Monthly Archives: May 2015

Bar closing times punishing the wrong people

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Normally I would have a degree of empathy with the authorities over bar regulations. It is not pleasant to be breaking up fights between drunks; cleaning up after a road accident that involved alcohol or dealing with other antisocial behaviour brought on by drunkenness. Nor can it be pleasant in Accident and Emergency wards to be treating injuries resulting from drunkenness.

But in councils across New Zealand we are seeing a tendency to introduce bylaws that punish the wrong people who comply with the law and the instructions of bar staff. We are tending to see a fear of upsetting authorities amongst the people who introduce these laws of the hospitality sector, which employs so many people and gives an outlet for a bit of socializing. I feel that the issue is generally not the bars, but the availability of alcohol outside of these premises – do we really need wine and beer week for example at Pak N Save? Do we really need two alcohol stores, two supermarkets, and four bars all within 400 metres of each other? That is almost a sort of saturation level in terms of availability.

I frequent a couple of bars on a regular basis. One is a common bar with Guinness, Tui, Speights and so forth on tap with beers such as Tiger and Heineken in the fridge. It is a sports oriented bar that has its peak activity on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Clientele tend to be more from the trades often still in work gear and local businesses. The other is a bar and restaurant that has Macs Gold, Kilkenny, Speights and so forth on tap, with beers by more distinctively New Zealand labels such as Emersons in the fridge. Its clientele are a bit older, and the staff generally more experienced with more rigorous training.

In all the many times I have been to both, I have never seen serious drunkenness requiring eviction by the staff or police intervention. This is despite quite different approaches to security.

However the current moves seek to punish the 90-95% of patrons who are responsible, well behaved and out to remember their night for the right reasons. How is that fair? Why not punish the trouble making minority harder? They cause the havoc that my/your/our tax payer dollars are forked out for to cover the cost of cleaning up. Shouldn’t they be the ones who are made to atone for their conduct?

 

 

Cleaning out F.I.F.A.

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Federation Internationale de Football Association is corrupt. Its President is a 79 year old man who seems to have forgotten that corruption is a crime and that by condoning it, he is as bad as the ones doing the dirty work. And around all of this, world football, the so called “beautiful game” is trying function. But how much longer can F.I.F.A. keep this charade up for.

What a disturbing sight it must have been to F.I.F.A. officials trying to play down the biggest emergency in its history to see journalists at a press conference  not asking a single to their faces about the Under 20 World Cup currently being hosted in New Zealand. All they wanted to know about was Sepp Blatter and the corruption scandal that blew to the surface like the Japanese volcano that erupted today – highly explosive, destructive to all in its reach, causing alarm among many. So, what is going to happen, as opposed to what SHOULD happen?

The what should happen can be answered simply and bluntly. F.I.F.A. needs a clean out of all executives and other senior officials who think bribery is somehow okay. Nationalities, roles and seniority are immaterial. If entire boards end up quitting, then so be it. But F.I.F.A. staff, board members and the public at large should not forget what it was set up to be – the governance of football around the world, the organization that would be responsible for world cups and other fixtures.

I think a memorandum of understanding between different nations such as Japan (2002 World Cup co-hosted with South Korea) with a clear carrot and wooden spoon is necessary. If nations deliberately refuse to tackle corruption, one can therefore wonder what sort of secret agreement  or other questionable conduct is being carried out.

The what is going to happen is perhaps a little bit more different. It stems at first from the understanding that F.I.F.A. member nations standards of conduct that need to be upheld at all times. They need to be aware that they and their neighbours are welcome to be member nations, but also that the far right which has a harder view on market economics than I am ever likely to apprceciate and the far left need to reach a common ground. Is this an organization that is really for the poor nations of the world whose children form small crowds around a T.V. when a match is on? Or is it just for the wealthy ones with heaps of time, money and resources to throw  This scandal has the potential to jail quite a few more individuals who have developed secondary activities that risk causing global damage to the organization.

No one said it would be easy. Mr Blatter is an old hard bitten warrior who thinks he is invincible. Conspiracies exist to prevent the toppling of him because it is apparently – if one believes Vladimir Putin – an American plan to sow chaos in the game. And yet the sport faces some potential existential crises based on a loss of confidence in Mr Blatter, sustaining growth in the worlds most popular sport that if left to fester quietly like cancer tumours and whether or not Qatar is fit to host the 2022 World Cup. Mr Blatter is going to fight, but it may end up being to his detriment as much as that of F.I.F.A. at large.

The questions at media conferences about the U20 World Cup are by no means finished yet!

 

Fishing boat abuses damaging New Zealand

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In 2010 following a trawler sinking in the seas off the Chatham Islands, a Sunday Star Times expose on the working conditions inside fishing trawlers operating out of New Zealand raised some hugely damning questions. People on the ships, mainly Indonesian men working to save money to send back to their families were complaining about sexual, physical and psychological abuse. They were complaining about the withholding of wages, stand over tactics and illegal dumping of fish. The public were horrified. So what has changed?

Sadly, not a lot. In fact, one wonders if it has worsened.

New Zealand is a nation that prides itself on being a safe place to work. It prides itself on being supposedly first world. And yet the abuses that have been happening on fishing vessels in our waters have been consistent with slave labour. And most insultingly to those who work honestly and fairly in the industry, those who really do look after their crews, it seems that a major failing of New Zealand’s obligations under international labour statutes is in progress. Why are the Department of Labour and the Ministry for Primary Industries not acting on these problems? The authorities seem to have failed to weed out the perpetrators, failed to weed out the boats too dangerous to go to sea and failed to show that New Zealand is better than that.

It was not in 2010 or the years since, is not now or in the future, good enough. This should not be happening.

But it is. A few examples:

  • Oyang 70 sinks off the New Zealand coast, killing six people in August 2010
  • Crew of Oyang 75 walk off their ship in Lyttelton in protest at their treatment – big fines are handed down to senior officers of the ship; Oyang 75 also involved in illegal dumping of fish
  • Oyang 77 involved in illegal dumping of fish at sea in order to legitimize their catch

If it is for example Sajo Oyang trawlers in New Zealand causing the trouble, as their ships were in 2010, maybe it is time to send Oyang Corporation packing. Maybe it is time to hit them with the hardest fines New Zealand labour law can hand down. Payable within a matter of days. If any are at sea, have the navy arrest them. Have Ministry of Primary Industry inspectors ready to board the ships the moment they are docked in a New Zealand port. The time for decisive action is now.

But let this not be a Sajo Oyang specific issue. Let this be a New Zealand fisheries issue where any company with fishing vessels operating in New Zealand waters, the charters by which they abide, their compliance with New Zealand maritime laws, comes under the spotlight. Let this be the occasion where we show we are capable of being the first world nation we are and clean this up.

Because nothing less will do.

 

Dear Labour Party…

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Dear New Zealand Labour Party​. You call yourselves the mainstream party of the centre-left. You call yourselves the party of the little businesses and the little guy. You used to be the champions of the unions. You have shown yourselves able to do great things such as write the Resource Management Act and conceive the changes to local Government that happened in November 1989. You stood up to France over the Rainbow Warrior and many of your number marched against the Springbok Tour in 1981.

Okay, sure you lost the 1990 election. Sure the 1991 Ruthenasia Budget was terrifying to watch being broadcast in hundreds of thousands of homes. You railed against that quite rightfully. Sure, when Helen Clark came to power it was because she was leading a party that was ready to govern, despite a relatively mediocre policy platform.

Helen Clark’s Government was austere in many ways. It was solid without being spectacular. You introduced Kiwi Saver, something that National is now relentlessly chipping away at. You bought back Kiwi Rail and you accepted that a lot of local councils would work better if they had sufficient planning staff to do the job from the outset. But you had golden opportunities to do things that you elected to pass up on, such as setting up a nation wide biofuel scheme based on the waste stream. You ignored the 92% of New Zealanders who wanted harder penalties for serious crimes.

For sure when Prime Minister John Key came to office in 2008, it was going to take a while for Labour to get its act together in the post Helen Clark political environment. He had the easy going people friendly persona that Kiwi’s love. He was down to earth, charismatic and initially passed as someone you might have a beer with even if you disagreed with him. Perhaps we should not be surprised that a void when said Dear Leader departed immediately formed, and perhaps Phil Goff was the best person to fill it. But Goff saw the light and resigned after the 2011 election. I didn’t expect Labour to win that election, and admittedly it was hard for Labour to do better when the Greens and New Zealand First put on convincing performances.

I expected Labour to resolve or at least partially resolve its leadership woes in the second term. I expected it might get a bit more traction around Christchurch than it did. I expected that Labour would issue a directive to for those Members of Parliament who have been around for awhile to consider making way for newer, more energetic members. I hoped that Labour would find a Jacinda Ardern type for some of the other issues. She clearly knows what she is talking about, but she is only one person.

Labour. Come 20 September 2014 last year I had hoped you would have cleaned yourselves up and formed a line up that could at worst pick several seats and force National to rely on Winston Peters for support. At best I had hoped that Labour might be occupying the Beehive with help from New Zealand First and the Greens. But holy moly, was I wrong.

But what are you now? What is a centre left party that thinks means testing is necessary for superrannuitants, and where were you last week when National killed the $1,000 Kiwi Saver start up payment? What is a centre left party that refuses to stand up in Parliament and give National a point blank ultimatim on the Trans Pacific Partnership?

Where are your spokespeople for the environment, foreign affairs, and so forth? This is pathetic Labour.

You need to shape up Labour and you need to do so FAST. This term is now nearly 8 months old. Although some of the Government ministers seem to be practically falling over themselves to do the next dumb thing, the silence from their opposite numbers in Labour is deafening. My God, I hope you get your act together in the next few months because if you do not, National stand a very good chance of winning an unprecedented FOURTH TERM.

And if they do, it might be your swansong. That is all.

New Zealand not making most of Security Council seat

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It is sad but true: New Zealand is not making the most of its United Nations Security Council seat.

After all that effort lobbying nations around the world, talking up our record and our stand point on world affairs, the New Zealand Government seems woefully determined that our time holding a temporary United Nations Security Council seat should go to waste. And we will end up regretting not having done more when we were granted the opportunity.

What is the problem?

Could it be stage fright? I doubt it very much. Our past performance shows New Zealand is not scared of the world stage. Our standing up to France over the Rainbow Warrior bombing nearly 30 years ago was one of character that impressed many nations all over the world.

Could it be that the New Zealand government, now having gotten a United Nations Security Council, does not know to do next? Possibly. In some respects it is behaving almost like you give a pet something it clearly wanted to play with and then it looks at you as if to say “what do I do with it?” or “was I supposed to do something with this?”. Part of the problem with M.M.P., a system that generally works well is that it shaves off the radical policies completely or tries to weaken them. Not that I am suggesting New Zealand foreign policy has been radical – on the whole if one can see past the blemishes of the last 15 years, it has been exemplary. Both this National led Government and the Labour one before it I have felt could have been bolder with policy and more decisively acting in dealing with international emergencies or in seizing opportunities.

Could it be that in return for investment, we are expected to suck up whatever demands come from other nations? Possibly. Certainly one would think so from the Government’s appeasement of the Saudi businessman who had he been a New Zealander would have been up for the large scale slaughter of so many sheep. The reluctance of the Government to criticize Chinese human rights abuses and the eagerness of the Prime Minister and Minister of Trade to wrap up the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement show evidence of such.

Or could it be that corporate dollars are eroding any moral backbone that this country has ever had and that we are in danger of becoming the meek and obedient sheep being led into the valley of steel that the Pink Floyd song Sheep alludes to? Probably. The very suspect nature of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, the refusal of the Government to release the text and the media seemingly unable or unwilling to carry out their fourth estate duties by investigating the issue. So many of the issues causing alarm in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement are issues that nations signatory to international statutes such as New Zealand would be obliged to act on, lest we get a rebuke from the United Nations. Labour, environmental law, human rights are just a few.

Hmmm…. got an identity issue I think. The country that prides itself on a fair go, seems to be A.W.O.L.