Just Left

Two nice events : Ros Noonan's farewell, #OSNS launch

I got to be at two nice events in Wellington this week (interrupted by an equally nice Auckland trip for a somewhat less exciting Telecom briefing).

Tuesday evening saw a nice farewell for chief Human Rights Commissioner Rosslyn Noonan, hosted by Simon Power at the beehive.

Ros ran the human rights commission for a decade, and won a reputation for asking questions that governments often don't want asked.

In her speech she made a big point I really agree with, one that needs to be made more often.

She noted that in New Zealand, it really isn't popular to disagree with or stand up to the state. Much of public opinion and much of officialdom doesn't like having it's view questioned, and when that happens often responds in what I would call a thuggish way.

She linked that to the importance of strong and fearless human rights institutions that can help in a small way to redress the power inequality between the state and the citizen.

It's so true. The great kiwi clobbering machine is alive and well. We like to pretend otherwise sometimes but the illustration this week of a government trying to ram through thuggish law at no notice is timely.

I admire the work and the views that Ros has and I hope her next adventure is as meaningful & courageous as her stint at the HRC has been.

The second event on Wednesday was the opening of the OSNS exhibition by the College of Creative Arts at Massey Wellington, in the old Museum building.

It is a showcase, "Old School / New School", of design at the college in all its permutations, over the 125 years of its existence.

It was a timely reminder of the massive creativity in this city over time. The head of school (name to come) drew an important connection too — that between design and growth.

Science and technology are the engines of our economic future, no doubt, but without design nobody will want them, and what we do sell will be worth far less.

Without design too, life would just be so much more boring.

Thanks to Clare Robinson from Massey for the invitation.

A very nice dinner

I was somewhat mystified to get an invitation in my inbox a few weeks ago asking me to Dinner at the Residence of the Ambassador of the United States of America.

A very nice dinner it was too, last night: a crowd of media/blogger types, who for reasons of discretion I shall not name.  The Wellington post apparently has one of the most developed social media operations in the US diplomatic universe, and I'll admit I've been following some of their stuff for a few months now. That may have been the inspiration for the selection of the guests.

I've never really been in that sort of setting.  David Huebner and his partner Duane McWayne were brilliant hosts, and the mix of guests and Embassy staff mixed nicely together.

If you've not been to the residence and you get a chance, you should go: a particular highlight is the art.  The Ambassador explained that each post gets up to 15 art works which the State Department will borrow and bring to the residence, and that for his choices, he put a young Auckland artist together with a young Los Angelo artist, had them over to each other's cities for a fortnight each way, and got them to pick something that worked for the house.

Work it does. The pieces are marvellous, and the residence itself has a nice mix of informal and formal rooms that set the different pieces off.  The two chose seven pieces each, and if memory serves the fifteenth is a specially commissioned piece in the dining room that is really quite stunning.

The conversation was all around the place: the challenge of Kiwis with spicy food, through to U.S. presidential politics, the religiosity of public culture in the States, connections that social media allow, capital gains taxes and more.

It's funny. You can't always raise things you are most interested in in the context of a light social dinner. At some stage I'd be fascinated to hear his thoughts on the relationship between the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement negotations and America's strategic interests in the Western Pacific -- but that didn't quite fit last night!

So a pleasant evening all round, a nice way to begin the week. My thanks to Mr Huebner for the hospitality. You can follow him on Twitter too, at http://twitter.com/DavidHuebner.

New Blog: Mainly Politics

A hat tip to my friend Chris Hipkins, currently in London, who has started what looks to be a very good blog on NZ (and no doubt a bit of British) politics from an overseas perspective.

You can find it at http://mainlypolitics.blogspot.com/ - well worth a read.

Wellington City Broadband

For the first time in a hundred years, adding to the power, road, water and sewage networks, there is a new piece of critical infrastructure needed in our communities.

It is fibre infrastructure, to allow the transmission of vast quantities of data between people and places.

Wellington City Council is recognising this, with the Council proposing some really interesting plans to get fibre closer to the home. You can read a report that went to the Council's Strategy and Policy committee here (pdf). It is an excellent summary and exposition of the logic for municipal involvement in this area of infrastructure development.

More Councils need to follow Wellington City's lead... congrats to the Councillors and the staff for pulling together some really bold, useful thinking on this.

Dom Post tripe on rates

So our dear old Tory paper here in Wellington gets on the rates bandwagon:

Any business that continuously raised prices by three times the rate of inflation with no discernible improvement in the quality of the services it offered would soon find itself bereft of customers and courting bankruptcy.

The funniest thing is that the rest of the editorial is much more balanced, but the headline and first para are all that many people read.

Community pressure in local bodies is always for more spending: people want another pool, or new sidewalks, or for the water to stop leaking. They want graffiti painted out. They want another festival. They want a new beach. They want fibre to the home networks. They want their street re-sealed. They want flood damage repaired. These mean rates growth, year on year.

Councils also now have to pay for their assets through depreciation. In the long run that will mean much better physical infrastructure in our cities, paid for by current users not just at replacement. In the short run, it means higher rates.

I defy anyone to show me any institution, public or private, of the size of most metropolitan councils, and prove that every job is necessary. I also defy anyone to demonstrate that the growth in Council spending, when not on issues they control (as many of those listed above are), are anything other than responses to things like inflation, tight labour markets, and input costs over which they have no control.

Oh no. It is much easier for newspaper editors to simply bash out some lines to get people going.

I think rates are a silly mechanism for local government finance. I would like to see local income taxes, set at the regional level, providing the bulk of finance for local government. I think people's incomes are a better proxy, in most cases, of their ability to pay for local government services, than are the values of the homes they live in.

Wgtn Bloggers Drinks: Tues 16th, 5.30pm

David Farrar and I suggest it is time for the next Bloggers Drinks in Wellington.

Midtown - at Hope Bros Bar, on Dixon St just under Bambalina's (what used to be Eva Dixon's). http://www.hopebros.co.nz/for the exact address.

From half five on Tuesday 16 January, and we'll aim to go upstairs, in the area on the right hand side of the top of the stairs.

See some of you there... all welcome, be you a blogger, a commenter, lurker, whatever..

Cricket!

Off to my first match at the Caketin this afternoon, seeing NZ play the West Indies in the day-nighter. Should be fun.

Apologies for the lack of posts - there's a lot to blog on but I have just been rather busy with work etc. Lots of travel done and more to come...

Sunlight

Was a lovely warm day on Sunday. It was my first day off (work or campaign) in about two months, and so I spent the afternoon lounging on the beach at Oriental Bay, talking with a friend, unwinding and soaking up some sun.

It is so nice to reclaim a bit of normality in life again!

Any other exciting "election recovery" efforts going on among you?

Wellington crime figures

Today's crime stats are *excellent* news. Recorded offences in the Wellington police district are down by 12.7%, the largest fall in the country. It's really nice to see that investment in police, combined with tighter sentencing laws and a dramatic fall in poverty and unemployment, are working together to lead to a safer society.

Some detailed figures for Wellington:

Violence offences +5% - offences up slightly  (in "group assemblies", robberty and kidnapping & abduction (!) categories) and resolution rate stable at 83%.

Sexual offences -5% - offences down slightly, resolution rate stable at 53%.

Drugs & AntiSocial offences -8.7% - offences down except in drugs (new drugs), family offences continued and Sale Of Liquor Act. Resolution rate up a shade to 93%.

Dishonesty offences -19.5% a very good fall. Declines in all areas. Resolution rate stable at 26%.

Property damage offences -0.8%, with resolution rate up a shade to 32.5%.

Property Abuse offences -13.3%, down in all categories except littering (a whole 28 offences!) and Arms Act offences. Resolution rate up from 73% to 76%.

Administrative offences -10% and resolution rate up a shade to 92%.

That really is good news, apart from the violence category.

A bright new day

I have to say, the month of July was very kind to us here in Wellington, and the balmy weather has carried right on through to August too. I was sitting thinking about last winter, and continued to as I walked to work this morning. Was far, far colder. The last few days have felt like late September, not early August.

Maybe global warming has hit at last? ;)

Is your part of the world warmer than usual?