The Thorndon Bubble

As I have to be over at Docklands around 7 pm, an earlier start time for drinks seems prudent. So I’ll be at the Southerner at 5 pm now.

It’s at 46 Essex Street, WC2R 1AP and is also its penultimate day as it closes at the weekend.

Tags: DPF, United Kingdom

If anyone is unclear about what Chris Carter’s core message was, this video shows him how on message he was. Note there are no duplicates.

Trevor Mallard has said Carter is irrational and implied he needs to see a psychiatrist. Now that is a bit like me implying someone needs to go on a diet, but regardless I have to say Carter seems very calculating in his comments on TV. He knows you have to repeat a line a dozen times before it sinks in with the public – and he has done exactly that.

Tags: Chris Carter, Labour, Labour Leadership, Phil Goff, You Tube

Advised not to use the line but I do think the day needs lightening up.

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Over the past couple of months I've been running a little project aimed at learning how government agencies track OIA requests, with the ultimate goal of generating performance statistics to allow non-compliant departments and Ministers to be publicly named and shamed for their failure to obey the law. The project is almost done - most of the data is in, with just a few laggards to chase up, and I hope to post some initial results next week. But this has turned my mind to the question of what standards we should hold Ministers and Departments to in meeting their obligations under the Act.

On the one hand, the law is very clear: requests must be responded to

as soon as reasonably practicable, and in any case not later than 20 working days after the day on which the request is received

Which suggests a 100% performance standard. But even I think that's a little high. In a large organisation, there is an inevitable level of mistakes. Requests will be misplaced, the need for an extension forgotten, responses unable to be signed off because the Minister or Chief Executive is away. Expecting perfection from bureaucracies is a recipe for disappointment.

So, what are the alternatives? One obvious one is to hold Ministers to their own standard. Every government department has a "purchase agreement" with its Minister which includes certain performance requirements (whether those requirements are met is reported in their annual report). One of those requirements is always that 95 or 100% of Ministerial drafts - such as OIAs forwarded to departments for answers - are completed on time. Taking the lower of those gives us our standard. Its what Ministers demand of their departments, and we can demand no less from them.

What a scoop! We've just received a copy of the first draft of the letter that Chris Carter sent to the media yesterday. He obviously did a bit of work on it before it hit the news last night, but we reckon he should have stuck with the original.

Anyway, here 'tis. In reading it, just remember that Chris Carter was once the Minister of Education ...

Over on Pundit, Andrew Geddis has an interesting post on the value of early childhood education. His chief talking point? A study from the US showing that a qualified ECE teacher is worth US$320,000 a year. And that's just considering the net present value of the increased earnings of their students - not of deferred crime and healthcare costs. If teachers are worth that much, why are we cutting the subsidies to ECE centres to hire them?

The answer is twofold: firstly, of course, National wanted to spend that money on tax cuts for its rich mates. But the reason it cut ECE rather than, say, secondary schools, is because they basically see it is valueless. In National's eyes, ECE isn't education, but babysitting. And this is simply false. The study cited in the NYT is just one of a large pile, showing (in the words of The Spirit Level) that

Early childhood education programmes can foster physical and cognitive development. They can alter the long-term trajectories of children's lives, and cost-benefit analyses show that they are high-yield investments. In experiments, disadvantaged children who have received high-quality early childhood education are less likely to need remedial education, less likely to become involved in crime, and they earn more as adults. All of this adds up to a substantial return on government investment in such programmes.

National has entirely the wrong view of ECE, and this causes them to devalue it and underfund it. And the result is that we are robbing the future of brighter, healthier, better educated and better adjusted kids, so that a bunch of 50-year old males can get a tax cut.

Is there a better cartoonist in the land than Rod Emmerson just at the moment? We don't believe so. He has the knack of making his point brilliantly yet simply. Here's his take on Chris Carter:

My journalist-trained colleagues on Pundit probably will wince at my opening with such a hackneyed cliche, but everything changes when you have children of your own.

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Yesterday Sue Kedgley asked Agriculture Minister David Carter some questions in Parliament about allegations that the Pork Industry Board was deliberately attempting to evade the Official Information Act with respect to information about animal welfare in piggeries.  Sue’s question followed a leaked email from the Pork Industry Board:

It is likely there will be a number of farms requiring corrective actions and … those actions could cause embarrassment to the farmer if made public and could cause embarrassment to the industry if used by animal welfarists, [so] some alternatives to current procedures were put forward.

Here’s David Carter’s response to Sue:

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) to the Minister of Agriculture: Is he taking any action in response to reports that the Pork Industry Board sought to avoid the public embarrassment of reporting conditions in New Zealand piggeries by deliberately evading the Official Information Act; if not, why not?

Hon DAVID CARTER (Minister of Agriculture): No, and for a very simple reason: I have no responsibility for the Pork Industry Board being compliant with the Official Information Act.

But a quick check of  section 6 of the Pork Industry Board Act shows that it provides:

(7)It is also a function of the Board to report regularly to the Minister on—
(a) the performance and present state of the New Zealand pork industry; and
(b) the Board’s achievement of its object; and
(c) the Board’s performance of its functions; and
(d) any other matters the Board thinks fit or the Minister requests. 

And under Schedule 2 of the Act, the Minister can “remove a director from office for disability affecting performance of duty, bankruptcy, breach of any duty set out in Schedule 1 that applies to the director, or misconduct, proved to the Minister’s satisfaction.” 

I suspect this story has a wee way to run.