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 …
Category Archives: Politics
Drinking in outback australia
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 …
Australia fix your roads
On the one hand it’s great for people like me that there are vast roads of days of sand and corrugations. It was tough at first but ultimately I was skimming through the sand pit that is the NT part of the great central road. Some of the road has not been graded for months, …
Global official aid falls – NZ languishes at the back
Pathetic. Official development aid worldwide actually fell by 8.4%, in real terms, last year. This meant a drop from 0.31% to 0.28% of OECD member’s GNI, rather than rising up towards the 0.7% of GNI agreed to at the Gleneagles G8 and UN Millennium + 5 summits in 2005. Much of the change was because …
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China: all but wheat, sugar and rice
Wheat, sugar and rice, along with “certain paper products” those are the items that will remain subject to tarrifs when we export them to China. They represent about 4% of our exports to China, so not a bad outcome. All three grains are subject to some pretty serious subsidization and quota-driven distortions in the world …
Blogging for $35 billion – Expensive Tankers
So you lose a $35 billion deal to a competitor that you have been keeping away from your major customer for years. What do you do? Well if you are Boeing, the customer is the US Government (Airforce), the competitor is Airbus and the product is refueling tankers, then you start a blog. and launch …
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Ham-fisted intervention in markets is dull thinking
Score one for protectionism, and minus several ranks of the economic freedom index for New Zealand, after the Government intervenes to prevent a Canadian fund from buying into Auckland airport. When the market drops by 2% after a new protectionist law is created it should be obvious to everyone the impact of ham-fisted interventionist Government …
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Blocking Sky is bad for everyone
Sky may be forced to not bid for exclusive access to big events of “national significance”. Well, it’s one of several proposals apparently, so let’s not jump up and down yet. The result would be less incentve for sky to bid for those events, and therefore a lower final price. That means less money to …
Guaranteeing Safety on the roads
A timely topic as we head out on the annual Christmas travel-fest. It’s dangerous on those roads, and we all need to do something about it. The NZ Government has come up with their list of measures to reduce fatalities on the road: Increased demerit penalties for crossing stop lights Increased demerit penalties for faster …
Anti Free trade: BNZ and USA
Why is it so complicated to wire money from the USA to NZ? I know the US laws are convoluted, but BNZ certainly isn’t helping reduce barriers to free trade with these instructions: Dear Mr Wiggs Thank you for your enquiry about transferring funds from the United States to Bank of New Zealand. In order …
Why not charge $40 for a pack of cigarettes
Via Freakanomics, it seems that for men US$222, and for woman US$94, is the true cost of a packet of cigarettes, when you add in the net preent value of the damage to your health and lifespan. The public sector economist in me says that you should step in when there is a big disparity …
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Blame the invisible man
Part of the blame for the underinvestment by Telecom, and under0-reaction by the NZ Government has to go on the National Party’s Maurice Williamson: A rare written question from National Party communications spokesman Maurice Williamson to Communications Minister David Cunliffe in May… …asked Mr Cunliffe how New Zealand’s {broadband} ranking compared with its position in …
Telecom’s $1.4 billion investment
It’s great news. Score plus one for Paul Reynolds, who is making all the right moves as he embarks on the Telecom turnaround. I’m running on the promised ADSL2+ here in Perth, and it is fast enough for most purposes, with an upgrade path to 20 MB per second ahead for TCNZ. Sadly – that …
US State – enforcing Iraq postings
The US State Department (foreign service) is enforcing postings in Iraq – there is no turning them down it seems, else you lose your job. That’s scary for 250 or so people who will be informed on Monday, and have just 10 days to reply. The only excuses allowed are medical it seems. I know …
Al Gore unleashed
if you want to see what Al Gore could be like as a US Presidential candidate, then look at this camera phone video. He is passionate, and calls Bush on the blunders before 911. It’s an utter transformation – the cumulation of the change that we partially saw in An Inconvenient Truth. Has the Nobel …
Lance Wiggs 