Free Press

ACT’s regular bulletin

Google vs the PPTA
The PPTA teachers’ union has held its annual conference with the usual combative ‘70s trade union style rhetoric. We needn’t repeat it here because it is predictable enough: life and death struggle, good and evil, et cetera. A thought: Employees at Google are not only allowed but required to spend 10 per cent of their time working on new, blue sky ideas. This ethos is why Google has succeeded not only as a search engine but in advertising, maps, the Chrome browser, and email, while it moves aggressively into transport. Contrast that with the relentless negativity against a new policy in the form of Partnership Schools that consumes approximately 0.1 per cent of the education budget.

Not Even Failing
Google has had several spectacular failings, particularly its attempts to take on Facebook with a string of forgettable Google social media products. None of this has caused the company to retreat from endlessly innovating. If Partnership Schools were an obvious failure the Union’s relentless negativity would be tiresome at best. However as Free Pressreaders know, the nine Partnership Schools Kura Hourua are succeeding above average in most cases, off the charts in some, and failing in one case which has been well addressed. Imagine a teacher union that approached new and largely successful things with an open mind, or even support?

Labour Slowly Changes its Position
Staying with the PPTA, it wrote indignantly in its newsletter that the Labour Party had been sending ‘mixed messages’ about the future of Partnership Schools. Quelle horreur! Labour education spokesperson Chris Hipkins wrote reassuringly that their position was ‘crystal clear’ then said if in power he’d deal with Partnership Schools on a ‘case by case’ basis. We don’t know what that means but it’s quite different from what his Private Members’ bill used to say, that he’d close them all at the end of the year.

Softening up the PPTA
No doubt the PPTA are one of Labour’s most important supporters, but Hipkins is softening them up for a long life with the Partnership School model even if Labour get back into power. His article for their newsletter goes on to say “The biggest barrier to that creativity and innovation is the red tape that the current National government keep wrapping schools in.” But Partnership Schools, who are protected from the policies of the Government of the day by their five year contracts with the Crown, are the obvious answer to this protest. Free Press predicts that sooner or later Hipkins will bring himself to say so, and the PPTA will be isolated.

The Trouble with Feel Good Policymaking
The government announced that the Kermadec Islands (halfway between New Zealand and Tonga) will be home to an enormous marine reserve several times larger than the North Island. Nobody’s against marine reserves. Anybody who’s visited Leigh, for example, knows they can host a richness of marine life sadly lost from much of the oceans. The problem is the total lack of consultation and regulatory impact assessment done on the policy. The Cabinet Paper claims that regulatory impact assessment was not necessary because officials behind the policy thought there weren’t any impacts. The point of the regulatory impact assessment appears lost on them.

What Consultation and Assessment Might Have Found
Unlike Leigh, which would otherwise be fished heavily by recreational fishers who do not require quota, the potential for fishing around the Kermadecs is by commercial operators catching migratory fish under quota. The effect of the reserve is not to reduce the overall catch (you can’t catch more than your quota) but ensure that fishers cannot fulfil their quota in that territory. Regulators often miss the practical effects of their legislation, and fishers will miss catching quota at the time of year certain species are in the Kermadec zone. Meanwhile, foreign fishers outside New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone can catch the same fish to their hearts’ content.

The Net Result
No fish will be saved because fishers will catch their quota elsewhere, at greater cost. New Zealand quota holders will be disadvantaged because they’ll have to work around the new Kermadec no fish zone. Investment confidence in New Zealand will be eroded by this kind of ad hoc regulatory overreach. Fishing and conservation are seen as antagonistic instead of working together. A poor result all ‘round.

What the Government Should Have Done
The Government should have prepared a Regulatory Impact Statement. It should have consulted actual fishers to understand what, if any, impacts the zone might have on their operations now and in the future. In the case of discovering losses, the government should have considered compensating the losers. Rather than a danger to business confidence, conservation should be seen as a cost to be borne by all beneficiaries, in this case the New Zealand public. (Full disclosure, Free Press has been briefed by one such potentially affected fisher, Paul Hufflett of Solander, who is a former ACT candidate).

Welcoming Refugees
ACT has had the only consistent position on refugee quotas (that the quota should rise with population). Every other party has bent its principles with each new picture on the TV screens. How, though, should refugee policy deal with fluctuating refugee numbers and the public’s varying willingness to help? ACT has an answer: let those who want short term increases put their money where their mouth is.

Eh?
Canada has a world leading and widely respected scheme that allows charities to put up the funds to settle a refugee. ACT has long believed that real compassion means being willing to help other people rather than willing politicians to help other people. David Seymour explained further details of the policy here (scroll 42 minutes into the clip).

Everybody Wins
Good policies can create multiple winners. Bringing the community sector into refugee sponsorship would mean more refugees can come, without burdening the taxpayer. Those dependent on community groups are already on the path to integration. Those who want to do good will have an extra avenue to do so. Government will still be responsible for vetting refugees for security.

The UN Joke Continues
Apparently Saudi Arabia is now a leader of the UN Human Rights Council. We can’t make this stuff up.

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