Investment in a new learning tool for Automotive Trades students at Ara shows the Institute is anticipating and adapting to new and emerging technology in the field. Students training as Electrical and Mechanical Automotive Engineers in Canterbury now have access to a hybrid car, exposing them to the swift technological developments in the industry.

Partly powered by an internal combustion engine, partly by electric motors, hybrid cars require less petrol than traditional motor vehicles. As such, these environmentally, and economically, friendly cars are becoming an increasingly common sustainable transport alternative.

While the current Automotive courses on offer at Ara focus predominantly on traditional motor vehicles, tutor David McBlain supports the Institute’s move to put students in the drivers’ seat of new, green technology. “As a college we’ve obviously got to adapt and keep up with the latest technology so that the students can actually see what is available and how the technology is actually developing for the future.”

McBlain as the proud owner of a full electric vehicle, has experienced the benefits first hand. His Toyata Prius runs entirely on electric charge so rising petrol prices don’t present a problem. Rather than pay for fuel, he plugs his car into charge each night. “My car is a short range vehicle and will do 120-130km on a single charge. I commute 100kms a day, so it’s enough for me to get in and out to work.”

Many may think that the high tech systems inside hybrid and electric vehicles would result in more complications than traditional petrol powered cars, however he disputes this. “When you look at the technology involved in an electric vehicle and under the bonnet, there is actually far less componentry to go wrong. There’s no gear box, it’s just a final drive. Engine losses are minimal. Acceleration is much superior. For me it’s a win-win. You’re losing less money, you’ve got less things to go wrong with it, and the performance is superseding standard cars already.”

McBlain, stresses the importance of equipping students for the rapidly developing market which they will enter into as graduates. “The technology is here now and it’s only a matter of time over the next couple of years, for the electric vehicles to become more prevalent in New Zealand and Australia. They’re coming now so the future mechanics need to be trained and ready.”

Ara is committed to leading in sustainability across the institute. Guided by the Sustainability Charter, Ara is embedding more sustainable practice and reviewing curriculum to reflect the latest sustainable best practice across all industries.

| An ARA release  ||  September 4,  2017   |||

Three and half years ago, Roman and Andrea Jewell, who was expecting the couples  first child at the time, started Fix & Fogg.  Previously both lawyers, they made the choice to leave behind the corporate life and dedicate their time and energy to creating something meaningful, sustainable, and delicious.

They decided to make the world’s best peanut butter.

They love that they make every jar of Fix & Fogg peanut butter from start to finish in their factory in Wellington. From designing  labels to  carefully blended peanut butter, they are completely hands-on throughout the entire process.

They think the award-winning peanut butters are so popular because people can taste the difference in a product that’s handmade by humans who care about quality.

Continue here to read more about the Fix & Fogg journey here

Revivalist opportunity perceived at last moment

An outbreak of middle class idealism based on party immigration policy promises to boost the Green vote at the expense of Labour, and to a rather lesser extent, National, and even New Zealand First.

A sign of this is the 11th hour awakening is decision of the Greens to field a candidate in Ohariu in which the Labour candidate Greg O’Connor had seemed a shoo-in following the resignation of the enduring independent incumbent Peter Dunne MP.

Mr O’Connor (pictured) is one of the very candidates anywhere in the entire Westminster sphere who meets the traditional Labour Party guidelines. A tough street-level cop, deployed into the most troublesome zones, he went on to run the police union for an entire generation.

The Greens understand that Labour will respond with their own counter truce-breaking reprisal of some kind before the general election.

But the electorate move in Wellington’s up-scale suburb of Karori with its horse-riding schools and country club environs by the Greens is one of the party’s several calculated risks in the last few months and a closer examination of this one indicates a strategic positioning which also contains a strong surprise value.

The Green Party is the only party to have an ironclad policy embracing the acceptance in New Zealand of refugees, the ones from nations torn by tribalism and sectarianism.

All the other parties have hedged around the refugee issue, seeking to bury it in their wider immigration policies covering desired skills and economic contributions.

Facebook commentaries whizzing around between greying baby boomer ex- activists also indicate that Labour’s new leader Jacinda Ardern MP is expected to conjure up a reprise, if only partial, of the Labour glory days of the Vietnam-Apartheid-Nuclear era.

Great revivalist expectations such as this were simply not even to be considered under former leader, the pragmatic Andrew Little whose non telegenic façade shrouded a subtle blend in fact of the Trades Hall-varsity nexus and union lawyer.

Winston Peters MP and his New Zealand First Party will remain substantially, but not entirely, inoculated against any late-developing fever centred on the asylum-seeking category of immigrant.

This is just because New Zealand First’s most visible policy plank is the thumbs down to most immigrant categories regardless of whether they come bearing gifts or sectarian blood feuds.

The prospect of the Greens unveiling a high profile moral compass pointing to refugees in the accepted meaning of the word, and thus igniting a last minute bush-fire type of guilt-propelled fervour, is a prospect that Labour appears to be anticipating now.

We look now at the election eve multi-faceted immigration issue in its wider sense ……………………………….

THE GREEN PARTY

Advantage of humanitarian position on refugeesThe children of the baby boomers appalled by middle class material values of their parents, who they often regard as sell-outs anyway, , reach for an ideal, in this instance the refugee one, in order to re-establish the nation as a force for good in the world. The Greens offer the only unequivocal policy in regard to accepting refugees, especially the ones that other nations do not want.

Argument against The children of the baby boomer beset by the need now for dual incomes and the financial demands of the tertiary education required by their own offspring are suspicious of the financial and social impact of the moral crusades of the type embarked upon by their parents in their own university days. These were free of charge and the parental generation in addition was often actually paid to enrol and attend university, incredible as it may seem now.

THE LABOUR PARTY

Advantage in stressing a new and enhanced humanitarian position on refugees

A breath of fresh air into the Helen Clark era doctrine of multiculturalism and diversity offering New Zealand an opportunity to walk tall once more in all the right international convocations, notably United Nations

Argument againstA disquieting medium-term memory of the way in which Auckland schools, houses, and hospitals began to creak at the seams during, and after, the immigration influx inaugurated during this same era.

The National Party

Advantage in suddenly opening the policy gates to refugeesAn indirect reminder that gung-ho immigration policy inherited from Labour ensured that businesses kept at full throttle and that the nation’s lavish, on a population basis, investment in universities of all description became partially shouldered by foreign students. A German-style open door refugee policy could/would sustain and enhance this

Argument againstImmigration was used to fuel the “rock star” economy at the expense of infrastructure which in this context is code for houses, schools, hospitals. Also that the increasing reliance on the private students from foreign lands and their need to collect a degree of some sort and a widespread belief that this every-punter-gets-a prize devalued these qualifications and provided also the now much-quoted “back door” for an extended if not permanent stay here.

NEW ZEALAND FIRST

Advantage in its turn-off- the-taps immigration policy.Immigrants are drawn to metropolitan centres such as Auckland already populated beyond its carrying capacity. Both National and Labour have implemented this state of affairs, the party claims. Universities have become disguised back doors for the “c’mon in” techniques devised by the immigration “consultants,” and until quite recently evident on their web sites. New Zealand First insists that immigrants must be selected on a needed and high skills basis.

Disadvantages in this policyThe drastic tourniquet is in some conflict with New Zealand First’s new role as the true saviour and champion of farmers and cultivators. They cannot find manpower locally and seek to fill this vacuum with workers from Asia especially. Their work is of the repetitive and conscientious type and does not meet the New Zealand First advanced specialist skill criterion.

Background to the all-party immigration dilemma

A very wide spectrum of voters are keen on immigration – in any form.

Big business for a start because it increases the number of consumers and the number of workers available to meet their needs.

The churches are very enthusiastic. Their inclusive view is both spiritual and practical in that people in need are manna from heaven and very much so in an epoch of dismayingly shrinking conventional congregations.

Social service agencies of all types tend to be similarly enthused

Metropolitan politicians are also enthusiasts as they see their electoral roles filling up with supplicants and thus voters.

Immigration Topics that National and Labour prefer you did not Introduce

So why has immigration replaced employment and even health and education as the most sensitive issue in this general election?These issues are widely considered to be interrelated in that many of the so-called occupied urban jobs are in fact part time only. This is considered to be due to the ample availability of people to fill them because of the swelled urban work-force because of the immigration influx which also stands accused of putting the strain on houses, schools etc.

Why is the refugee component of this issue so ultra-sensitive?It is dangerous to Labour and this has been indicated by the Green’s decision to stand its own candidate in Ohariu, which is regarded as a liberal constituency.

A sudden intensity focus on a need by New Zealand to admit many more refugees seeking asylum by the Greens would prick this liberal conscience and force the Labour Party into a defensive corner in which it has no ambition to be. Not in the run up to the election, anyway.

You could have the Greens asking for example why a nation, one of the self-proclaimed international good guys, and which has less than half of one percent of its land mass urbanised is not taking in many more?

It's time New Zealand seriously started to invest in promoting technology, the country’s third largest export industry and fastest growing sector of our economy, a leading New Zealand tech businessman says.

NZTech and FinTechNZ chair and Augen Software Group director Mitchell Pham says when Kiwis are in Asia and ask locals what they know about New Zealand, they generally say tourism, education, dairy, beef and lamb, high quality food products and other primary exports – never technology.

“It is highly unlikely that technology innovation or digital products would be mentioned, even though we have thousands of world class tech companies in this country,” he says.

“I want to see New Zealand technology promoted to the world just as we have made a huge effort over the past 20 years to globally feature tourism in this country.

“As a technology entrepreneur who has travelled extensively throughout Asia, the lack of knowledge of Kiwi tech ingenuity is a constant frustration for me. There's no place in the Asian region where I can use the NZ Inc. brand to help position a tech business as being from a well-known high-tech export nation.

“This is why NZTech is actively working to develop the NZ Tech Story in collaboration with Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and New Zealand Story to add being a high-tech nation as an integral part of the story we tell the world about ourselves. We can all participate and add to the development of the story via the NZ Tech Story Forum on LinkedIn.

“New Zealand has invested heavily in promoting education and tourism for decades, which is why we are so well known in Asia for these industries. It's time we make an on-going investment into promoting our fastest growing sector of our economy. The sooner the better, as it will take time to build the brand association between NZ and high-tech nation.”

Pham says the tech sector is not an island. As most Kiwi tech companies are still relatively new to business development in Asia, it would be smart and important for them to work alongside other New Zealand industry sectors which have been doing so for much longer and are therefore bigger, stronger and better known. Technology businesses are more relevant when promoted as part of the sectors that they serve.

Tourism, education, dairy, beef and lamb, fruit, wine, high quality food products, other primary exports, banking and engineering are just some of the sectors that have been developing in Asia for some time, he says.

“Critical mass is important for branding in Asia. So while we haven't got many large tech brands from New Zealand, such as Orion Health and Xero, we do have a large number of tech firms.

“NZ Techweek next year will be a huge opportunity to promote tech. International tech people will come to attend our events and we want to put NZ on the world tech map. Bringing together hundreds of events into the same week is better than spreading them across the calendar. The sheer number of Kiwis who come out to attend the events will also show critical mass and attract attention.

“We should also work smartly by tapping into relevant networks that are available to us. High-value and high-trust networks are full of influencers and connectors, so they are good channels to push the NZ tech story, such as KEA, New Zealand Asian Leaders (NZAL), ASEAN-NZ Business Council and similar networks connected in New Zealand and Asia.”

| A MakeLemonode release  ||  August 28,  2017   |||

Procedure is killing Party’s election hopes

Eminem’s copyright legal proceedings centred on the rapper’s lawyers claiming that the National Party had heisted riffs of the warbler’s Lose Yourself album for its 2014 general election jingle.

The unlikely proceedings conducted in a Wellington courtroom are remembered for sweetening global network talk shows.

Presenters in the United States especially discovered humour in the rendering of the word Eminem due to the squished vowel sounds of their New Zealand counterparts.

The chuckling involved in the parodies attendant on the New Zealand broadcasting patois along with the bizarre courtroom episode we can see now obscured a much more serious intention and in the view of many, a much more dangerous one.

The National Party was determined, even if rather belatedly, as per the disputed song, to lose its old self, slough off its wrinkled skin, and hop disco-style into the age of hip.

This Eminem-style background “music” to the campaign was the pointer to a much deeper strategy designed to attract the very large slice of the electorate both young and old who identify themselves with the contemporary culture represented by rap.

Former premier John Key’s campaign to change the New Zealand flag can now be seen as part of this trendy re-imaging campaign.

The flag replacement scheme was remarkable in that it failed to obtain any traction at all in the media, usually always on for a dig at the established order, and then it collapsed through the absence of any popular momentum at all.

The appeasing of the fashionable Greens by the U-turn on live sheep shipments has left the government with an obviously festering sore as it seeks to compensate double-crossed Middle East interests by building there for free a processing depot for which there is no budget, simply because the construction was and is unofficial.

External affairs allocations are still being combed to pay for it.

A weight of evidence points to the involvement behind this of foreign image consultants.

This explains why the change-the-flag scheme ran alongside the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings and thus of Anzac.

Foreign consultants would not have been aware of the significance of this milestone in the short history of the nation, and especially of the way in which it transcends ideological boundaries.

Similarly with the anti-Israel complicit vote in the dying days of New Zealand’s last tour of duty as a temporary member of the United Nations Security Council.

Foreign advisers would not have been aware of the size of the evangelist-fundamentalist following in New Zealand, traditionally National Party adherents, and the bloc’s sensitivity about anything to do with the holy land.

A further clue to external progressivist influence is the money that the National Government, note government and not the Party, started doling out to the Clinton Foundation at a time when the Clintons were doggedly campaigning in Hillary’s bid for the presidency.

As was seen subsequently the involvement by foreign governments in United States federal and even state elections is prohibited by law. This applies specifically to the financing of individual candidates.

Again a suspicion remains of an external influence, a re-imaging one, behind these donations to the Clinton Foundation, estimated by the Taxpayers Union, to amount to between nine and 10 million dollars, or the equivalent of the annual income tax paid by 899 workers on the average wage.

The unseen advisors had no doubt whatsoever that the Clinton dynasty would resume, and that the hand-outs would be regarded ecstatically here by the very progressives that the National Party now strives so ardently, and so awkwardly, to draw to its side.

 | From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  ||  Thursday 24 August 2017   |||

This new customised scam gives the old fashioned con artist the full leverage of the electronic funds transfer era.

A new wave of money transfer fraud techniques is on its way to New Zealand. It is the President scam, so called because it is centred on the departure from secure procedures triggered by a very senior official in the targeted organisation intervening and giving the appearance of wanting the fraudulent transfer to take place.

Under the President modus operandi someone poses as the boss of an organisation. They then conjure up an exception of some kind and which requires an instant transfer of money. The controlling officer, the one at the receiving end of the email or telephone call, then instructs the operations person concerned to implement the transfer. Or transfers it personally.

Inherent in this confidence trick is the artificial flap and the urgency it generates, an urgency designed to wash away any remaining security steps, especially any suspicion about the entity on the other end of the money transfer.

The theme of the President scam is that it differs from other transfer frauds in that it is designed to be implemented and completed in minutes rather than hours.

However the preparatory spade-work by the perpetrator will take much longer and involves a close study of the voice and verbal pattern of the senior official, the President, who is being mimicked. It will also require an evaluation of the vulnerability of the authorisation chain and especially of the individual who will press the button on the transfer.

These weak links may include for example a command chain noted for an informal i.e careless approach to established procedures.

Also an organisation in which the boss, the President, is known for making procedural short cuts. A boss who is feared in this context represents a weak link because line staff will want to avoid incurring their ire and so be more willing to take the procedural short cut.

There are of course a number of variants on the President scam.

These include the scam artists impersonating suppliers who claim that if a certain payment is not immediately made, that they will cause, for example, a production line to close down.

A particularly nasty twist is when a known adviser, perhaps the head of an organisation’s firm of accountants appears to be ringing in, urgently advocating the settlement of this or that account before the sky falls in.

In Europe where the President scam was developed and refined there can often be a conspiratorial aspect to the impersonation in which the scam artist seeks to impersonate elements of the forces of law enforcement, and seeks the covert assistance of someone connected with money transfers on the grounds of patriotism.

The money transferred under the President scam moves quickly through the hot money arteries, bouncing around countries with low banking surveillance, before being laundered, and often factored through commodities and other merchandise.

The history of the preceding waves of electronic scamming indicates that the International fraud artists turn their attention to New Zealand when they have picked the eyes out of the low hanging fruit in the northern hemisphere.

This time, as we shall see, is about now. Neither can we claim that the President technique has not already been applied to New Zealand. It may have been intercepted. Or the victim organisation has shut up about it.

Anyone involved in money transfer knows that by its very existence any chain of authorisation is vulnerable just because humans are involved.

So we have to hold onto something solid. In this case documentary credit instruments represent the best banking landmark. This means, in this context, sight documents.

Why? Because seeing is believing. Any departure, any exception, from authorised procedure must be verified by “sighting” the individual, the President, the CEO, or the CFO who is demanding the implementation of the exception to standard practice i.e. the money transfer.

The reason that sight procedures (never in this connection ever to be confused with citing or even “site” procedures)apply now is just because unlike previous waves of point to multi point stacked scams, the President formula relies on a high degree of customisation.

This means for example that an email used in the scam will be customised around the known habits of the President and also around the known personality of the target, the officer of the organisation authorised to make the transfer.

This email may, for example, have a holiday home telephone number. “Ring me for verification.” The person at the other end of the line will be the impersonator, perhaps with a nasty cold in order to cover up any discrepancy in tonality.

It is this customisation that makes the President scam so dangerous to New Zealand organisations.

Organisations should now evaluate the wisdom of displaying and generally publicising the names of their treasury people, especially on their web sites. They are the point of departure for practitioners of the President scam.

As practitioners turn their attention to southern latitudes we find that only in the simplicity of direct sight, the face-to-face encounter, is there an antidote to this curious yet so far extremely successful blend of the old fashioned confidence trickster merged now with the speed of light of a numerical transfer.

How vulnerable are New Zealand medium to large organisations to this new threat?

Until now the publicised victims of electronic scams of all stripes have been individuals, householders.

The first wave was the Nigerian one in the fax era. Then followed a medley centred on phishing or bank impersonation. Dismayingly the banks insist on using emails to send out their promotional material which means that they cannot collectively state that any email from a trading bank is by definition a false one.

It is in this year’s wave, the telephone calls from Microsoft accredited agent impersonators that we find the direction of this new scam.

As this particular Microsoft scam developed it was observed that recipient caller display bars began to show New Zealand telephone numbers.

Though replies indicated that the caller display numbers elicited no response.

Another pointer is the arrival in the Auckland area especially of criminal gangs working over ATMs.

We are entering the era in which organisations will have to start becoming reticent about their financial authorisation chains in terms of who staffs them.

Similarly with IT structures in which any unanticipated request for tests should be flatly ignored.

At least, until the sight verification.

| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk - European Correspondent  ||  Tuesday 22 August 2017   |||

Our panel takes the National Party election engine apart---and diagnoses a machine in full reverse thrust

 The National government has no more than a 50-50 chance now of winning the pending general election. This has come as a surprise and most of all to the National Party which is scrambling around its faithful to put together an 11th hour war chest to avert what many of its adherents are beginning to suspect is the inevitable. How did it all come to this? It seems only yesterday that the National government would go on and on and on….There was the almost monarchical transfer of power, the abdication of King John and the accession of the crown prince, now King William. What could go wrong? Simple. The National government’s formula of being all things to all people started to lose compression. Then this loss of impetus became obvious. The MSC Newswire panel now takes apart, disassembles, National’s election machine, the one supposed to drive it into power again. This reveals that the engine is sputtering just because so much National government policy is influenced by a category that does not vote for it. We now present in this exploded voting component presentation analysis the self-destructive path that the National Party insists on following, the one that favours those who do not vote for it, at the expense of its own voting blocs. This component bloc analysis is on an ascending order of sector significance.

Category 1: The IntelligentsiaThis is the sector which most preoccupies the National Party, yet which delivers it the least quantity of votes. We are talking here of the broad picture of social “science” centred on universities. This sector has the ability to make the National Party feel unfashionable. So the National Party constantly seeks the approval of this vote-arrid sector, often to the detriment of its own conservative base.

An example was when under the persuasion of the university lobby the National government university-ised crucial artisan and technical vocations. This had to be unpicked by Jim Anderton MP, he of the far left, and the trade apprenticeship courses re-instated and revved up.

This one-sided infatuation between the National Party and the intelligentsia elites continues still in several forms now in the run-up to the pending general election.

For example, the National government is paralysed in the matter of articulating in any clear fashion at all, the doctrines of global educational bodies, themselves university based, to the effect that money invested in early education delivers a value far in excess of the money invested in later education.

2. Administrative ClassThis is the category once described as white collar. They slog away doggedly keeping the nation on its course. We are talking here of those who work for institutions such as banks, insurance companies, utilities, and of course the government itself. This bloc has a problem. They are not very exciting and in this mediatic age this counts for a great deal. National governments take this sector pretty much for granted. What this category wants more than anything is stability.

Again, we find the National government in its preoccupation with the flashy and the fashionable elites quite unable to make the obvious gesture to this solid sector.

This should be to the effect that National governments personify stability and the once-much quoted “steady as she goes” way of politics.

National must make it clear to this sector that it recognises it – and will not be subjecting it to any sudden changes of the social engineering variety and which will de-stabilise it.

3. Self employedNew Zealand First’s Winston Peters MP has singled out this sector for special attention – and no wonder. National government’s treat this sector with a disdain bordering on snobbery. It refuses to acknowledge the immense contribution of this sector which generates in three dimensional and practical terms the prosperity of the country. We are talking here of people such as owner-drivers, plumbers, electricians, builders, butchers, bakers. Also, and this is not widely understood, IT people.

These solid, dependable types once again tend to be rather unexciting and so once more we find the National Party taking them pretty much for granted, or did so, until Mr Peters singled them out for his special attention.

One of the problems of this sector is that in expanding, or “growing” their businesses, they need to employ staff, and in doing so run the risk of incurring the immense distraction, not to say cost, of a disaffected employee and the litigation that they can invoke.

The National Party should clearly set out its record in streamlining hiring/firing and state unreservedly that it intends to introduce further such work place measures.

4. FarmersNational governments over the past 30 years have found it increasingly hard to adjust around this sector due to pervasive dairy farming, and more recently and to a much lesser extent, bio-farming.

As a voting bloc it has lost its significance to the National Party. Worse still, the National Party has let this show.

Who outside the sector can instantly recall for example the name of the Minister of Agriculture or the relevant departmental permanent heads?

This weakness too has been identified by New Zealand First’s Winston Peters who has cast himself as the true champion of this once clearly defined and identified backbone of the National Party.

Mr Peters has correctly drawn the conclusion that the National government’s constant compromising with the unproductive but noisy ideological factions has driven farmers to distraction, and thus alienationThis is quite simply the most cruel and the most dangerous cut that Mr Peters has ever delivered to the National Party of which he was once a loyalist.

How exactly does the National government explain why it has been so pliant with these ideologues, who have no intention of casting a vote in its direction in any shape or form?

Even at this late stage the National government must embark upon a strident, very noisy, old style tub-thumping campaign to remind its once key constituency of the way in which it has held firm in the face of so much ideological fear-mongering.

Two of these self-induced panics worth signalling might be Food Miles and the animal respiration/global warming syndrome.

5. The Professionals.This is the class from which National members of Parliament tend themselves to be recruited from. We are talking here of accountants, lawyers, company directors, medical doctors. The traditional boss class in other words. The National government badly needs to re-vitalise this base. The reason is that it is precisely this voter category that is now restless. It continues to vote National, certainly. But it will hedge.

This will take the form of tossing its spare vote to one of the other parties which however dotty it nonetheless views as being forthright, and thus decisive.

This category is in the business of making clear-cut decisions and across a wide swathe. It is becoming increasingly disaffected by the National government’s failure to do the same thing.

6. The TradersThis is the vocational category that loves the National Party and from which the National government will draw its largest single occupational vote haul. This sector is made up of those in occupations not particularly admired by the rest of the working population on the grounds that practitioners are amply rewarded for a minimal contribution to society, a contribution that in the view of many even has an entirely negative impact.

This is why the National Party in or out of office prefers to put some distance between it and this voter category, the only one it can truly rely upon in this pending general election.

We are talking here of course about real estate agents, property “investors” and the money dealers of various descriptions.

The reason they support National is that the National Party prefers to leave them alone in their counting rooms.

Even so, in the sea-change that has gripped politics in the Western world since the beginning of the last year, even this group cannot be relied upon to deliver its vote unprompted.

It is exactly for the benefit of this somewhat unloved category that the National government can deliver a daring policy. More importantly still, it can clearly state the reason for putting it forward. There is another benefit. It will not cost anyone a single cent.

The National government can announce that it will not introduce a capital gains tax. Ever.

Reason A. It is unenforceable and will merely create a wave of unproductive work for Category 2 and Category 5.

Reason B. Countries which have a capital gains tax, which means most OECD countries, have had far worse property bubbles than has had New Zealand.

Ireland is one such example. Britain and the United States are two others.

|  From This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.   ||  Friday 11 August 2017   |||

National Party Paralysed by non-productive but media-friendly anti water exports pressure groups

 From MSCNewsWire's European Correspondent August 7 2017 -  Fresh water is New Zealand’s most promising new primary export yet the more extravagant become the prospects for development, the more intense the pressure to vapourise the business from powerfully placed ideological pressure groups.

In recent months attempts to staunch the packaged water business has U-turned away from a generalised argument against the plastic (i.e petroleum-derived) containers to a much broader-gauge argument to the effect that pumping out drinking water is undermining the very geological base on which the nation itself rests.

This notion is quite literally allowed to float un-contradicted.

A reason is that the relevant lobby New Zealand Water association is reluctant to buy into the issue.

Privately, officials will talk about the scaremongering centred on the emptying out of the subterranean aquifers.

They point out simply enough that the supply of water remains constant and that water merely changes its form on its way to finding its own level again .

Steam, rain, snow, ice being just some of them.

However, the New Zealand Water association is mainly comprised of municipal water treatment officials and their suppliers.

So there is an understandable reluctance to buy into the ideological and thus frenzied fresh water exports debate.

This is correctly viewed by New Zealand Water industry group, which is a top-tier lobby, as a lose-lose proposition from its point of view.

There are now strong indications internationally that fresh water exports offer the same economic opportunities to New Zealand now as did the wine sector a generation or so ago.

Sales of bottled water in Europe have now substantially overtaken sales of bottled flavoured sodas, of the type now so actively despised by New Zealand educationalists, among others.

The other trend is the way in which the bottled water sector has imitated the wine sector in that provincial and family-owned bottled water marques have begun to bite deeply into the established brands.

This means that Nestle and Danone, the two dominant bottlers, have had to reconfigure their marketing around the threat of these niche, and personalised premium brands.

All this is much more than abstract state of affairs for New Zealand.

It means that all the French multinationals involved in packaged potable water are intent on diving headlong into Asia.

As these companies seek scale and market share in Asia they are much assisted by France’s merchant marine which is customising its freight capacity to take advantage of this new highly absorbent market.

This will be a big export setback in the region.for New Zealand.

Much greater than is widely understood.

The reason is that the European potable water will be bundled into much wider primary offerings just because firms such as Danone and Nestle are also the world leaders in, for example, dairy products.

Dairy products move in and out of various categories of surplus.

Fresh water in clear contrast enjoys a much more constant level of demand.

| From This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ||  Monday 7 August,  2017   |||

Has Booby-trapped Centrists

 New Zealand First leader Winston Peters MP has booby-trapped the pending general election for the centrist parties.

He now presents himself as the voice of common sense without the clutter of chic, neo fashionable issues that continue to cloud and generally fuzzy-up the offerings of the National government, and to an only slightly lesser degree, the Labour Party opposition as well.

Examples of his precision focus:-

• Farmers. He has undermined this founding and traditional support base of the National Party by appealing directly to them and doing so without the environmental qualifications that increasingly haunt the National government. More seriously still Mr Peters has bathed the nation’s economic base in a halo of Heroism while branding their leaders (i.e National Party) as Donkeys. Invoking this Western Front oratory, though, has tended to mask some of his other undermining devices. So also in his sapper’s kitbag we find fuses attached to:-
• Multiculturalism. The National government can only tread around this minefield for fear of antagonising its often unrecognised but still very strong intelligentsia support in places such as universities. Mr Peters states straight-out that whether we like it not that we all have to pull together for the common good.
• Diversity.(See above)Immigration. Like all adept populists, Mr Peters has the ability to articulate what most people are actually thinking. This is that the nation’s long-standing liberal policies on immigration have a lot to do with the demand for houses substantially exceeding their supply and especially so in Auckland. In other words that the immigrants have the effect of making houses too expensive for the locals to buy.In this current campaign which surely must be his last hurrah? Mr Peters also packs in his electioneering kitbag his old whizz-bangs from his previous campaigns.

Among these we can include his known distrust of the non productive money twirlers (anyone still remember the Wine Box era?)

This is the segment known to be far,far away when the bill for their unproductive though personally ultra-profitable activities eventually falls on the electorate at large.

He also benefits from the National government’s chief piece of knock-out weaponry which is the nation’s extremely low unemployment statistics.

Note that we say “statistics.” The problem is that they have become a damp squib. Because few believe them

Mr Peters knows that there is great distrust about these figures just because they do not give any value to the actual jobs, many of which will be part time or low-paid ones in the services sector, or include for example those doing educational course of one description or another.

To have survived so many campaigns requires of course luck. Here again we find Mr Peters’ star shining brightly still.

The changeover in leadership pf the Labour Party means that it quite literally presents to the progressive part of the electorate an altogether much more fashionable and thus appealing face.

This means that Green voters, the fringe ones, can happily accommodate the prospect of casting their vote in the general direction of the Labour Party.

The Labour Party is much more disposed to form a coalition with Mr Peter’s New Zealand First Party than is the Green Party.

|  From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ||  Saturday 5 August 2017   |||

Passengers travelling out of   major Australian airports should plan their airport arrival to be earlier than usual from today, to allow for increased security screening after police and counter-terrorism agencies foiled a plot at the weekend to “bring down” a plane, reportedly an Australian domestic flight.

Qantas now advises arriving at airports two hours before domestic flights and three hours before international flights.

Counter-terrorism squads, which launched armed raids on four Sydney properties on Saturday evening over an alleged “Islamic-inspired” plot to blow up an aircraft, arrested four men. Authorities first learned of the alleged plot on Wednesday and stepped up security at Sydney Airport on Thursday.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters yesterday (Sunday) that security-screening measures had been beefed up at all Australian airports – and passengers should arrive early.

“Travellers should arrive at terminals at least two hours before flights to allow ample time for screening.

“They should limit the amount of carry-on and checked baggage, as this will help to ensure that security screening is efficient.”

That’s from the Prime Minister.

Passengers faced significant delays at major airports yesterday and used social media (as above, on Twitter) to let people know that queues were building up at airports around the country.

Qantas placed the following notice on its website yesterday:

Additional security screening at Australian Domestic and International Airports

The Australian Government has introduced additional aviation security measures at international and domestic terminals at Australia’s major airports.

Customers can expect to experience an increased level of security scrutiny at the airport so it may take a little longer than usual to get through the process:

• Passengers should arrive at the airport two hours before domestic flights and three hours before international flights to allow ample time for screening.
• Passengers should limit the amount of carry-on and checked baggage they travel with as this will help to ensure security screening is efficient.

There are no changes to what can and cannot be carried on-board the aircraft.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Virgin Australia and its budget subsidiary Tigerair Australia advised passengers similarly, adding that customers “should not be concerned about these precautionary measures”.

“As the measures place an additional burden on the screening system, it may take a little longer than usual to get through the process,” Virgin Australia said.

At Adelaide and Sydney airports, some passengers reported delays yesterday of up to 90 minutes before passing through security, with a major police presence at and around the airports.

Turnbull said the plot appeared to have been carefully planned and was probably not the work of a lone wolf but in the category of “quite elaborate conspiracies”.

He said none of the men arrested worked in the airport industry but police believed the plot aimed at the Australian aviation industry at a major airport.

Five properties in Surry Hills, Punchbowl, Wiley Park and Lakemba were raided on Saturday evening. Surry Hills, a diverse and – in parts – very fashionable inner-city suburb, was a surprise. The other suburbs, in south-western Sydney, have significant Muslim populations, giving rise to early suspicions that Saturday’s simultaneous raids were linked to Islamist extremism. This seems to have been confirmed.

“We believe it’s Islamic-inspired terrorism,” Australian federal police commissioner, Andrew Colvin, said. “Exactly what is behind this is something we need to investigate fully.”

ABC News said it had learned that police found materials and items “that could be used to make a homemade bomb” when they raided the house at Surry Hills.

| AneGlobal Media release written by Peter Needham  ||  July 31,  2017   |||

The broadcaster said it understood that authorities believed the group planned to smuggle the device onto a plane and blow it up.

Australia’s national terrorism threat level remains at “probable’, unchanged since 2014.

Written by Peter Needham