The Young Nats schedule

I happened to be looking around the Young Natz website today when I came across their activities page. So I thought I would check out what they get up to.

The Lower North Island Young Nats report:

Together, members throughout the region engage in a variety of social events, debates, policy forums, and campaigns.

The Southern Young Nats report:

Young Nats also host social events throughout the year – whether it be a pub crawl or dinner with an MP, there is always something going on.

Well that sounds promising. Here's the Young Natz schedule:

It's the same non-event for all upcoming months as well. Pathetic!

Booze barons calling the shots

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd realise that New Zealand has a destructive heavy drinking culture that pervades all sectors of society.

With an estimated 70% of all Police incidents involving alcohol and young people between the ages of 17 and 19 making up the highest proportion of inebriated offenders, there is no doubt that over consumption of alcohol is costing society dearly.

Just how costly you might ask... In 2005/06 it was estimated by Berl Economics (PDF) that the cost of harmful alcohol use was $4.4 billion in diverted resources and lost welfare, which is over four times the amount of tax revenue gained. However taking into account the full social and economic impact from alcohol abuse increases the costs dramatically.

Last year, the Law Commission made a number of recommendations to try and curb the harm caused including a split drinking age of 18 for bars and 20 for off-licence purchases to 20, implementing alcohol limits for ready-to-drink beverages, reduced opening hours and increasing the excise duty on alcohol by up to 50%.

However the National government hasn't taken much heed of the evidence based advice. Instead they have delayed their own already watered down Alcohol Reform Bill from reaching its third reading, obviously because of strong lobbying by the alcohol industry against the Law Commissions recommendations. These lobbyists want the government to put profits before factually based evidence and ignore the huge cost to communities from alcohol abuse.

Research conducted in 2009 by the Population Studies Centre at Waikato University showed that every extra off-licence venue increased police events or incidents by 60 to 65 per year, findings that have been backed up by recent research undertaken by the University of Canterbury's GeoHealth laboratory.

Yesterday, the Dominion Post reported:

Rates of serious violent crime double within 900m of a liquor outlet, a new study has found.

And the nationwide study has confirmed that the more liquor stores an area has, the more likely it is to have a higher rate of serious violent crime, regardless of poverty and other factors.

[…]

Using mapping software researchers were able to work out the median travel distance to a liquor outlet. Areas with the lowest rates of serious violence had to travel a median distance of 4.5km to the nearest off-licence. For the highest rates of serious violence, the median distance to an off-licence was just 1.1km.

Using the mesh block analysis, crime rates were calculated for distances from liquor outlets. On average nationwide the incidence of serious violent crime doubled once you got within 900m of a liquor outlet.

Alac chief executive Gerard Vaughan said the current law did not take into account how many outlets were in an area when granting licences.

Well that’s just ridiculous! Surely the application process for a liquor licence should recognize that the amount of outlets is directly related to the amount of disorder caused.

Despite the obvious correlation between availability of alcohol and crime rates, some areas of New Zealand such as Manukau City have seen an increase in off-licence venues by 234% between 1990 and 2008... which is absolute madness! Talk about the booze barons calling the shots.

Councillors to disclose financial interests?

Today, the Dominion Post reported:

Secrecy surrounding the commercial interests of local authority councillors needs to end, the peak body for councils has told the government.

While MPs have a public register of interests, local councillors controlling billions of dollars of assets and paying hundreds of millions of dollars to contractors, are often shielded from public scrutiny by the policies of councils, despite a requirement in the Local Government Act that councils operate "in an open, transparent, and democratically accountable manner".

[...]

Auckland Council, meanwhile, said privacy laws mean it should not make the register available, even though Manukau City Council, one of the seven amalgamated councils that formed Auckland Council, did have a public register.

In response to a Local Government Official Information Act request, by "anti-corruption activist" Penny Bright, the council's general counsel Wendy Brandon said: "The register will not be released in full in order to protect the privacy of elected members, information that is subject to an obligation of confidence and the commercial position of some elected members."

Disclosure wouldn't be an issue unless some inappropriateness was going on already, and having an open register of financial interests for local authority councillors would certainly curtail any corrupt funding allocation... perhaps why there's so much opposition from certain councils.

Being that ratepayers pay councillor's wages, they're theoretically accountable to the people who employ them. Most employers require disclosure these days, especially where a conflict of interest might impinge on the employee to make the right decisions for the employer.

The argument that privacy laws should mean councillors financial dealings are kept secret simply doesn't cut the mustard. In fact it makes me highly suspicious that personal benefit from being a councillor isn't endemic throughout New Zealand already.

Rena disaster not studied

Last Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported:

Bottlenose dolphins in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, are showing signs of severe ill health, according to NOAA marine mammal biologists and their local, state, federal, and other research partners.

Barataria Bay, located in the northern Gulf of Mexico, received heavy and prolonged exposure to oil during the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill.

Based on comprehensive physicals of 32 live dolphins from Barataria Bay in the summer of 2011, preliminary results show that many of the dolphins in the study are underweight, anemic, have low blood sugar, and/or some symptoms of liver and lung disease.

Nearly half also have abnormally low levels of the hormones that help with stress response, metabolism, and immune function.

The problem is that effected animals are often afflicted with mouth and sinus infections, which means they cannot find, catch or eat their food properly.

Dolphins are very susceptible to starvation from pollution induced infections, so although oil is not always found in their systems during autopsy, their deaths can be attributed to the pollution, which has also badly effected the Dolphins food supplies.

The Business Insider reported:

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), more than 675 dolphins have been stranded in the northern Gulf of Mexico since February 2010 – a much higher rate than the usual average of 74 dolphins per year — which prompted the NOAA to declare an Unusual Mortality Event and begin an investigation.

[...]

Another ongoing study by Linda Hooper-Bui at Louisiana St. University found that several populations of insects and spiders are still not recovering from the spill. She has been studying insect populations at certain sites since 2009 and collected insects at 45 sites about 25 times last year.

She has found that there was a large drop in numbers immediately after the oil spill and that some kinds of insects and spiders are still far less numerous than in 2009.

Another recent study of deep ocean corrals seven miles from the spill source found dead and dying corals coated in "brown gunk" that was attributed to the Deepwater Horizon well after a chemical analysis.

The research, jointly funded by the NOAA and BP, noted that deepwater corals are not usually affected in oil spills but the depth and temperatures in the Deepwater Horizon spill seems to have created plumes of oil particles that have caused unprecedented damage.

Yet another study confirmed that zooplankton – the microscopic organisms at the bottom of the ocean food chain – have also been contaminated with oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

So there are serious long term effects from the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster to a number of animals and organisms. The problem isn't limited to oil pollution either, as around 6,800 m³ of dispersant was applied, which has proven significant side-effects.

Unlike the the Gulf of Mexico, New Zealand's Bay of Plenty hasn't had any comprehensive study into the environmental effects from the Rena disaster.

This is outrageous considering the Rena was also carrying large amounts of dangerous chemicals, with the cumulative toxic effects likely to cause damage to the environment for many years to come.

National going down

Yesterday, the Timaru Herald reported:

The Green Party has hit a record high 17 per cent support and National have taken a big hit in a new political poll released today.

The Roy Morgan survey shows National down 4.5 per cent to 44 per cent since the previous polling period that ended on March 11 - virtually a straight switch of support with the Greens who were up 4.5.

But there is little good news for Labour, which was up a marginal 0.5 percentage points at 30.5 per cent.

The poll contrasts with last week's One News survey that had National solid on 51 per cent.

The latest Roy Morgan poll was taken between March 12 and April 1, covering the controversy over ACC and minister Nick Smith's resignation. It polled 948 respondents.

So that's a huge 7% difference between the two polls. Personally I don't think Nick Smith's resignation on the 21 March over the ACC debacle is the only factor, as it's the overall incompetence of National, their economic mismanagement and broken pre-election promises that people are waking up to.

The Colmar Brunton poll was taken between the 24th and 28th of March so would have somewhat taken Smith's disgrace into account. The interesting thing is that both polls would have occurred while National was stonewalling a full ACC enquiry, while Judith Collins' idiotic defamation sideshow over the last week wasn't covered by either poll. So there's likely worse news to come for the Natz.

There's also been a lot of good work done by the Greens lately around the fracking issue, the Christchurch housing crisis and the shameful tax cuts for the wealthy, which have landed us in a huge amount of debt... so we cannot put this entirely down to National shooting themselves in the feet.

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Sensible sentencing for white-collar criminals?

Today, 3 News reported:

A judge at the Auckland High Court has told Bridgecorp boss Rod Petricevic that a prison sentence is inevitable.

Petricevic and fellow director Robbert Roest were found guilty on all 18 charges they faced and have been refused bail ahead of their sentencing.

Non-executive director Peter Steigrad was found guilty on six of 10 charges he faced.

The Crown says it will be seeking tougher penalties than have been handed down yet in any case involving a finance company collapse.

Well that makes a change to the usual soft justice for white-collar criminals.

We've seen numerous cases of investor company fraud involving huge amounts of money where little punishment has been handed down to the perpetrators. The most recent was the Lombard Finance scam that left 4400 investors owed around $127 million.

After being found guilty of breaching the Securities Act (PDF) by making untrue statements to investors, all four directors escaped prison and were instead sentenced to a few hundred hours community service and ordered to pay insignificant fines in comparison to the crimes they committed.

As the most prominent amongst those felons, the ex National Minister of Justice "Sir" Douglas Graham should have at least lost his knighthood.

Being that a knighthood is removed at the discretion of the Prime Minister, it's likely that the convicted criminal Douglas Graham will keep the title, which in my opinion makes the entire honorary process a lot less honorific.