NZ Politics

Well has good information on proposed new copyright Legislation here in NZ.
The good thing is that there is a new format-shifting provision meaning that you can make a cd from music you have purchased legally. The bad thing is that it takes a page out of the DCMA and puts massive fines and/or imprisonment if you try to circumvent DRM on files.

The question Russell Brown asks is whether anti-circumvention clauses should be part of any copyright law, obviously i think not. Remember the only gains to be made from DRM are music labels/movie studios. The end user and the artist get no gain from this technology.

DRM creates major consumer confusion and it takes away a legal purchasers fair-use rights after they purchase the movie/music. There have been serious allegations made about Don Brash s famous leaked emails this morning by Investigative Researcher who was just about to realise a book based on the emails but was stopped short by last week.
The book is an extraordinary case study of unprincipled and anti-democratic politics, Hager says in his preface.

Waring, now professor of public policy at Massey University, described the book as an excellent systems analysis and so important .
This is a story about democracy, and the public of New Zealand deserve to know what they have when they speak of such an ideal, she writes. I would expect to see much of the evidence set out in the book reported to the Electoral Commission, Parliamentary Services, the police and the Auditor-General.

She adds: It is my hope that the ultimate effect of The Hollow Men will be the return of honour and honesty to our democracy. I thank Nicky Hager for his courage and extraordinary hard work.
Hager says the leaked papers came from the highest levels of the National Party hierarchy.

Six people in particular provided most of the information.
These allegations sound very serious. Don has handled this poorly by getting the injunction which blatently makes it look like he has something to hide.

Now the public curiosity has been aroused, i wouldn t be surprised if the emails are leaked publicly within a week or so. The SST has the preface to the book .
Well it looks like Auckland will be unlikely to agree on anything for building a Rugby World Cup stadium, which is a real shame.

Now that the National Party has put the boot in with supporting the Eden Park option (because of concerns of the cost blow-outs - which is somewhat hypocritical seeing as they are the party) I strongly doubt that Auckland or the government will be able to make a decision on where the stadium will be.
As i have stated earlier rugby stadiums in the Auckland area, a fourth will be very hard to justify. Whilst the economic advantages are strong i feel this stadium has got too little going for it to work.

Jordan Carter has a good post on why it would be whilst I agree with some of the benefits particularly economic and with transportation I just think that there is too little time between now and 2011 for the dream to be realised.
Anyway bring the final to Christchurch! We ll be ready and we will probably be the cheapest option too!

And by a big majority too 72-49.
Finally our elected officials have realised that raising the drinking age will have no effect on the current binge drinking culture in New Zealand.
So the drinking age stays at 18, which is still one of the highest in the world.

Well despite the National Party rhetoric New Zealand has been rated least corrupt country in the world equal with Finland and Iceland. The survey was taken out of 163 countries.
The annual survey by the Berlin-based organisation Transparency International draws on surveys from multiple independent institutions.

It defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain and measures the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country s public officials and politicians.
Data is gathered from businesspeople and country analysts. Not every country is included in the survey because of an absence of reliable data from the remaining countries.

The scores range from 10 (squeaky clean) to 0 (highly corrupt). New Zealand, Iceland and Finland rated 9.6 while Haiti scored just 1.

8, marginally behind Myanmar, Iraq and Guinea with 1.9.
New Zealand has achieved no easy task, to have a country which has the least corrupt government out of 163 is no easy task.

Well done New Zealand.
Below is an actual billboard which has gone up at airports around the country.
It s from the National Party.

What is interesting to note is that National is failing to promote its own policies and is instead still favouring attack politics (as shown by the billboard). I just hope they remembered to pay the GST on it!
Anyway its about time we saw some policy from National, their only real policy they had at the last election was tax cuts and now they have softened up on that as well.

Where s the education, health, environment policies? What will they do that s any different if they win the election? Who knows.

But the attack politics didn t really work for them at the last election, so why will it again? Any attempt to raise the drinking age again, will almost certainly fail to do what some people expect it to do - stop underage drinking and stop teenage drunkeness.
There is no doubt in my mind that this will not stop teenage binge drinking as the issue is not one of age, but as puts it, one of Parents responsibilty, proper funding and enforcement of current laws.

This is a problem with New Zealand society at large rather than just of teenagers. If anything teeagers are more responsible today then ever before. Drink-driving by young people is seen as really bad today, as opposed by being the norm when my dad was a teenager (35 - 40 years ago) also today alcohol is more expensive then ever, because of many factors.

Therefore the quantity of alcohol drunk would be less as well, i also believe that teenagers today have a lot better control over their alcohol intake, most know their limits and how much they can/cannot drink.
I was reading the paper this morning and came across the story of Thomas Hossein Yadegary. A guy who has been held since November 01 2004 in Mt Eden Prison in Auckland without trial.

Thomas Hossein Yadegary is an Iranian man who has been in New Zealand for about twelve years. He came to this country as a political asylum seeker in 1993 and asked for help from our government.
He worked all these times and paid his taxes.

Over these years he has spent over $60,000 on legal fees in order to gain residency, only to find the doors of a free life in New Zealand closed on him after all this time. He waited all this long twelve years and yet there was no answer.
All his applications have been declined and now he has been put him in prison to be deported back to Iran.

He has been in prison from 1 November 2004.
He has still been fighting his deportation, and has refused to sign a waiver allowing for him to be deported, therefore he is continually imprisioned.
It seems every month he goes back in to court, only to find immigration officials arguing for him to go back to prision.

It has also been infront of labour MP Clayton Cosgrove, who has denied Thomas an appeal.
New Zealand isn t Guantanamo Bay. I find it completly unacceptable that someone is being held in prison without trial here in New Zealand, and further more our government which has full knowledge of the incident is not doing anything about it, this is especially hypocritical when they campaign against human rights abuses around the world.

I was unable to find any reports from the mainstream media, the only thing I could find was this advocating for his release over a year and a half ago. The gutterball politics, personal attacks and all the other general bullshit that is going on in parliment must stop now!
The current political climate is embarrasing and disgraceful and the Labour and National parties are bother equally to blame.

- Labour may have to pay their election overspend >$400,000 (2005) and maybe $400,000 (2002)
- National s election overspend (GST) >$100,000 (2005) and maybe up to $400,000 (2002)
Wayne Idour, the man who originally denied being hired by the Exclusive Brethren to spy on Labour MP s has now done a flip-flop and has confirmed that he did infact spy on labour party mp s.
His confirmation of having been hired by the Exclusive Brethren reversed denials yesterday and the day before.
He explained his switch by saying the first rule of his industry was to protect clients.

He said he had not been hired directly by the Exclusive Brethren, but had been subcontracted.
He had been asked to make inquiries into unlawful activities of the Government, the Labour Party in general, to find out what I could and report back . The national party, who have had a very dodgy and secretive history with the EB must now renounce any dealings that they may of had with them, because if there is any indications that the National Party were behind this or had knowledge of this in any way it is very serious because t is no different to what Nixon did.

The EB issue here also clearly shows what this group of religious fanatics will do to undermine democracy in NZ and around the world, i d hate to think what their campaigns in Australia and the US involve. This is warning, take these people seriously! Well it seems the national party once again have shot themselves in the foot.

This time because of news about leader Don Brash allegedly having an affair, whilst campaining on the morales of family and marriage.
Now it looks likely that he will have to go, once again fuelling devistating leadership rumours. Also National party insiders and some national MP s are also calling for the leader to go, particularly Brian Connell.

All this will cost National big. It not only has taken the wind out of their sails, but has also started filling the ship with water. All of nationals recent gains will be lost, and any more in the future will probably be very ineffective due to the in-fighting as the public will lose confidence in them.

The issue has caused many right wing bloggers to hit out at Labour for releasing the information, but in reality for someone as prominent as National Leader Don Brash to have an affair, it was bound to come out sometime, really Labour cannot be blame, nonetheless some RW bloggers have begun censoring their blogs comments anyway.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has suggested that Labour may indeed pay back the money owed, after it gets the final report from the Auditor General. It is also looking to hit back at National for use of anonymous election donations and its GST overspend.

If it is made to pay back up to $800,000 that is estimated it may owe, it may do so by underspending its $4.9 million entitlement this year and next year by $400, 000 each year to effewctivly wipe off the total debt.
In that way, it would save the taxpayer the same amount it had unlawfully spent - on communications such as mail-outs, or other costs funded from the same appropriation such as research, or whips office costs.

Meanwhile, Helen Clark launched war against National yesterday with counter-claims of corruption in last year s election.
She foreshadowed an electoral law change that would prevent National channelling many of its donations anonymously through trust funds.
That could hit National in a significant way.

Of the $1.88 million of donations declared by National last year, $1.74 million was channelled anonymously - though legally - through trust funds.

National MP Bob Clarkson continued his rant towards Muslim Women and homosexuality last night. Even going so far to say that homosexual people are not average people .
He also made reference to the number of gays and lesbians in Labour s ranks.

I would question the fact there seems to be more than a fair share in the Labour Government and maybe they should look at equal opportunity of employment in their case.
We ve got a problem there they are employing more of those than average people. The funny thing is, that despite all the media hype, only about 30 people turned out to listen to him speak, they were probably outnumbered by media, lol.

That proves that this conservative theme that is running through the National Party, is really out of touch with New Zealanders today.
The latest poll, the has shown National open up a 7 point lead over labour. This has just continued the trend of see-sawing on the polls since the election, with one poll showing national, the next labour ahead.

The reality is that this poll is relativly insignificant as we are still about 2 years away from the next election.
Even if the election was held tomorrow, Labour wouldn t have that much to worry about, remember National doesn t have many (if any) friends in parliment, with the exception of Act (who got a laughable 0.7% in this poll) National have no other clear potential coalition partners.

has highlighted an unacceptable where Auckland mayor Dick Hubbard had suggested that people who cannot afford to pay for the massive rate rises that the Auckland City Council are suggesting should borrow to pay for their rates.
This is appalling, especially seeing as interest rates are high and that the people he is suggesting borrow money will not be able to afford to pay the interest on these loans.
However DPF s highlighting of this issue is also a bit hypocritical, there was no mentionat the time of disgust when the National Party suggested it would have to borrow money to pay for any tax cuts.

Although not the same as national s infamous dawn raids many years ago.
The National Party has been told by its marketers that it is too old, and needs to look more cool . It has been suggested that it aligns itself with New Zealand Rock bands such as steriogram and clothing labels such as dawn raid.

It has also been told to sell its (very few) women MP s to magazines and newspapers.
Its all pretty funny stuff, read more .