National blowing millions on consultants

Today, Radio NZ reported:

Transport consultants have received $200 million in the past three years for work done on roads of national significance.

Some $216 million has been spent since 2009 on investigation and design work for five of the seven roads - Puhoi to Wellsford, Auckland's western ring route, the Waikato expressway, Wellington's northern corridor and Christchurch motorways.

Information obtained by Radio New Zealand under the Official Information Act shows $200 million of this was paid to consultants.

Almost half, $92 million, was paid for work done on the northern corridor.

This outrageous cost is because the government doesn't have the expertise within its own departments.

The Ministry of Works used to undertake all road planning at nominal cost... It was disestablished in 1996 to became the privately owned Opus International Consultants and Works Infrastructure. So lets put this one down to another privatization blunder by National.

Reports confirm sea level rising

Today, the Wairarapa Times-Age reported:

Councils have been warned not to build on parts of the Wairarapa coastline after areas at high risk of flooding and erosion have been identified in reports released by Greater Wellington Regional Council.

Senior hazards analyst Iain Dawe said the two reports researched the rate of sea-level rise and the likelihood of coastal flooding in the Wellington region.

The reports show that sea levels are rising at over 2 millimetres per year and the Wellington region is tracking towards 1 metre of sea level rise over the next 100 years.

If global warming isn't causing increased water expansion and more ice to melt, what is making the sea level rise? Surely all those climate change deniers out there must have a plausible explanation?

Here is what New Zealand has to look forward to:

• Drought risk is expected to increase in already drought-prone areas such as inland and north Otago, eastern Canterbury, Marlborough, parts of Wairarapa, Hawkes Bay, Bay of Plenty, Coromandel and Northland.
• Severe drought is expected to be more frequent across many eastern parts of New Zealand by 2080. For example, in a ‘low-medium’ scenario, Marlborough could experience a one-in-20-year drought event every 3-5 years by 2080.
• Droughts may happen in spring and autumn, as well as summer.
• Very heavy rainfall events may increase in many parts of New Zealand, even in areas where the average annual rainfall decreases.
• It’s expected to be wetter in the west and drier in the east.
• Temperatures are expected to increase, with greater increases in winter, and in the north of New Zealand.
• Frost risk is expected to decrease, while the risk of very high temperatures will increase.
• Westerly winds are expected to increase in strength and frequency.
• An increased risk of forest fire.

Unfortunately the National government isn't making any plans to manage these liabilities. Instead they're promoting further dependance on fossil fuels and simply manipulating the media to keep people uninformed about climate change, which will undoubtedly contribute to further problems.

Buller River in flood 16-07-2012

Owen Glenn conman

Yesterday, the NZ Herald reported:

Number three is integrity and everything that goes with that - trust, honesty, accountability. Not just in business, but in your personal life as well. Your handshake has to have the same worth as your word. My father taught me that. He said, 'Son, if you shake somebody's hand, it's very important that you look them in the eye and say, "You have my word."' And that has to count. Never mind bits of paper and lawyers and court: if your personal integrity is ever questioned and you don't measure up to it, you're not worthy of doing what you're doing. That was always at the forefront of my mind. When I offered my hand and shook on it, it could be trusted completely.

I just had a case in the sale of OTS, where they started to try to monkey around with the prices. So I wrote to the chairman of the investing company: 'We had a handshake agreement and you said to me that you believed and your grandfather believed that the handshake was the mark of the man. In this transaction, which is now bouncing around the walls, what happened to integrity? I look forward to your answer.' That's all I said to him.

He wrote me back a very nice note. He'd immediately got himself involved back in the deal, because he'd become aloof from it, and he simply said, 'We made a deal, let's stick to it.'

Along with the two page article being a complete bore and nothing more than an old man waffling about rubbish, Owen Glenn is being highly disingenuous by trying to pass himself off as some sort of good guy... Nothing could be further from the truth.

Back in September the conman promised the Nation that he would donate at least $100 million to education if National and Act won the next election. To date he hasn't gifted one red cent, and that makes him a complete bullshit artist through and through.

Along with it being illegal under the Electoral Act to commit the offence of bribery, Owen Glen hasn't stumped up with the cash he promised. Therefore it's a bit rich for the head of the trucking mafia to talk about integrity and honesty when he has absolutely none.

I would rather read "Sir" Bob fucking Jones, if I had to. It's a sad indictment of how backwards New Zealand is when these corrupt old bastards can pass themselves off as some sort of credible celebrity. Without their ill-gotten gains they have no redeeming features at all.

Something to go to on Saturday

Budget cuts cause failures

Today, RadioNZ reported:

The Public Service Association (PSA) says the department own information is that in the 10 days from 25 June to 5 July, staff dealt with 131,000 calls but failed to answer a further 70,000.

The union says this is the result of poor planning and poor management of changes at the department, where hundreds of jobs have been cut as a result of Government budget cuts.

The PSA says it is particularly frustrating for staff who warned management what would happen when jobs were cut, but who cannot now cope with the volume of work and who are having to bear the brunt of the public's anger.

So over a third of all calls to the IRD are not being answered. This is a huge failure as a result of budget clawbacks and staffing cuts, and the blame for that mismanagement is the governments. As Minister of the IRD, Peter Dunne needs to sort this issue out pronto before it further undermines New Zealands economic viability.

Having tens of thousands of people, many of them business owners not being provided an essential service is completely unacceptable!

The typical dumb response from Nationals chief propagandist David Farrar is pathetic! He apparently called the IRD recently and got through to a staffer... Whoop-de-doo! Brainfart Farrar's argument is that his one example makes those 70,000 missed calls OK... What a complete dickhead!

This failure is on the back of similar call-centre issues at Housing NZ, with Stuff reporting:

In April, Housing NZ shut its local office doors to tenants in its 69,000 state houses and members of the public with accommodation emergencies, directing inquiries through a new customer service call centre.

The change lead to 70 fulltime frontline positions being axed. The centre has been inundated with calls, its staff unable to cope and callers facing waits of up to 40 minutes.

Last week The Dominion Post revealed that only 55 per cent of calls were answered during April and 53,000 calls went unanswered.

These infrastructural problems are a direct result of Nationals ideologically driven policy, which is not based on good economical reasoning or any form of proper research.

Why anybody would support the undermining of key services and want to reduce the economic viability of New Zealand by supporting Nationals neo-liberal agenda is beyond me.

The Last Ocean