trevor Mallard’s 2007 decision on mobile termination rates was thorough, evidence-based and he certainly isn’t one to walk away from a challenge.

Both of them have more bottle than Joyce appears to have.

But Joyce doesn’t like regulation.  So it will be interesting to see what he does. It appears the Commission may have given him an out via its split decision.

He also has another big decision coming on fibre (not to the home though). It’s about time he made it. Every month that goes by is another month with not one millimetre of government funded fibre being rolled out. Remember this was their big policy! The biggest item actually. He’s taken too long, made it too complicated  and allowed the situation at Telecom to get out of hand.

This is what happens when you’re a hands off Minister.

Joyce should be thinking about consumers (people) first and ensuring that the government’s role is to protect their interests. Not shareholders. It’s not his role to protect them. This is an industry with a future. It’s hugely important to our country, from an infrastructure perspective as well as its capacity for innovation.

I wish I felt more confident that Steven Joyce got that. But then he does have many portfolios to look after and not sure this is a priority.

A final point. Chris Barton suggests that fed-up consumers want a Clint Eastwood figure (a Dirty Harry) to ride into town and pull out his pistol. Well, as much as I’m a Clint Eastwood fan (sorry about that to everyone who is reacting with shock and horror) I adamantly disagree.

There’s way too much cowboy behaviour in the telecommunications industry. That’s why some regulation is required around mobile termination rates. It’s why the XT network debacle happened and has allowed a duopoly to strangle the market.

It’s why we’ve had a monopoly keeping prices inflated across our international internet cable. It’s allowed our biggest telco to continue to exercise its muscle throughout the industry despite not having a real commitment to a national network.

We don’t need a vigilante. We need a Sheriff, bringing a bit of order and civilisation. And we need someone with some bottle to deliver it. Is it Steven Joyce?

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Filed under: broadband, comms & IT, infrastructure, internet, regulation
12 Comments

Critical infrastructure yes?

Posted by Clare Curran on March 4th, 2010

Two recent pieces of interest in the NZ Herald. Fran O’Sullivan’s piece yesterday titled: Failures make us look third world. About, yes you’ve guessed it, Telecom’s XT network failures and Transpower’s outage in Auckland.

She’s concerned that these outages were:

to put it kindly, more like what you might expect to occur in South America or parts of Southeast Asia

and then says:

Infrastructure failures do occur. But in Telecom’s case the excuses tendered by chief executive Paul Reynolds (who either doesn’t know what caused the failures or is simply using confusion to obfuscate what critics claim is the failure to scale up the XT network fast enough to meet escalating demand) verge on a Monty Python skit.

The absurdity of Transpower needing to call in police assistance to protect its workers when they went on to an irate farmer’s land to fix the electricity transmission company’s pylon was also bizarre.

Both these failures exposed the fragility of some of the nation’s critical infrastructure: Telecom does not have a back-up network for its XT service which will automatically kick in when failures occur.

And she hopes that the Govt’s national infrastructure plan will address the issues. But is concerned that it won’t go far enough. And I agree.

The second piece just updated on the Herald website is somewhat horrifying.

Telecom is giving out rival 2degrees’ services to key hospital staff on XT as backup in case the network, which has failed four times since December, goes down.

The Herald reports that this is what’s happening in the Canterbury DHB. Otago Southland DHB is reviewing its contract with Telecom and in the Hutt Valley, north of Wellington, Telecom began transferring clinical hospital staff to a reliable network after four outages that could have jeopardised emergency responses.

Capital and Coast, Blenheim’s Wairau Hospital and Hawkes Bay DHBs have either moved to pagers or are reassessing their contracts with Telecom.

So tell me that a functioning mobile network is not critical infrastructure?

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Filed under: comms & IT, infrastructure
6 Comments

GST poll in herald – disingenuous

Posted by Stuart Nash on February 13th, 2010

If anyone had any doubts about the NZ Herald’s political stance over Key’s GST proposals, they certainly won’t anymore.  Front page of the NZ Herald this morning had a headline “Poll shows solid backing for GST rise if income tax cut”.  We then read on to find out that the so called “poll” was actually an email sent to the 6,432 Herald readers on the Herald’s reader panel.  Of these only 1,407 replied. 

Now I hardly think this “poll” is scientific, objective and representative of the views of all NZers.!  Far from it.   Wouldn’t mind knowing the full demographic of this reader panel – but I can guess…  What the Herald only mentioned at the end of the article is that a greater percentage of readers thought that the tax package was unfair (45%) than it was fair (43%).!!! Also only 22% thought that the tax proposals would promote economic growth versus 51% saying it wouldn’t.  Wonder why the Herald didn’t lead with these results..?? 

Come on the Herald, you can do better than this, and your readers expect more.!!!

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Filed under: GST, Tax
21 Comments

Cheese rolls… the ongoing story

Posted by Clare Curran on January 15th, 2010

I just got asked for the recipe for cheese rolls. I thought I’d google it (even though I know it).

And… discovered there’s a cheese roll appreciation society recently been established on facebook. 

I’m not suprised, judging by the cross-parliamentary reaction to my plate of (straight from the oven) cheese rolls at the parliamentary press gallery party in December.

The NZ Herald published the recipe for those who are interested:

Cheese rolls are made by filling a slice of bread with a mixture of cheese, onion and onion soup powder. Optional extras include reduced cream, mustard, parsley and chives. The bread is then folded and grilled, and the toasted cheese roll is buttered on the outside.

Mmmmm. I am seriously thinking about running a cheese rolls supply service in parliament. A fundraiser ( of course) but would need a cause supported across the House. Because it’s a universal thing.

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Filed under: humour
8 Comments

A tale of two cities newspapers

Posted by Grant Robertson on January 13th, 2010

There is not a lot of variety in the New Zealand media, given our size and the domination of a couple of key players.  But today we have an interesting divide between the NZ Herald and the Dom Post on just what is on the agenda for discussions between Hilary Clinton and Murray McCully.  Bear with me here, but it all started with the Herald’s in-depth coverage of the Clinton visit on Saturday, which included the cringe-making headline in the print edition ” They like us again”. That story tells us that military exercises between NZ and US are all set to resume and all will be revealed very soon.

The Weekend Herald understands it is likely to be announced next week when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, Kurt Campbell, visit New Zealand.

Now these sorts of stories do not come out of thin air and Audrey Young, the author of the article, is a highly respected journalist. The rest of the articles in the Weekend Herald extensively quote Murray McCully, so one could be forgiven for assuming him, or to quote one of my favourite journalistic euphemisms ” someone close to the Minister’s thinking” was the source.

Clare Trevett follows the story up today with an account of Mrs Clinton’s programme and informs us

High on the agenda is understood to be the United States’ review of the security relationship with New Zealand and plans to drop the US ban on military exercises with New Zealand.

However in the Dom Post today, Martin Kay has a story headlined ‘Defence ties with NZ ‘not in Clinton’s portfolio’. It tells us

Sources close to this week’s visit by American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have scotched speculation that she will announce an end to the ban on United States-New Zealand military exercises.

The article goes on to say that actually the question of military exercises is not even in the Secretary of State’s portfolio, and that a US review of our defence relationship had not yet been completed and quoted the US Embassy as saying

“The review is ongoing and no conclusions have yet been drawn.” 

Hmmm, a curious case. I can imagine the Dom Post’s editors asked its reporters how they could miss a pretty damn big story, and they went and checked with the US Embassy and discovered it was just not happening.

Now this is all quite amusing, but it does raise a couple of serious questions. First, how on earth do we get two so contradictory stories? My experience always tells me to back cock-up over conspiracy. But you do have to wonder how it is that the NZ Herald could have gained the impression that there was to be a major announcement if it was not from someone in the NZ Government? Was there an attempt to get it on the agenda by raising it through the media? or just someone getting way ahead of themeselves?  If it is either of these then it is bad politics  and poor diplomacy from the National Government.

The other thing I do know from my MFAT experience is that the US will be less than impressed that the idea that there would be an announcement on military exercises has been made public if it is not going to happen on this visit. These visits are carefully managed and likely outcomes discussed well in advance. The rivalries in the US system are also a factor, and the notion that the State Department might be stepping on the toes of Defence will go down very badly.

Anyway, it will be most interesting to see what does get discussed/announced, and which of our daily journals of record is right about this.

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Filed under: Foreign Affairs, defence
15 Comments

Summer school VI – Herald + nats = bipartisan foreign affairs approach

Posted by Trevor Mallard on January 11th, 2010

Every now and again we all take a risk with our relationship with people who are friends as well as having a different role in their employment. I’m doing it now but there was one of those moments during the summer school that was too good to let past.

Grant was leading a discussion around the pros and cons of a bipartisan approach on Foreign Affairs and Trade, where it works, where it is inappropriate etc.  Obviously it is a real advantage to a government in having the major opposition party onside – and it is a big thing to oppose your own government offshore.

We were looking at a few quotes clippings and the media approach etc when the penny dropped for all in the room.

We do have a bipartisan approach to Foreign Affairs and Trade. Two groups where you can’t see daylight between them.

The NZ Herald and the National Party.

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Filed under: Foreign Affairs, journalism, media, national
20 Comments

White mofos not racist?

Posted by Trevor Mallard on December 4th, 2009

I still don’t get it. How can Hone begin to get away with suggesting that his comments weren’t racist?

And even more amazing is that the editor of the Herald has become an apologist for the Maori Party. You can almost see John Key’s spin team dictating the editorial. At least the Dompost can spot bullshit.

The Herald should not be buying into John Key’s special treatment for his Maori Party support team.

If a Pakeha used the term brown mofos it would be racist.  That standard should apply both ways.

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Filed under: M?ori, coalition management, national, politics
44 Comments

Rudman comments

Posted by Trevor Mallard on August 27th, 2009

While I generally agree with Brian Rudman – and he is certainly one of the Herald’s most thought provoking columnists – he doesn’t seem to understand that Labour politicians work with businesses in their electorates and get frustrated when jobs are exported – especially new economy jobs such as these which have gone to a French defence company.

Leading Auckland Labour Party politicians involved in the negotiations were also appalled with the comments, and that Mr Mallard had made no effort to check the facts with them.

I would be very very surprised if any politician had been involved in the commercial negotiations. It would be improper. The negotiations would have been conducted by officials from ARTA and NZTA.

He might have realised that he was the victim of a last-ditch PR campaign by Wellington-based Infratil, whose proposal had been found inferior by ARTA, ARC and Wellington government funding agencies.

I reiterate what I said in a comment on that post:

My source is someone who has enormous IT experience and was an early critic of the Police and INCIS. Remember it is IBM it must be best syndrome.

I did not discuss it with Infratil or any of their PR people.

As was clear in the very articulate debate between Jarbury and Tim Brown some people think it is important to develop and own the ticketing system and be responsible for all upgrades and others think this is not core business and it can be rented. Some people think the $10m+ plus spent to date on the bid process is good value for money and others think that knocking 20c off every fare in Auckland would have been a wiser spend. Some people think having something up for the RWC is a good idea and others think that 2012/13/14 is a better idea.

I’m not fan of all of that Infratil does. My view is that Labour should make it clear that it will reverse any Nact decisions to put schools into Infratils PPP arrangements.

However I’m not sure that we need to spend ratepayers or taxpayers funds on a system in Auckland when we haven’t had to in Wellington.

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Filed under: Auckland, blogs, national, public services
12 Comments

Where to from here?

Posted by Chris Hipkins on August 15th, 2009

John Armstrong has an interesting column in this morning’s Herald on the challenge ahead for Labour. It came to my attention because he quotes my Red Alert post on small business, although my Google Alert actually referred me to the ODT version, where the sub-editors have given me a sex change. 

Armstrong quotes one of the people Phil Goff met on the streets of New Plymouth who remarked “Listen, mate. You know we voted these guys in seven months ago. You don’t expect us to come up and say we did the wrong thing yet, do you?”

That sums up the present state of New Zealand politics. National won the last election quite comfortably. Kiwis are fair minded people and will be willing to give them a fair go at the job before they pass judgment. I expect that will be reflected in the opinion polls for most of the current parliamentary term. I would be very surprised if we make much of a dent in the poll gap before election year. But I’m not worried about that either.

New Zealanders will next get the chance to weigh the pros and cons of a Labour-led or a National-led government in 2011. They will judge National on what they have delivered and all parties what the respective parties are offering for the future.

In the meantime our role as an opposition is to keep the government honest. We need to highlight what they are doing and the impact of the spending cuts they are making.

At this point in the electoral cycle nobody expects to see new detailed policies from Labour. But they do want to see us out and about listening to their concerns and reconnecting. That’s what Phil Goff’s “Touching Base” visits have been all about. It’s also why the Labour caucus has visited places like the West Coast, Wanganui and New Plymouth.

We need to keep listening. We need to talk about our values, rather than giving laundry lists of specific promises or commitments.

There is no doubt in my mind that victory for Labour in 2011 will be tough. But our party is in great shape. Our members and supporters are upbeat and ready for a vigorous campaign.

Meanwhile National is busy breaking its election promises, bullying its critics and implementing policies it didn’t dare put before the public before the election. All that will be starting to add up by the time 2011 rolls around.

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Filed under: democracy, labour
25 Comments