Archive for the 'Politics' Category

5 Recent posts that I like – and a new page

Published June 22, 2009 Business , Internet Business , Life , NZ Business , Politics Leave a Comment

I’ll be on Kathryn Ryan’s Nine to Noon program on Radio NZ at about 9:20am Monday 22nd.

There are a few potential topics to cover – including why NZ is a good place to be right now, what businesses can do to manage through the recession and the Social Innovation camp next steps. We’ll see what happens on the day.

For new and newer readers I’ve just put up a page of posts that I like from the last couple of years.

Posts I like.

Here are some good recent ones

Blame directors for failure, CEOs for success

2 shots were fired Self restraint is good

Let’s stop MPs drinking and lawmaking Seriously

Two McKinsey pieces on education – do read them

Well done Green cabs – now how about that website Great comments

Brass Monkey 2009 – a photolog The annual winter bike rally

Let’s deliver mail once a week

Published May 24, 2009 Business , NZ Business , Politics Leave a Comment
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From this great illustration of the average US Postal Service residential customer’s mailbox we can glean some interesting facts. Amongst them is numerical evidence as to why I don’t check my mail very often.

delivermagazine

There are almost 200 billion pieces of mail delivered to the (and Wolfram Alpha couldn’t deal with any of this) 111 million USA households each year. That’s an average of almost 1,800 each, or 5.7 items a day* or 34 a week (with 6 day delivery). I recall it was around 24 in 1999, so times have been strangely kind to the USPS.

Here’s the problem – 5.3 of those 5.7 letters each day are “unwanted”, and the only 0.5 are not. I’m including bills in the unwanted, as nobody really likes getting them. Moreover in the USA in particular, bills are used as just another way to deliver you junk mail.

Meanwhile the average household is getting about 1 personal letter a month, and  1 card or invite a week – though many of those cards will also be junk.

<update – the legend is wrong – red is not wanted etc.>

It’s really hard to define the size of the junk market in the USA, or anywhere, as companies for some reason get really defensive about their mail being classified as ‘junk’ or ‘unsolicited’. Also in the USA the junk mailers get around ‘no junk’ signs by personally addressing much all of their materials – those are the catalogs, direct letters and so forth in the graphic above. Moreover it is often difficult to distinguish junk (’get a pre-approved credit card’) from bills (’Here’s your credit card bill – with a pre approved offer!’) – and sometimes that is deliberate, so you will open the junk.

Sadly, no matter what you call it, it is all just so much wasted paper (the occasional beautifully crafted wedding invitation aside.) What is particularly strange are the 15 Billion catalogs sent out each year. That’s a whole lot of paper in the internet age.

We all belong to the internet age – paying bills online (usually automatically), sending and reading thousands of emails, twitters, blog posts and so forth each year and reading our news online. We only use snail mail (the name says it all) when we deliberately want a slower and more classy process, such as for those elegant wedding invites.

I last sent a personal letter when I was in Pakistan. In 1998. Or was it Europe in 1996? Either way – it’s long past the time when the mail was something I cared about.

Yet we still have the Pavlovian instinct, much like when a phone rings, of checking the mail when it arrives. I often do as well, but what could be in my mail box of any importance?

Well – the only things that matter to me at the moment in that box are The Independent and The Economist, which as newspapers have a time element to them. (I should also get the NBR but they make it a bit hard.)

Everything else can wait. I’d prefer to do bills in batches (I usually wait until the 3rd letter then overpay for a few months) as it is more efficient, and junk gets binned. (Powershop wins awards here – no paper is involved in the purchase of electricity)

So why do we as a society insist on a service to deliver our mail every day? Can’t we reduce it to once every 2 or 3 days, or even once a week?

Businesses can perhaps have more frequent deliveries, but they can pay for it, and besides – this will prod them into going fully online.

How about we offer a dual service – one service that will get me The Economist yeserday (e.g. by print on demand and hand delivery) instead of Monday/Tuesday and that will  deliver the Independent to me before I wake up on Thursday and another service that delivers letters once a week?

We can take the savings, and use them to contribute somehow to the roll out and maintenance of decent broadband infrastucture. We could even give the ownership of that broadband infrastructure to the NZ Post, just like it used to be.

Two McKinsey pieces on education – do read them

Published April 24, 2009 New Zealand Institute , Politics 4 Comments
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Two astonishing reports on education from McKinsey.

The first shows the effect that the USA’s poor schools have had on their economy – and was just released. It finds the economic loss in the order of US$2,400 billion to $4,200 billion of GDP in 2008 alone. That’s more than enough to compensate for the current economic crisis.

It’s a tough number to get to though, as it means that the US schooling system would need to be the best in the world, whereas in fact is is close to the worst in the Western world. Their top schools are astonishingly good, but their average and below average schools are appalling.

NZ fares better than the USA, but there is a lot we can learn from this report. It wouldn’t be too hard for the local McKinsey office of the NZ Institute to generate the economic loss numbers for New Zeaand – how about it?

The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools

The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools

Poor school systems mean the students have poor grades, which mean that a lower proportion go to university, the average income is lower and they are more likely to have low civic engagement and criminal records. That’s summarized nicely in a page, as is a McKinsey team’s wont:

Somewhat frightening are the differences in scores relating to being black and/or low income – things which are also correlated. I wonder what the sme chart looks like in other countries.

While the most recent report stays well away from asking why the education is so poor, the report from 2007 does so – and it is fascinating reading as well.

How the worlds best-performing schools systems come out on top

How the world's best-performing schools systems come out on top

The summary is simple – get great people, help them become great teachers and support them with an equitable excellent system:
McKinsey

The difference a great teacher can make is immense – lifes are changed:

The end of the document has this wonderful check-sheet to determine whether you have an excellent education system or not. The gaps are pretty clear:

I would like to see this on every headmaster’s wall, along with everybody in the Ministry of Education, every member of a school board and all teacher of teachers:

In closing my recent favorite question to ask teachers is “how often are you reviewed by your peers?” The answer is usually close to “never”, and that is sad. It is very hard to improve if you are not getting continuous feedback related to normal situations.

I strongly feel we need to get to the stage where peer teachers can wander into and out of each others classes, sitting quietly at the back (say) without the students changing behaviour, and then giving and receiving 1-1 feedback after the class. This means the teachers need more time in the day, which in turn means more teachers.

We need to also better reward great teachers, those who work in lower decile schools and tough areas,  bringing back the student and society’s respect for teachers. It’s a tough job, and the teachers themselves (in the form of their union) are often against performance pay.

However I have yet to meet a teacher that would not welcome the feedback from peers, while the pay for the people to whom we entrust our children’s future is a national shame. Teaching is a calling, and we should not be doing it for pay, but I really think we owe it to them to allow them to live a decent life.

How to blog anonymously

Published March 28, 2009 Business , Global Macro Trends , Internet Business , Politics Leave a Comment
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As we progressively lose our freedoms on the internet, it was timely to have a read of some of the excellent material written by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society – it’s part of the Harvard Law School and has the delightful url of cyber.law.harvard.edu – as it was started from a seminar way back in 1994.

The Center’s Internet and Deomcracy blog has a recent post on “How to blog anonymously“, and explains why anonymous speech is important:

Like 18th century phampleteers (or even the writers of the Federalist papers), anonymous bloggers are empowered by their aliases to challenge taboos, censors and government power.

…The internet is the last bulwark against totalitarian control because of its fluid and democratic character. That is why anonymous blogging is so important. Difficult to trace or gag, it is the kind of speech most likely to impact an increasingly interconnected and web-dependent world.

However – it’s a dangerous game this blogging:

Of course, be extremely careful. Use these tools at your discretion. Reporters Without Borders has a comprehensive list of jailed cyber-dissidents.

The GlobalVoices site has the guide to blogging anonymously,which comes with a chilling caevet:

These directions do nothing to prevent you from being linked through other technical means, like keystroke logging (the installation of a program on your computer to record your keystrokes) or traditional surveillance (watching the screen of your computer using a camera or telescope). The truth is, most people get linked to their writing through non-technical means: they write something that leaves clues to their identity, or they share their identity with someone who turns out not to be trustworthy. I can’t help you on those fronts except to tell you to be careful and smart.

The bold part is important. The surveillance measures that are increasingly coming in are not that important to the either “criminals” or “freedom fighters”. Decent police work is much more effective at finding out about bad things happening, which is why societies should make sure their police, court systems and bureaucracies are corruption free and focused on the highest risks. New Zealand always scores very highly on these stakes.

Anyway – to cut a long story short, if you don’t want the ISP’s in NZ (or anywhere) to be able to see what you are doing, then use Tor, proxy servers, gmail and wordpress, writing your posts offline in say notepad and secure erasing everything along the way. You may not be really avoiding any real threat to your personal freedom in New Zealand, but you will be helping people that have real issues.

It’s a draconian move to go undercover, but there are some topics and writers which lend themselves to being anonymous. Consider though the words of GlobalVoices:

A final thought on anonymity: If you don’t really need to be anonymous, don’t be. If your name is associated with your words, people are likely to take your words seriously. But some people are going to need to be anonymous, and that’s why this guide exists. Just please don’t use these techniques unless you really need to.

We are being watched now

Published March 28, 2009 Internet Business , NZ Business , Politics , telecom 1 Comment

Via the NBR I hear that ISPs can snoop on us from April the 5th.

S92 was nothing. The Telecommunications (Intercept Capability) Act, coming into full force on April 5, will let the Police, SIS and the GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau) execute search warrants on internet service providers to grab users’ data

Right now the law applies to voice calls, and April 5th sees that extended to everything passing over your ISP. That means email, VOIP calls, blogging, torrenting, facebook personal messages, intra-company communications, emails to your lawyer – and so on.

As the NBR helpfully points out, the spy base at Waihopai “has been able to tap internet communications systems for years” and from ISPANZ President Jamie Baddeley we hear

“some Ispanz members have already engaged already in legal interception. The police have been very pragmatic. I don’t think it’s a big issue.”

So nothing has changed really. Wire tapping can only be in place with a court order, it seems that this is happening already and that is how it should be. We just have to, as a society, make sure that the overall number of cases is low, and that tapping isn’t retrospective or go on for too long. Find the bad thing that you got the court order for then make an arrest, find nothing (or something else only) then turn it off.

But, along with section s92 of the NZ copyright act, the Australian Government’s somewhat clueless efforts to censor their internet and the NZ libel laws, we have an increasing chilling effect on our online behaviour, and expensive unwieldy compliance for our ISPs.

The ISPs are struggling merely to get us connected, let alone at a decent speed. Now they are being asked to police content, place surveillance capability in line and (in Australia) censor. All this adds cost and complexity, and ultimately degrades the service that we get in our homes and businesses.

Keith Locke from Green Party has the last word

“No one is denying we may catch a few more criminals through these powers, but there is a huge downside for us. The big downside has two aspects. One is our privacy, and the other is how these powers could be misused by agencies of the government.”

Trains, buses and cars – we need them all

Published March 18, 2009 Business , NZ Business , Politics 1 Comment
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A nice rant by Bernard Hickey against the rushed Auckland electrification decision. I’m not arguing with him on the rushed aspect, nor on the specifics of this particular decision, which seem to be remarkably absent.

However the comments have unveiled a cars versus buses versus trains versus whatever war.

Let me copy my comment on the thread:

To me it is simple – a decent sized city (any city really) needs multiple modes of transport, and Auckland is currently a public transport joke.

The aim should be to make the retail cost of each transport option include the full cost or benefit of it’s economic externalities.

  • That means driving a car should incorporate the cost of smog, congestion and road building/maintenance.
  • Travelers on a bus should receive some of that car congestion subsidy – after all they are taking cars off the road.
  • Train riders should receive more, as they are using even less road space and resources per person.

And that’s why trains make economic sense – they work when you add the numbers up correctly.

When we add the true cost of carbon emissions to the equations then things will really start to pay off – for trains and for us all.

Meanwhile car drivers already pay a lot of tax for emissions and so forth via fuel tax, but they do not pay for the congestion cost. It’s a real cost – increased fuel consumption and wasted time spent in traffic for thousands of people.

But we can only start charging for congestion when we have a viable alternative transport system.

So yes – bring in more trains and other mass transit options, and especially bring in more transport to more areas.

Dissecting the NZ job summit output – Top twenty

Published March 3, 2009 NZ Business , Politics Leave a Comment
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After reviewing the raw output from the 6 groups, let’s now turn to the published “Top Twenty” list, and some quick comments.

Job Summit – Top Twenty
Core Workplace and Employment Issues

1. Retain and Upskill – the nine day fortnight
Retain jobs by reducing wage costs while firms earnings are down. Retain jobs short and long term by upskilling workers. Possible focus on a nine day fortnight or maximum 6 week block release.

–> The nine day fortnight (or less) is a personal favorite, and one I’ve advocated before for both employees and employers. Why not make it even more flexible – down to even 6 day fortnights? The extra free time can be filled by entrepreneurial activities for those so inclined.
–> Sadly the move seems to be for Government to pay for the day off, which seems a bit rough. Why not just reduce the pay?
–> “Upskilling workers” is a motherhood statement, and comes with a very real cost. External training can run to the thousands per person day, and even internal training comes with logistical costs. Meanwhile you are paying workers to be trained.
–> Giving unpaid time off to go to universities and polytechs  is a potential winner, though many people do this already without taking the time out.
For all of these the concern is that those that earn less money are unable to afford the unpaid time away from work.

2. Intra-national migration achieved
Creation of a seasonal work marketplace that will remove barriers (information, infrastructure, qualifications/skills) between employers and seasonal workers.
–> This makes no sense to me. Isn’t there a decent private enterprise system for matching jobs and potential employees? Trade Me and Seek seem to be pretty good. Who would create and run this rather unnecessary extra marketplace – the Government?. Aren’t seasonal workers able to get jobs anyway? And what about the working holiday tourists – will they still be able to partially finance their journeys?

Skills and Transition
3. Keeping people in education and creating jobs through education and training
Expand group training programmes, review current apprenticeships models with a view to sustaining and expanding levels of training and introduce a training requirement as part of government procurement processes. Support summer employment for students, facilitating retraining and promoting the importance and value of education.

–> What are group training programs? They sound like they cost money (see 1:).
–> There has to be some room for improving the apprenticeship system, perhaps with decent Government subsidies for employers? The idea of paying very small amounts in exchange for training is fundamentally a good one. However I’m concerned that some trades which were wildly popular in recent times with the mining and housing led boom will have oversupply of workers going forward. The market will clear, but sometimes it takes time.
–> A training requirement as part of a Government procurement process would discriminate against some firms, especially smaller firms. As I said above training is expensive and smaller firms will find it especially hard, while all firms will find compliance bureaucratic.

Remove barriers and increase enablers/incentives to ensure that the education and training system is well-placed to meet current needs and opportunities including a specific focus on Maori/Pasifika people.

–> What are the barriers? You want to lower entry requirements? How wil tertiary institutions cope with this? Won’t this decrease the experience for those that can qualify? I had always thought we were pretty good on this front, and very good when it comes to reaching out to all cultural groups. This feels like a land grab, and we’ve had years of working on this already.

–> What I would like to see is the return of (the tiny) payments to study. I used to get $80 per week to go to university in Palmerston North, but then I’m living in the past.

4. Improve matching of supply and demand for training
Improve identification and matching of clearly identifiable job opportunities in the short and medium term by industry groups to direct future education and training priorities.

–> more training. Please – we get the story, but really, it is not generating income i nthe short term. Who would do this? What is wrong with allowing market forces to determine what training gets used? – individuals will choose training that gets them a job. Meanwhile there is plenty of information about in training courses – try Google, or maybe someone can do a quick start up for $5000.

5. Redundancy and transition support programme
Improve support for people about to be made redundant or who are unemployed to help them transition to new work opportunities and training including:
-Particular focus on those most vulnerable
- Income assistance
-Collaboration
-Enhanced industry partnerships
-Auditing, integrating and streamlining
-Improving information and access to services

–> Good – we need to make sure the safety net is there when people fall. We also need to make sure we don’t create thousands of consultants or push people into fields that are politically popular but not sustainable in the log term.
–> However those bullets raise more questions than they answer – what does “collaboration” mean? What does “Auditing, integrating and streamlining” mean? Surely we are pretty good at this stuff these days? This feels like layers of bureaucracy to me.

Maori Economy, Local and Regional Government
6. Enhanced utilisation of iwi assets
Creating new employment in the primary production sector by bringing Maori land and water based assets into higher value export focused productive use.  This may involve accessing existing business support, legislative/regulatory review and active facilitation of intra-Maori partnerships.

–> This wasn’t (like a few of the top 20) in the group break out output, and it is certainly interesting. It does sound a bit like planting trees, farms, tourism and factories on Iwi land – a business-first solution with obvious issues. It’s a good idea, but we have to remember that Iwi are in charge of their own resources and while outsiders can encourage and offer to invest, it is up to the Iwi to determine their own future.

Investing in projects that support Maori kinship -based infrastructure, including iwi-led housing projects, innovative approaches to existing state housing stock, and marae development.

->This new idea could be really interesting, a good use for infrastrucutre spending.  It is hard to tell whether government funds is the idea or not. This coulkd be lousy or fantastic, with the devils are in the details.

7. Government systems
Ensure that government services to Maori deliver effective results.

–> motherhood, apple pie and useless as an action. What does this really mean? What have we been working on since 1984?

8. Urgently develop and implement new sources of bond funding
Aggregate local government debt to gain access to debt funding at lower than current interest rates. Also, prioritise New Zealand investment plan across central/local government, that ensures a job creation focus, incentives for expenditure, quality spend that best positions New Zealand for medium to long term and avoids competition for capacity and capability.

-> Will aggregation help – or is it that local government finances are the issue here? Aggregating (mortgage) debt to get higher credit ratings and lower interest rates is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place, while spreads for NZ and local government will be high regardless.
–> If aggregation is a good thing, then why has nobody in the private sector done it already?.
–> Prioritising local government investment is done by local government, and I am not so sure how much extra they have in their pockets.
–> I’m concerned about any statement that has the words “avoids competition” – tending to think that competition is a good thing resulting in cheaper, higher quality results.

9. Reduce regulatory compliance costs and impediments
Adopt a permissive approach to increase the range of permitted activities in e.g.  building and housing, food safety. Enable local government to determine appropriate level of consultation.  Seek a moratorium on drinking water and air quality standards. Improve practice in council processing of regulatory consents.

–> This is the anti-environment clause, and the again the devil will be in the details of this. While I do not doubt that regulation has gone a bit far and is certainly cumbersome, the idea of reducing our water, food or environment quality for a quick buck is one that will fail in the public domain. Food safety in particular is everything for NZ’s economy – we cannot afford to compromise.

Helping firms survive
10. Big projects fast track
Establish a taskforce(s) to report directly to a relevant minister to anticipate and actively manage approval and regulatory processes for major and/or complex processes.

–> I do like this idea – make it quick and easy for big projects to be approved – or not approved.
–> Muldoon called this Think Big, but this looks to be more of “enable private sector to Think Big” which makes sense.
–> This overlaps with #14

11. Rule-making freeze
Cabinet directive issued to government agencies/regulators to stop all rule and regulation making or extension, unless specifically approved by the minister.  Reduce all enforcement activity to focus on minimum acceptable standards (rather than ‘nice to haves’) and the overall immediate interest for New Zealand.

–> Easy, but will it make a difference? Rules will be made as new information comes to light.
–>How about a “Relentless Rule Removal” campaign – much like the Great Qango hunt in earlier times?  That’s something I could buy in to.

12. Boosting tourist traffic co-fund
Establish a government/private co-funded $60 million fund to support initiatives to increase visitor numbers targeting 1% global market share, through short and long haul promotional activity, domestic tourism promotion and targeted infrastructure development.
–> an interesting idea but $60m is pissing in the ocean for such a big industry. Pushing on airports to reduce landing fees, fast-tracking Australia/NZ domestic travel status and so on would be more effective. We are actually pretty good on a lot of this stuff already.

Business Investment
13. Accelerate energy, environmental and water initiatives for employment and productivity improvements
–> That’s a good idea. It overlaps with #9, #10 and #14 – between big projects and training this list has some recurring themes.

14. Streamline regulatory approval processes for major projects
Accelerate transmission grid investment by increasing threshold for Electricity Commission consideration of electricity projects to $50 million. Allow longer wheel-based trucks and heavier loading. Establish taskforces reporting to a minister for vetting major infrastructure investment proposals and ensuring regulatory processes are quickly and consistently completed.

–> Another good idea, which oddly seems a bit specific for electricity. I really like the taskforce based approach to large investment approval, together with aggressive timetables for decisions but aggressive reaching out to stakeholders.

–> what about the smaller stuff – making it easy for individuals and small businesses to sell back to the grid. Let a thousand generators blossom
–> what about smart metering. Great for infrastructure (we can make them here – and by we I mean Textmate could, and with no ongoing telco costs), but even better to help us each use less power.

15. Access to working capital delivered via an extension of the Export Credit Office
Extend the Export Credit Office to also apply to domestic firms that need cash flow funding for completion of confirmed contract orders.

-> This is a big one as the ECO does extend a lot of credit to Exporters. Extending it to domestic circumstances does seem pretty hard as we are now essentially creating another bank.
–> What about extending the mandate (and backing) of Kiwibank to aggressively target SME’s instead?
–> Why just contracts? What is a contract? How do you assess counterparty risk? Why not on accounts receivable as well? Why not for importers as well?

16. Level the playing field to NZ firms for local and central government procurement
Revise procurement guidelines to ensure they do not bias against local providers by stipulating a specified firm size or track record.

–> Yes, this is good. The track record one is amusingly and frustratingly Catch-22 – you can only supply if you have supplied before. The GETS system does need some work to be fair to smaller providers. Even the application process to view tenders is convoluted, seeming more to push you away than let you in.

Firm Funding
17. Super-charged debt market
Possibilities include streamlining reporting and disclosure requirements, long term bond issues, involvement by a wider range of organisations such as local government.
–> Yes – I’m all for better disclosure and the like.
–> Are we large enough to support a debt market like this? Who will rate the bonds – the discredited agencies?
–> Who makes the market? Who does this really benefit?

18. Government/bank equity investment fund
Develop an equity growth fund to allow large institutional investors access to quality investments in the SME sector that are currently unavailable to them.
–> This has potential, though the language is a little scary. Those large institutional investors have always been able to invest in SMEs if they want to – but they seem unable to do so. Meanwhile SMEs find it hard to get funds to grow – banks may lend on balance sheet items but not on P&L prospects and business plans, and that credit will tighten through the year.
–> But the details matter. Who will run the the funds? How do we adapt lending criteria to adjust for SME’s? Are we talking equity as well as debt? Most of all, what people will be involved?
–> And a related question – How many sustainable jobs have the VIFs created through their investments? By sustainable I mean that the firms are profitable and no longer need to be supported by investors.

19. Commitment by banks to providing capital to NZ firms
Banks and Government co-fund partnership for preferred equity, financed by bank and government equity, leveraged with debt funding.
–> Sure , but as long as the Government has equity in the deal and or the banks. This is what the banks should be doing on their own, and again the devils are in the finer details.

20. Banks to significantly invest in financial literacy
Investing in educational initiatives to improve the financial literacy of their customers with a focus on SME businesses

–> This is a bit too stable door for me, but always good. Are banks not doing this already? If not then why not? Being the trusted advisor on all things business is after all a great way to identify and close on opportunities.

Overall an interesting top 20, with maybe a few goers in there but a few losers as well. There are overlaps, and gaps, but it is a good continuation from the group outputs, tightening up some of the ideas, dropping many of them and substituting some good new ones. But it’s still pretty raw, and there is a long way to go from here to tangible actions.

So what does Government and industry do with this all? and what else will emerge from the individuals that were there?

Both Bill English and John Key gave speeches at the conclusion of the event, and there has more output after the event. Nowhere in these two posts, for example, have we seen the NZ bicycle track idea (something that I’ve seen kicked around for a while – including at FOO) but somehow it emerged as one of the lead stories.

So next up let’s look at the subsequent output in another post. In a day or four.

Dissecting the NZ Job Summit output – Group outputs

Published March 2, 2009 NZ Business , New Zealand Institute , Politics 2 Comments

The Government sponsored Jobs summit was on Friday, and on the beehive website you can read the input documents, breakout descriptions, attendees, power point bullet outputs and  a top 20 laundry list. So lets get to it.

I believe a summit was a good idea – the depression looms, and that also the focus on jobs was right   – as it is in job losses where we feel the biggest impact of a depression. Loss of investment value, scaling down spending or even bankruptcy are all sustainable if you retain employment. Losing your job and being unable to find another can lead to loss of home, increase in crime and other social problems and personal depression. So yes – making sure we all have jobs is good.

Bill English, amongst others, mentioned that 80% of NZ’s GDP was represented amongst the participants, which is a pretty amazing statistic. It’s not so amazing that the people were there, it’s amazing that just 200 people could represent that much of the economy. It says a lot about our lack of diversification, but also about our tiny population. There were a fair smattering of current and ex consultants, (McKinsey was well represented) and a few folk I have met, and even one I have worked for (Joan Withers). I don’t see a lot of the dot com crowd there though, aside from Rod Drury. Maybe that is a liberal versus conservative thing, perhaps it is a generational thing or more likely there were no (aside from Rod) people that could represent the entire industry.

All in all it appears that the day went well, with people across sectors working together in a common goal. Well done.

So here are three quick posts on the day. I can only write about what I read and see on video – being there would give a lot more.

Following some kick of speeches, the attendees broke off into groups and later into sub groups. So let’s first look at  the groups, the aims for each group and what they each proposed for “Big” “Near Term and High Priority” actions.

Group 1: Core workplace & core employment issues (Rob Fyfe, Helen Kelly)

AIM: Identify workplace solutions that are in the long-term best interests of NZ by identifying specific potentially time-dated measures and agreements that are ‘right’ for these conditions.

Big, Near Term Actions

  1. Retain jobs by reducing wage costs while firms’ earnings are down and long term by using this opportunity to upskill workers.
  2. Creation of a seasonal work marketplace that will remove barriers between employers and seasonal workers.

Group 2: Workers – Skills and transition (Stephen Tindall, Joan Withers)

AIM: Concrete actions, not frameworks or taskforces, that utilize existing assets, and capabilities –public, private and NGO – including educational, to assist in re/upskilling labour and minimizing transition time and costs.

Big, Near Term Actions

  1. Keep people in training
  2. Improve matching of supply and demand for training
  3. Flexibility, enablers and incentives in education and training to build skills and create and keep jobs
  4. Improve support to help people cope with redundancy or unemployment

Group 3: Maori Economy, Local and Regional government (Ngatata Love and Lawrence Yule)

AIM: Minimize school-leaver unemployment. Define actions that will allow rapid deployment of Maori, and local and regional government assets into greater productive use.
Increase certainty and speed up regulatory functions to bring forward private sector investment.

Big, Near Term Actions

  1. Integrated Approach to Māori Secondary and Tertiary Education
  2. Integrated delivery of education and training in senior secondary and tertiary sectors, through existing Māori and other education providers.  Involves linking education and training to support the Māori asset base, and emerging sectors; and relaxing funding and regulatory barriers (eg, remove capping of Student Achievement Component funding to enable demand driven response; relaxing movements between secondary and tertiary; enabling use of alternative delivery sites such as marae.
  1. Councils agree to roll out good practice and streamline consenting processes
  2. Councils commit to bringing forward infrastructure development
  3. Mayors commit to broaden the scope of the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs

Group 4: Helping firms Survive (John Bongard)

AIM: Implementable, targeted near-term actions that make a meaningful difference to identified industries.

Big, Near Term Actions

  1. Cabinet Directive issued to government agencies/regulators that “now is not the time to be introducing new or extended rules, standards or processes that create additional compliance costs for firms
  2. A fund for initiatives to encourage more tourists to New Zealand, both long and short haul
  3. Actively manage regulatory approval process for complex and/or major projects (over $25M)

Group 5: Business Investment (Wayne Boyd, John Shewan)

AIM: Create a package of policies and options that give business the confidence and rationale to not delay capex, and identify some specific new business opportunities that will see new, productive jobs created. In this area we expect to see some ‘upside risk’ as well as ‘downside mitigation’ from the policies.

Big, Near Term Actions

  1. Reform regulatory approval processes for major infrastructure projects
  2. Target and attract offshore investment and entrepreneurial migrants (e.g. wealthy investors, foreign students)
  3. Improve SME access to working capital

Group 6: Firm Funding (Rob Cameron)

AIM: Honest assessment of the role and goals of the bank sectors, with clear understanding of how the bank sector and government will work together for the best interests of the NZ economy on both firm and consumer sides – during this period. Identify solutions that ensure NZ is ‘core’ to the use of Australian banks’ use of funds, and will see bank funding at acceptable price and volume levels. Improve the set (range, speed, cost) of non-bank funding options for firms.

Big, Near Term Actions

  1. Stimulating the development of New Zealand’s debt markets
  2. Equity growth fund for SMEs
  3. Bank and Government transition fund
  4. Statement of commitment from banks to continue to meet the demand for credit

Quick Feedback

Some groups did well, while others came back with motherhood statements. Frankly this is all a bit too raw to over-analyse and thankfully a this work has been crystallized into a “top 20″ – which I shall walk through next.

It’s really important in these sorts of session to take notes/actions well – usually you’d assign a consultant to each one. You can tell a lot from the outputs – some of them have bullets that are clearly inadequate, while others encapsulate tangible actions well. Well written actions are not everything, but they do make sure that everyone in the room has common understanding and agreement.

It is a bit pedantic, but very few of these these are actually written as actions, and none of these are written as actions that clearly describe what needs to be done, by who, by when and why. For example  “Equity growth fund for SME’s” can be interpreted in many different ways. My vision may be very different from yours, and I imagine that even within the room there could have been different ideas. I use this example as it is rectified somewhat by the top 20 list, it a powerful idea and clearly the result of some discussion. However it’s also indicative of how difficult it is to come up with crisp answers in short sessions, and with large numbers of opinionated participants.

I’ll pick on the local Government/Maori actions next, they were the only group requiring two separate Powerpoint packs to present their answers, and the Maori one (for example) addressed the question of unemployment by a long-winded answer which boils down to “training”. Unfortunately it takes a lot more than trained people to create jobs – as anyone in the Philippines will tell you. Fortunately better ideas did emerge in the top 20.

The Workplace Training group one didn’t really answer their question’s call for “Concrete actions” – how can we, for example, “keep people in training” or “Improve matching of supply and demand for training”, and who will be responsible for it?

The 4th Group – helping big firms survive – did very well  – coming up with 3 actions that could reasonably easily be written up with a workplan.

The last two groups are shovelling around big dollars, and we can anticipate some debate on their proposals – and debate is good. None of their proposals come across well in bullets, but the top 20 has more.

So next let’s look at the top 20.

Why this site is in #blackout

Published February 22, 2009 NZ Business , Politics 2 Comments
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#blackout

Section 92A of  Amended New Zealand Copyright Act comes into effect on the 28th of February, 2008.

The chilling effect of 92A has been reported here before – one email to an unused address, and a family’s internet connection was switched off.

It is pleasing that MP’s from all sides have indicated that this section of the act has issues, and my personal belief is that the 92A section slipped in without notice of almost all MPs.

However the required code of conduct between ISP’s and the “Creative industry” is unlikely to be negotiated before the implementation date. Much more crucially there needs to be public (internet users) and creative, people that are not associated with the RIAA and MPAA controlled NZ equivalents, representation in the drafting, agreement and implementation of any code of conduct.

We should recognise that society and our economy now demand that high speed reliable internet access is a utility, and like electricity, gas and water it should only be switched off in exceptional circumstances.

<update. After 7 days of pressure and campaigning the Cabinet has today decided to delay implementaton for a month (March 29), and for another 6 months if there is no agreed code of conduct by then. Well done to the Government, and to the global campaign.>

<update 2 – after a day we’ve now reverted to normal view>

Alcohol and driving: make it 0.0% or forget it

Published January 7, 2009 Life , Motorcycling , Politics 9 Comments
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Good news  - the NZ Government wants to look at reducing the drink driving limit from 0.8 g/l to 0.5 g/l. 

It’s been 0.5g/l in Australia for years – folk over 40 will remember Peter Brock always had had 05 on his car, as that was the limit for drink driving.

But is it the right solution?

 

The problem is that we just don’t know whether 0.8g/l is ok for you and yet 0.01g/l is not ok for me. The problem is also that there are so many other reasons why one could be impaired – fatigue, drugs – legal and illegal, phone, screaming kids, adjusting the radio and a lousy vehicle.

So should we be judged on our alcohol levels in blood, or on our actual on the road behaviour? Here are three alternatives to the current policy – what do you think?

The Case for Zero Tolerance

By setting a limit above 0.0% g/l we are  promoting the thought that some drinking is ok when you are in charge of a motor vehicle. It’s not. Any alcohol in your system means that your ability to drive is affected.  I can feel myself being adversely affected after just one beer, and on a motorcycle it is particularly dangerous.

If you had asked me 10 years ago I certainly would have reacted against the thought of 0.0% as a limit, but after working in a zero tolerance environment I now understand the reasoning. It’s simply that it is dangerous to yourself and to others to operate machinery when you are impaired. It is also so simple in practice – you just don’t drink.

A Zero Tolerance environment is much easier to police – both on the road but far more importantly at a social event. If you see one of your friends drinking anything then that means they are not driving. It also applies if they take anything else that could affect their judgement.

 The Case for Zero Testing

Some people are able to drink and drive safely, and even do so at relatively high levels of alcohol. This occurs a lot in other countries, such as Italy, where the driver will drive safely and slowly, is 100% focused on the road (and not answering cell phones, chatting and so forth) and poses no threat to himself or others.

So is it really wrong to drive home drunk if you are driving well below the safe speed and when others know that you are impaired?

Here’s a proposal. If you have had anything to drink, then you can still drive, but must do three things:

  • Place large florescent “D” signs on the front, sides and back of your car – signifying that the driver is under the influence, and that others should give space
  • Drive at no more than 40kmph in cities and 75kmph in rural zones
  • Never ride a motorcycle, never drive at rush hour  

I found in my recent trip in Australia that a “P” plate was a solid indication that the driver was likely to be an idiot, and so I stayed well clear. Similarly with a “D” sign – other drivers will stay well clear and give you the space to survive.

Meanwhile police can easily identify the impaired drivers and pay special attention to how they are driving. Any hooning while impaired, speeding over the D limits or driving impaired without D signs can be harshly dealt with.

The case for increasing driving monitoring

Why not abandon alcohol testing and simply be more rigourous on monitoring driving quality by increasing the ability of police and public to catch people that are driving poorly? Let’s use the natural increase of cameras in society to allow police to monitor more roads at once. It’s Big Brother, but he is here already and by proposing it now we can do it right.

  • Make it easy to send videos of idiot drivers to police – e.g. we can expect in-car video recording systems (make them evidential quality)  to increase sharply in popularity over the next few years, and passengers can use cell phones to take videos – give them somewhere to send them to.
  • Increase fixed location roadside surveillance cameras, place them in known hoon areas and go after idiots. 
  • Use remote cameras before and after police checkpoints to check for and pull over idiot drivers.
  • Roll out in-car monitoring of speed and location – and give registration rebates to people that voluntarily set up their systems to report on instances where the driver exceed 115% of the speed limit in a location. Alternatively give ACC rebates to businesses that do the same for their vehicles, and push for insurance companies to do the same with premiums.  

Note that it is dangerous driving that we should be focussed on – not low-level speeding in a safe way. 

<update – via a comment by Matthew Sanders on SimpleandLoveable the police have a place to report poor driving: http://police.govt.nz/service/road/roadwatch.html>

Less death on the roads, but more to do

Published January 3, 2009 Politics 3 Comments
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A huge reduction this year in NZ road fatalities, continuing a fantastic series.
NZ Road Fatalities series
What’s stark is the reduction since 1987, which is around about the time, as I recall, when the advertising campaigns really stepped up, drink driving was finally perceived by most people as a bad thing and random stops came in:
NZ Fatalities since 87 (road)

These stats are backed up by excellent work by Transport NZ, who publish annual reports and excellent source material.

Stuff’s lowest road toll since 1956 article mentioned these factors driving the drop:

  • Driver education/people driving more safely
  • Improved road engineering
  • Safer vehicles engineering
  • Police enforcement

Which ones matter the most? Easy – it’s road engineering and safer vehicles. Indeed you can heavily reduce the impact of idiot drivers by having separation of lanes, long, straight boring roads, big boring cars and perfect road surfaces. That would be the USA.

Then again – in Western Australia there are plenty of those – but their statistics are worse than NZ’s:
comparitive fatality stats - NZ/ Australia

Lowest ACT is all-city driving, while WA has a huge amount of country driving. There are plenty of kangaroos on thise roads, and, as I’ve seen, plenty of appalling dirt and sand roads to lose control on.

Not only are those roads extremely dangerous, but there are also a lot of idiot drivers. The prevailing car for hoons in WA seem to be hotted up Commodores, combined with speed and alcohol, if Fremantle on a Friday night is anything to go by. 

Indeed the rural areas contributed 106 of the 188 fatalities to November 2008, which is 56% of fatalities from 25% of the population. If that percentage stayed for December, then Perth itself is around NSW and ACT (Canberra) in death rates. But just look at the death rate for rural Western Australia – outrageous:
fatality stats - WA split

Aside from rural WA, NZ is the top of the list in death rates.

To me this is a fairly simple difference, and it is probably more apparent with vehicle miles. NZ’s roads are narrow, all corners and subject to a pretty astonishing array of weather conditions. Australia’s roads are wide, straight, more often separated from opposing lanes and subject to much milder weather. 

Both countries have worked hard at reducing the road deaths – and the results show. Kudos to South Australia and ACT in particular, with ACT proving that a low starting point doesn’t mean it is hard to reduce even further towards Zero Fatalities. Queensland and WA lower the standard and show the least improvement. Is it related to the fact that they both have substantial rural areas with still appalling roads?

Percentage drop in road fatalities per population from 1998 to 2008
comparitive drop

No Black backgrounds please

Published December 15, 2008 Internet Business , NZ Business , Politics , media Leave a Comment

Its always food to see new blogs. However if you are going to launch a new blog, like aotearoarenamemovement and newmasses did this week, then please make it easy to read.

I don’t mean the content, but the design. White words on black background simply isn’t that easy to read.

And for the Aotearoa Movement people,  if you want to start a movement, then here are some ideas to get the basics right:

  • Create a conversation. You’ve made a statement which leaves little else. The single post seems to have exhausted your rhetoric, and leads the reader to wonder whether there is anything else there. Perhaps if you frame the site differently so it isn’t just a “support this or not” decision
  • Use a better system than “email us” to ask people to make comments or contributions. Start with the comments on the blog, or make some new pages on the blog and ask for comments there. (It’s all probably easier on WordPress.) Ask for other contributors if you like, and get a good debate going.
  • Say who you are. This is a movement right? But behind a movement should be people, and a movement with nobody behind it  isn’t going to keep me interested for long. It’s saying the backers don’t actually want to put their reputations on the line. Say who you are, why you are passionate about this and what else you are pushing.
  • Use the right medium. A Facebook group might be smarter so that people can join, and it is a whole lot more viral. Try twittering, Beboing and everything else like that as well.

Let’s stop MPs drinking and lawmaking

Published December 11, 2008 Politics 5 Comments
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At BHP Billiton sites you have to be able to blow 0.00 on an alcohol breathalyzer before walking into any facility. This is not only to prevent operators of machinery from causing harm, but also to prevent poor decisions being made by anybody that could also cause harm.

It’s a very real rule, and jobs are at stake if you break it

- at 7am on my first day at a South African Aluminium site each person walking through the turnstyles into the offices was  breathalyzed. In the months following I was breathalyzed many more times

- At another site two of us suspected that an external contractor, as he arrived at the security desk,  had been drinking. Our concerns were not followed up immediately by the two security people present (including the security boss) and so they (and the drunk contractor) found themselves turfed off site that day.

It’s the same with any heavy industrial plant, and the same with many other institutions, such as banks, in many countries. You are simply going to be at much higher risk of making poor decisions when you have been drinking.

Watching parliament tonight I am shocked at what I see. At least one of the speakers tonight showed visible signs of drinking, and the behaviour in general seems to be the sort that is exacerbated by the consumption of alcohol.

Why can our lawmakers be drunk when they are making laws?

How can they be fit to legislate but not fit to drive?

Can’t we insist on our lawmakers on being sober when they are in the House of Parliament?

Let’s breathalise them all randomly as they walk into the chamber, and let’s turf them out if they blow positive, and publish the results.

Up the Tanami road

Published August 29, 2008 Life , Motorcycling , Politics Leave a Comment
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It’s the main drag from alice springs to the northwest, so I was expecting the Tanami Road to be pretty good. It was, but vast tracts were still unacceptabe for locals.
I cruise at 100-110km, regardless of terrain. The worst roads are deep sand and sandy corrugations, and there was a bit of the first but plenty of the second. The bike/tire/road combination I have is still smoothest at that speed- rather like going through deep powder when skiing, or water skiing. It’s about getting up on top of the surface and gliding.

However that requires decent suspension, tires & tubes, while the whole vehicle vibrates, so everything needs to be bolted on well.

If the vehicle is unstable at speed, then the only other option is to slow right down. This creates even more vibrations, and judging by the trail of debris I see, things often fall off other traffic.

So the Aboriginals that live in the country can’t afford decent cars, the distances are far, average speeds as low (cruise at 60) and fuel is expensive. But I repeat myself. There was a bit of road improvement happening-far better than on the great eastern road sandpit.

Meanwhile I am glad I spent the time prepping the bike, and I am glad to have obtained new tires in Alice. Another motorcyclist I met in Alice actualy turned back after starting the Tanami, but I met yet another chap today who was coping splendidly. Actually he had met the guy with the fired up KTM below, and the story was again confirmed that I am riding a bike that is likely to catch fire if I crash badly.

Pictures are of a termite mound, remnants of a strange ceremony, the end of the road, the half road near the start of the 1060kms and a very good bit later on. Oh – and it seems that most of the scrawling on the WA sign is from Kiwis.

Drinking in outback australia

Published August 27, 2008 Life , Motorcycling , Politics Leave a Comment
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The laws about alcohol are pretty interesting in rural, or, Aboriginal, Australia. This sign is on a road into Alice Springs, and the penalties for drinking in public are displayed.. Tipping out – sure. A fine (and that’s a lot of money if you are unemployed) – well sure.
But a court order to stop drinking???

Insane. Might as well order unmarried people to stop having sex, overweight people to stop eating junk food, every driver to stop speeding on occasion and smokers to stop smoking.

It is not going to happen.

The more I see of rural Australia, the more I believe that this is a poverty gap situation more than anything else. Poverty, isolation and despair drives the alcohol and behavioral problems. The Aboriginals have it hard, with mryiads of tribes and languages, ‘assisted’ by often misguided handouts and advice (e.g. Don’t hunt and gather but take this money and buy bad food and sit around.)
Meanwhile some communities seem to have a positive mindset,, while others are terrible.
My two cents? Help the ones that want to be helped, and let the others see the results. ‘Help’ means roads, cell phone coverage, subsidized healthy food and anything to help communities create jobs.
And stop the stupid laws that fail to treat symptoms. The ‘grog run’ is alive and well in rural Australia, regardless of the law, alcohol and petrol (for sniffing) are getting through.

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