Co-venturing Wellington and Auckland universities will rub collegiate shoulders with world’s major production engineer

General Motors subsidiary Holden’s arrival in Newsroom as founder-backer of the online information enterprise is GM’s second venture into the New Zealand information sector.

It was New Zealand’s major data processing proprietor when it owned Databank through another of its subsidiaries, Electronic Data Systems.

Databank at this time was considered the southern hemisphere’s pre-eminent non-governmental data processing operation in terms of capacity.

GM’s return this year to the New Zealand information sector carries value through the early involvement in it also of the University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington.

GM internationally is accelerating its recruitment of information technology graduates and its ground-floor involvement with the two universities will give it a special advantage in talent-spotting.

The auto manufacturer originally entered the information sector when it acquired Electronic Data Systems from Ross Perot of US presidential race fame.

With Electronic Data Systems now came New Zealand’s Databank at that time the world’s first and most successful nationwide cheque-clearing cooperative.

General Motors began to shed its non-core investments such as Electronic Data Systems and thus Databank as Asian manufacturers continued to pour on the competition.

Its new cat’s paw into the public dissemination sector of the information business in New Zealand through the Newsroom co-seeding also presents a valuable opportunity to the two universities involved, the ones in Auckland and Wellington.

This will be to take advantage of the commercial collegiate opportunity of rubbing shoulders as co-venturers with a research and development investing production engineer of this magnitude.

A constant problem for New Zealand universities has been to get on a working level with this category of production engineering multinational.

The indirect solution via the Newsroom joint involvement indicates a working opportunity that has consistently eluded New Zealand universities in the co-development sphere.

If the association looks a fruitful creative mix in automotive/academic terms then the news venture promoters could well find themselves with sufficient additional investment allowing them to take their foot off the paywall accelerator.

New Zealand browsers continue to exhibit a reluctance to pay for a service that they consider part of the free model.

|  From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  |  Fidy 17 March 2017  ||

University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington have put their academic shoulders to the wheel in backing Newsroom online alternative to print media.

Their other foundation partners include auto company Holden and telecommunications lines outfit Chorus.

The association will allow the US auto manufacturer Holden a fresh opportunity to counter the Japanese auto manufacturers which dominate branding on the free-to-air television channels.

Chorus, which is restricted to wholesale activities only, will benefit from additional use of its telecommunications circuits.

It is unsure at this stage if the two universities will contribute from an investment point of view, supplying content, or both.

The universities have long resented what they see as a failure by the daily newspapers in both Wellington and Auckland to give their universities the coverage that they believe they deserve.

Newspapers have long been disappointed by their circulations in universities. In recent years the dailies have clamped down on publishing learned academic articles. More sensitively still, they have ignored requests from the universities to publish their copious degree allocations lists and other such honoraria.

They have dropped their educational roundspeople as part of general belt tightening, thus exacerbating the resentment

Newroom meanwhile indicates that it will have a full time editorial staff approaching in numbers that of a New Zealand metropolitan daily.

The original Newsroom began as a lunge into vertical markets by the NZX. The high-end web aggregator was then acquired by information technology interests which then in turn aggregated it with Scoop, the pioneering New Zealand online challenge to the dailies.

Results were mixed. Scoop stayed in Wellington. Newsroom gravitated to new parentage in Auckland that groomed it for its current apotheosis as a multi-funded direct challenge to the dailies.

There has been talk of the unflappable family-controlled Dunedin-based newspaper chain centred on the Otago Daily Times being involved. This makes sense because Newsroom will require print pick-up.

The failure of Newsroom Versions: 1&2, and also of Scoop to get print pick up was a signal factor in their struggles.

Newsroom Version 3 must have pick-up disseminated through print to let the public at large know that it exists in the first place.

There is mention of dickering with the Wellington based chain Fairfax in exchanging stories. But whatever the stated reason, the real one will be pick-up.

The new Newsroom is unlikely to get it from NZME’s daily NZ Herald or its radio stations.

NZME which has especially aroused the indignation of its university simply by ignoring it gives all the signs of being the target-in-chief for this curious merger of industry and academia.

|  From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  || Friday 17 March, 2017  ||

Will purchase appease shareholders and their class action?

The acquisition by Toronto’s Resolver Inc of assets of Wynyard Group points up the need for an international partner by New Zealand technology companies.

Resolver has taken over a slew of products from the Wynyard Group which went into liquidation. In doing so the Canadian company also acquires a user base, notably in the public sector.

Resolver’s activities in the crime-fighting, counter insurgency, and security IT application sector mirrored those of Wynyard.

The failure of Wynyard much earlier to acquire a big league international collaboration is all the more strange bearing in mind that Wynyard sprang out of Jade which achieved its global market share through an initial tie up with Unisys, and then with the UK’s Skipton Building Society.

Even so, collaboration poses a special threat for risk systems producers.

The less people in on the codes, the better. The less diluted their allegiance, the less the risk of leaks.

These systems require input from law enforcement authorities. Tolkien buff and New Zealand resident Peter Thiel’s Palantir is an example.

It is not known if the acquisition by Resolver of the Wynyard Group product line is sufficient to appease the formerly NZX main board company’s shareholders with their class action.

Meanwhile, the transaction reinforces a long tradition of Canadian IT involvement in this country which started with the introduction of the first PC portable, as they were then known, the Hyperion, then the Commodore, and much more recently the BlackBerry, long the Parliamentary standard.

Canadian manufacturers that played a big part in the telecommunications ramp-up included Mitel, Norpak, and Brian Tolley’s Bell Block cable extrusion process factory Canzac.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |  Wednesday 15 March 2017  ||

Story So Far---Newspaper Managers Ironical and Touching Failure to Cooperate

The extra month of unexpected additional breathing space allowed before the promulgating of the final verdict of the Commerce Commission in the matter of the proposed merger of the two newspaper chains, NZME and Fairfax, will allow all interested parties more time to study the implications of the word deceive.

Deceive features in the Commerce Commission’s own glossary of words, the ones that fall into heavy use in its own jurisdictional bailiwick.

Indeed, as a helpful compendium this technique might well be used by other such official authorities.

The Commerce Commission defines it thus:-Deceive:-

To cause to believe what is false, to mislead as to a matter of fact, to lead into error; to delude, take in:

We may use this crisp definition to parse it in the case of the two supplicant chains requiring the approval of the Commerce Commission to bring about their desired amalgamation.

Therefore does the desired merger cause New Zealanders:-

To believe what is false? Not at face value – the chains are overwhelmingly in the print business which is shrinking rapidly. A diminishing marketplace requires diminished fixed costs which requires economy of scale such as might be achieved by merging.

To mislead as a matter of fact? The chains have been candid. They want to merge. They are not, for example, seeking to establish a cartel, fix prices. Both of which are difficult anyway in a severely over-supplied market and one with no bar to entry.

To lead into error? The Commerce Commission in its earlier draft verdict seemed to indicate that it had in fact defined an error. Namely that the erring is in the elimination of editorial diversity represented by having one proprietorship instead of two, leading to a contraction in the diversity of opinion.

To delude? Here we must answer this one with another question. Would the “reasonable” person, so beloved of, for example, by libel lawyers, be “deluded” more or less by one single amalgamated chain, instead of two? The increasingly widespread distrust of journalists, not to say, contempt, might indicate that the reasonable person today already sceptically applies two pinches of salt, instead of just the one.

To take in? See “To delude.” See also bundling (below)

We may now refer in this context to the Commission’s own underpinning objective also clearly and prominently displayed on its web site. The Commission’s purpose, it proclaims is:-

Achieving the best possible outcomes in competitive and regulated markets for the long-term benefit of New Zealanders.

It is the three words “long term benefit,” that carry the freight in the merger context.

Without the merger, can the two chains sustain their score or so of subscription daily newspapers?

A curious element of the journalistic makeup, and one which cross-infects their management is an inability to explain their own case whatever it is with any degree of concision at all.

Another and a trait which has been notably on display in this matter is an inability to see something from the point of view of the other person.

Therefore one cannot take for granted that the two chains have explained to the Commission that should they have to close their provincial dailies then they will also have to close scores of rural free sheets that distribute agribusiness information gleaned by their subscription stable mates

Now to the matter of bundling.

This is an information technology term which refers to a provider rolling out a product which can only be connected with and used with parts and other add-ons from that same supplier which are said to be “bundled” with the original product.

The Commission’s veto of the Vodafone – Sky marriage turned on the notion that Vodafone’s subscriptions would become part of a bundled subscription package that contained Sky also.

For Sky, think sports broadcast rights.

If anyone is still in doubt about the significance of sport in relation to what the Commerce Commission might postulate as being “for the long-term benefit of New Zealanders” then they might contemplate its priority treatment by, for example, the free-to-air television broadcasters.

Any moral backsliding by anyone with any profile at all in a moving ball sport moves into the narrow early bulletin time band still allowed for authentic news, as opposed to the pre-orchestrated, or contrived version of which leisure/sport is the mainstay.

Any such similar behaviour by a member of a once revered calling, let us say by a lawyer or a cleric, is interpreted as being of little surprise value and is thus shunted, if it appears at all, into the tail end of the news hour.

The Commission in its veto of the Vodafone – Sky marriage took this singular benefit into account, the one of access to real time sporting rites of passage, and decided that it should not be bundled into mobile telecommunication subscriptions.

Bundling, customer capture, is another word for leverage. Is there any leverage bundled seen or unseen into the NZME- Fairfax nuptials?

One area of such coercion could be levering Fairfax subscribers into NZMEs radio stations.

But the NZME stations are free to listen to anyway.

In the heyday of the Newspaper Proprietors Association, the 42 daily newspapers of that era happily worked together shuffling news and advertising back and forth to mutual advantage.

This happy state of affairs reached its zenith when Reuters, in which the newspaper proprietors held 12 percent of the global value went public and generated a windfall which saw the retirement of the last of the benign old newspaper families.

Since this triumphal hour the ensuing professional managers displayed a touchingly innocent absence of cooperation.

This culminated in their failure to join forces in the purchase of TradeMe and thus allowing it to be sold at an international value instead of a local one.

If there are two less conniving, two less cunning mercantile institutions in Oceania, then they should be revealed. Ideally, prior to the Commerce Commission’s final verdict on the NZME-Fairfax merger.

|  From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  |  Monday 13 March 2017  ||

Quai D’Orsay and Lambton Quay share a nightmare

The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade must now begin the difficult and counter-ideological process of accepting that Marine Le Pen’s National Front Party might win the pending Presidential Election in France.

The reason is that Miss Le Pen has pledged to extricate France from both the EU and also the eurocurrency.

Miss Le Pen (pictured) and her party according to the polls is now the front runner to take over the Presidency and thus the government of France.

The former Prime Minister Francois Fillon has dropped in the polls following revelations that the leader of the Republican (i.e. Conservative) Party had while serving President Sarkozy put most of his family on the parliamentary payroll for performing duties that still remain unclear.

The second-line Republican Party candidate Alain Juppe has ruled himself out from succeeding the beleaguered Mr Fillon, partly because Mr Juppe, also a former premier, had also been mixed up in what the French describe as “fictitious employees.”

This leaves Miss Le Pen, followed by Emmanuel Macron the youthful former economics minister under President Francois Hollande.

Mr Macron in exiting the government of President Hollande did not wait to become adopted by an existing party. He simply formed his own France En Marche—France on the Move.

The Socialist Party led by Mr Hollande is simply not in the running, and does not feature in any of the polls as a realistic winner.

All this is bad news of course on Quay D’ Orsay and equally on Lambton Quay. On the quays the fervent hope was that while Miss Le Pen’s National Front might win the first round in the election, the once solid-seeming Mr Fillon would wash her away in the second round.

If the current polls hold water also washed away will be two years worth of negotiations in formal support of the EU-New Zealand trade liberalisation agreement.

Also swept aside will be the European Commission’s mandate to put the trade deal into action.

The reason is that France’s departure from the EU, and it is likely to be abrupt if Miss Le Pen takes charge, will invalidate the central axis of the union which is the German-French one.

France is the link between the Nordic/ Teutonic zone and the Mediterranean member countries.

It is uncertain if New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has charted a contingency plan in the now likely chance that Miss Le Pen and her party will emerge victorious from the imminent general election in France.

But given last year’s upsets in the US and the UK a suitable such contingency scheme would be to have ready a shrink-wrapped substitute deal with the EU’s northern nations.

The victory of President Donald Trump in the United States indicated that the New Zealand apparatus did not lay any groundwork, notably alternatives, for an event that it most ardently hoped would not in fact happen.

To an only slightly less extent the Brexit development is a similar indicator in an antipodean belief in the status quo.

|  From the MSCMewsWire reporters' desk  |  Thursday 9 March 2017  ||

Other countries that are not even “clean-green” have dealt with the tyre problem

 Governmental public hand-wringing over the rural mountains of old tyres must be tempered with the understanding that central and local government was quite literally upto its neck in creating the detritus, noted the nation’s foremost developer of tyre remediation machinery.

Ken Evans (pictured) of Tekam Closed Loop is responsible for the New Zealand’s first all-size tyre granulator which converts discarded tyres into a variety of paving products.

Neither central nor local government encouraged the use of these granulated paving products and in some cases even discriminated against their use.

Government in all its forms had long failed to understand that the allocation of national and district contracts also militated against the use of granulated composition in roading and also in amenities surfacing.

Tekam Closed Loop’s tyre granulator is dual function in that it granulates the tyres in toto complete with their radial steel bands, or extracts the bands prior to granulation.

One of the reasons that surplus New Zealand tyres were being shipped to China was that the Chinese routinely used granulated tyre paving as a standard roading application.

Rubber roads are now standard in China, Brazil, Spain and Germany. The technique has been found to cut traffic noise by about 25 per cent, he noted.

Other applications in these countries convert tyres into ground rubber or rubber shreds, used to create ground cover for playgrounds, backfill for civil engineering projects, garden mulch, erosion control barriers or drainage foundations around buildings.

Low shock industrial surfaces such as those required for stock handling was another such example.

In his experience, Mr Evans noted, district and regional councils simply talked about installing granulation systems.

Though stockpiling old tyres in land dumps was now banned in the EU simply because they are not bio degradable, the practice continued unabated in this country, and showed every signs of continuing to do so once the current round of crocodile tears had dried up.

The technology existed in converting old tyres into asphalt, yet it was ignored in favour of instead formulating directives and policies instead of dealing with a problem that countries which do not even market themselves as being clean-green had long eliminated.

Another problem in New Zealand he said was that district authorities tended to consult on the problem with their roading contractors who had a vested interest in ensuring the continuation of the status quo, and thus doing nothing about the tyre problem.

Tekam Closed Loop developed the granulation system in conjunction with Napier Engineering and Contracting.

| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  |  Monday 6 March 2017  ||

Five Questions for Dr Don Brash..............................

Nobody today in so many different roles and for quite so long has stood at the centre of public life so enduringly as Don Brash. Economist, businessman, banker, politician, the former Governor of the Reserve Bank and leader of the National Party has defied typecasting. At one and the same time severe yet extravagant, austere yet colourful, scholarly yet populist, he has contrived always to reconfigure himself around the times. Now he has stridently intervened in institutionally-fuelled separatism. Shrouded in a protective veneer of high-minded fashionable purpose that makes ordinary people fearful to question it, Dr Brash vehemently, unequivocally declares the voguish syndrome as ultimately destined to tear the nation apart......

You are often considered to be at heart primarily concerned with matters economic and their corresponding data. Yet here you are now immersing yourself in what many might consider a socio-ethical issue?

Yes, most of my career has been about monetary policy, banking, and economic issues more generally. But my interest in economics has always been because of my interest in the well-being of society more generally. I have long felt, for example, that it will be difficult or impossible to maintain a broadly egalitarian society in New Zealand – the kind of society in which I was brought up – if average living standards fall too far below those in Australia because of the ease with which skilled New Zealanders can cross the Tasman for very much higher incomes in Sydney or Melbourne.

If we want the kind of healthcare which those in advanced developed countries take for granted, we have to have the living standards to support that healthcare. A few years ago, there was a big debate about whether Pharmac should subsidize the provision of Herceptin for the treatment of certain kinds of breast cancer, and it was noted that Australia did so. The fact of the matter was that at that time virtually all the countries which subsidized access to Herceptin had higher living standards than New Zealand did; those which did not provide a subsidy, had lower living standards – we were right on the cusp. For me, interest in economics has always been about the implications of economic policy for the well-being of society.

Hence, I was strongly opposed to inflation in part at least because of the totally capricious effects which inflation has on wealth distribution – those who save in fixed interest instruments being thoroughly gutted by inflation, while those who borrow heavily to invest in, say, property, make huge and totally untaxed gains with little or no effort. That has always seemed to me to be grossly unjust.

Will the Hobson’s Pledge Movement become a force in the pending general election?I certainly hope so. I find it very depressing that the National Party has moved such a long way from its roots in this policy area. In 2002, Bill English gave a lengthy and very thoughtful speech, demonstrating clearly that Maori chiefs had ceded sovereignty in signing the Treaty and arguing that the only way for a peaceful future for New Zealand was a “single standard of citizenship for all”.

In May 2003, he pledged that a future National Government would scrap separate Maori electorates, as the Royal Commission on the Electoral System had recommended in the late eighties if MMP were adopted. I made similar commitments when I was Leader of the National Party, as did John Key in the election campaign of 2008. And yet we’ve seen the National-led Government retreat a very long way from that position.

I applaud the fact that the current Government has accelerated the resolution of historical grievances, but utterly deplore the fact that too often resolution has involved not just financial redress but also “co-governance”.

We see the proposed amendment to the RMA requiring all local councils to invite their local tribes into so-called “iwi participation agreements”, involving co-governance on a grand scale. We saw the legislation establishing the Auckland super-city requiring an Independent Maori Statutory Board, with the Auckland Council giving members of that unelected Board voting rights on most Auckland Council committees.

We see the Government negotiating behind closed doors with the so-called Iwi Leaders Group to give tribes some form of special influence over the allocation of water, despite pretending to believe that “nobody owns water”. We see a proposal to make half the members of the Hauraki Gulf Forum tribal appointees.

The myth that the Treaty of Waitangi created some kind of “partnership” between Maori on the one hand (or more accurately, those who can claim at least one Maori ancestor, always now along with ancestors of other ethnicities) and the rest of us on the other is increasingly accepted as Holy Writ, subscribing to which is becoming essential for many positions in the public sector.

So I’m very much hoping that Hobson’s Pledge can help to substantially reverse this highly undemocratic drift after the next election.

You say that the National government is “pandering” to “separatist demands.” Which of these demands do you consider the most dangerous?

Where do I start? I’ve just listed some of the specific policies which are totally inconsistent with any reasonable definition of democracy. Most of those specific policies stem from the underlying myth that the Treaty established some kind of “partnership” between those with a Maori ancestor and those of us without, as I’ve just mentioned. But as David Lange said in the Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture in 2000, “the Court of Appeal once, absurdly, described [the Treaty] as a partnership between races, but it obviously is not. The Treaty itself contains no principles which can usefully guide government or courts.... To go further than that is to acknowledge the existence of undemocratic forms of rights, entitlements, or sovereignty.”

All the specific examples I gave in answer to the previous question stem from the underlying nonsense that there are two (and only two!) distinct groups of New Zealanders, those with preferential constitutional rights and those without them. This is leading New Zealand to disaster with a whole generation of part-Maori believing that they really do have superior constitutional rights to the rest of us.

To what degree would you ascribe this separatist development agitation as being primarily a project of the political class from whatever background?

Certainly, I think what you call the “political class” is the main driver of this separatist agitation, together with arguably most of the educational establishment, where adherence to so-called “Treaty principles” seems to be an absolute prerequisite for appointment to any teaching or leadership position.

The same is true in the public healthcare sector. But there is plenty of evidence that large numbers of the “general public” do not support the separatist agenda but are literally cowed into silence on the issue.

I regularly get people sidle up to me in the street and, after looking furtively up and down the street lest they are recognized by friends or acquaintances, tell me that they strongly agree with me. One university professor did this recently, but swore me not to mention his name or university department. And some of these people are Maori.

Of course, Hobson’s Pledge has two official spokespeople, one of whom is me and the other is Casey Costello, a woman of Ngapuhi and Anglo-Irish ancestry. But two of our very strongest supporters (though not members of our council) are Maori – one a prominent member of the Ngapuhi tribe and the other Ngati Porou.

The latter was a member of our council when we first established Hobson’s Pledge but, because he is closely associated with a political party, withdrew lest his membership of Hobson’s Pledge raise a question about whether we are a front for the political party he is closely associated with.

He resents the separatist agenda because he believes strongly that it is patronizing, implying that Maori aren’t quite good enough to make it successfully without these constitutional preferences.

Bearing in mind your underpinning career in banking, economics and looking now at the broader picture: where is the country now in your view in terms of nuts and bolts things such as balance of payments and foreign debt?

Compared with some other countries, we are in a good spot, with the economy growing, unemployment fairly low and government debt modest relative to GDP. Our banking sector is in reasonable shape. Even the extent of the country’s (public and private sector) total net external indebtedness is somewhat better than it was a decade ago, though still high by developed country standards.

But there are significant problems just below the surface of that apparently rosy picture. Yes, the economy is growing, but that is largely because the number of people in the workforce is growing strongly because of a high level of net immigration: productivity, and thus per capita income, is growing very slowly indeed, and the Government’s initial objective of closing the income gap with Australia by 2025 is not only not going to be achieved, the gap hasn’t reduced materially over the last eight years.

The ratio of government debt to GDP is modest by the standards of many other developed countries, but the Key Government did absolutely nothing to prepare the population for the need to adjust, for example, the age of eligibility for New Zealand Superannuation if government debt is not to explode, relative to GDP, over the next few decades. (Mr English, to his credit, has refused to renew Mr Key’s pledge on this issue.)

And while the country’s net external indebtedness, relative to GDP, has improved somewhat in recent years, that external indebtedness remains at a high level, the consequence of New Zealand’s running a current account balance of payments deficit every year since 1974. Much of that deficit has been funded by banks borrowing on the international markets to fund the explosion of private sector housing debt, the result in turn of another serious policy failing, the failure to deal with the enormous increase in the price of housing (or more accurately, of residential land).

|  From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  | Friday 3 March 2017  |

Will alert environmentalists, Greens, to renewable value , emissions reduction, organics

Napier advanced agri process technology specialist TEKAM is bringing to New Zealand Peter Franke  a world leader in turning agricultural waste into electricity and in the process ridding farms of the effluent which increasingly threatens drinking water.

Mr Franke is the founder of Germany’s Bio Ost which is a leading developer of closed loop systems which collect effluent, notably the dairy version, and convert it into energy for refrigeration and other milking systems, and also for distribution into the national grid.

These closed loop effluent-to-power systems are commonplace in Germany where installers are offered generous subsidies to install them.

The other Baltic nation leading in closed loop effluent-to-power is Denmark.

The Danish government has set a short term target of up to 50% of livestock manure to be made into this green energy supply.

Power derived from biogas and fed into the national grid is exempt from taxation in Denmark.

Mr Franke will advise on the installation and commissioning of on-farm plants and will outline returns to users in terms of energy recovery and in obtaining fertiliser by-products.

He is expected also to talk to local government officials about the value of the plants in reducing runoff contamination threats and also how the plants reduce methane emissions.

Similarly he will outline the benefit in which weed seeds and pathogens are killed during the biomass digestion process, thus lessening the farm need for synthetic herbicides and pesticides.

Ken Evans of TEKAM said that in his New Zealand visit Mr Franke will focus exclusively on discussing the technology and the cost-benefits of the on-farm bio gas installations.

Mr Evans’ TEKAM organisation is working in conjunction with Napier Engineering & Contracting on introducing the effluent-to-energy technology to New Zealand.

He noted that he did not anticipate any discussion of introducing state incentives, subsidies for these plants such as exist in Europe.

Mr Franke instead he said would focus on the practical evidence of his company’s world wide effluent-to-energy installations.

The problem in New Zealand of effluent finding its way into ground water would though be a priority topic, he said.

According to Mr Evans, New Zealand had been an early developer of dairy waste into energy conversion systems. But these early plants along with their associated research and development had been abandoned when the millennialist energy crisis scare failed to materialise.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  |  Monday 27 February 2017  ||

Five questions for Washington insider Scot Faulkner

The newly installed Trump Administration continues to catch New Zealand officialdom by surprise. So MSC Newswire asked Washington insider Scot Faulkner (above) what Wellington’s response should in fact be? Mr Faulkner was elected the first Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. His reforms became a model for the operation of national parliaments around the world.

The New Zealand Foreign Ministry has set up a special focus group solely for the purpose of identifying early warning of new policies promulgated by President Trump, the ones which will have an impact on this country. Can you short circuit this by helpfully forecasting any of these pending surprise policies?

The New Zealand Foreign Ministry’s Trump Task Force will only be of value if it discards long held assumptions and embrace a totally new way of thinking and acting. Trying to predict Trump through traditional means, such as monitoring after-the-fact media, is like using ouija boards, tarot cards, and horoscopes.

The Ministry’s primary objective should be to move at “Trump speed” and navigate in Trump’s world. Non traditional sources, non traditional methods will be keys to success. Thinking like a visionary risk-taking entrepreneur instead of a politician is the first step into this new reality.

Trump is unique. No one like him has ever been the President of the United States. While a few Presidents had business experience, their main credentials were either the military or government. America usually faced political or military crises. The 2007-2008 economic collapse convinced most Americans that something radical was necessary. So they rallied around a businessman who was known to most as a reality television star. As Trump stated, “everyone else has failed you – what do you have to lose? Try me.”

Trump’s unique background means unique thought patterns and processes. President Trump gets his ideas, news, and validation from places never before involved in governing. He is fearless, non linear. He embraces chaos, acts on intuition, moves quickly, and uses surprise as a strategic weapon. Sometimes only he knows the ultimate objective. He is a student of military history, especially Sun Tzu. That is what gave him the winning edge in business, the Republican primaries, and the 2016 general election.

Trump’s new Administration is already being tested by China, Russia, and a variety of other nations. President Trump’s responses will indicate many things: how fast he responds, how he responds, how he views the challenge and the challenger, how he frames the challenge within his existing world view, how willing is he to vary from stated positions to address a unique situation, how willing is he to escalate, whose advice does he value, who he collaborates with, and who, how, and what does he communicate regarding the challenge to Congress, the American public, and other nations.

New Zealand needs to understand that the next four to eight years has a very different global player. Trump’s approach will be very personal, intimate, intuitive, immediate, chaotic, and against all conventional wisdom, very successful.

All the indications are that the New Zealand diplomatic apparatus in New York and Washington was wrong footed by the Trump ascendancy. This led to falling in line with the Obama era last moment positioning of New Zealand as co-endorser of the UN anti-Israel resolution. Does New Zealand need to backtrack here?

New Zealand should always be wary of being pulled into American politics. Obama’s last minute swipe at Israel during his waning days as President should have been avoided at all costs. Obama’s behind the scenes orchestration of the resolution, which was being delayed until the new Administration, was ill-advised and dilatory. It undermined decades of America being a positive force in the region.

President Trump is a great friend of Israel. He and his team believe that, historically, enemies of America have funded the radical elements of the Palestinian cause.

Trump is committed, heart & soul, to destroying radical Islam and reining-in Iran. His priority is working with those nations that share his view. He sees Israel, and the moderate Arab governments, like Egypt and Jordan, as allies in eradicating ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their regional and tribal affiliates throughout the Arab world, Asia, and Africa.Trump and his foreign policy team fundamentally differ from the Neo-conservatives who surrounded President George W. Bush. They adhere more to the Reagan-Thatcher/John-Paul II approach of destroying tyranny, but not trying to second guess centuries of local custom through nation building. America’s role is to inspire, not intervene, in a nation’s journey toward a freer society.Israeli settlements are far more complex than the media portrays. Palestinian contractors and workers build Israeli settlements. West Bank unemployment soars whenever Israel slows or suspends new settlements. The chasm between peaceful, free, and democratic Israel and violent, oppressive, Islamic failed states in the region is stark. Land for Peace has been a chimera for Israel. De-radicalizing Palestinian leaders and their movement would go further in creating lasting peace than continuing to place the onus on Israel.

The Anti-Israel Resolution validated Trump’s view that the United Nations is currently there to promote radical anti-Western policies while wasting vast sums of money. It further proves his wisdom of pursuing America’s interests through bilateral, not multilateral, arrangements.

New Zealand has supported in spirit the US-EU trade embargo against Russia called up by President Obama. Is there a defined timetable to conclude this embargo?

There is no defined timetable for ending or modifying the trade embargo against Russia.

President Trump and his inner circle have a non-ideological practical “America first” world view. It harkens back to the 17th/18th Centuries. During that era, Western nations united to stop the expansion of the Ottoman Empire then competed, sometimes violently, to dominate world trade.

President Trump wants to build relationships with Russia and China for ridding the world of rogue players – radical Islam, Iran, and North Korea. This is why he picked Rex Tillerson, who has strong relationships with Russia as his Secretary of State, and Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who is friends with President Xi Jinping, as Ambassador to China. This is also why Trump picked a skilled fighter, James Mattis, as his Secretary of Defense.

Trump’s trade and business team is equally ready to help America win in world commerce. Wilbur Ross, Steve Mnuckin, and Robert Lighthizer will aggressively negotiate favorable trade agreements and rebuild U.S. competitiveness.

Russia remains problematic as its adventurism in Ukraine and intimidation of the Baltic States complicates Trump’s desire to be “frenemies”. Tillerson will be challenged to craft the right mix of incentives and punishments to refocus Russo-American relations. The current US-EU trade embargo will be assessed within this context.

The Transpacific Partnership Agreement signed in Auckland last year was No 1 on President Trump’s hit list. Looking at the longer term where do you see the advantages/disadvantages in this?

President Trump is all about building one-on-one personal relationships with world leaders. Bi-lateral relationships were his strong suit in business and will serve him well as President. They allow him more flexibility and agility. He has little interest in multi-lateral agreements or entities.

This is why TPP was in his cross hairs as a candidate and now as President. New Zealand and other TPP nations need to offer their best “value proposition” for trade relationships that will benefit the U.S. as much as themselves. These are the kinds of agreements that will get Trump’s attention and become his priority.

Trump prides himself on the foreign investments in America he has facilitated or promoted. He wants American companies to “come home” to America, and foreign companies to settle in America. Trump’s goal is to bring the best of the world to America to rebuild infrastructure and generate lasting employment opportunities. There is a new world of opportunity for New Zealand investment and partnering in America.

Given the available evidence it is hard not to conclude that officials here have only a threadbare understanding of what is going on in the relevant circles of United States policymaking. Where should they be looking? Who should they be talking to now?

Trump’s tweets remain the best original source. Trump won the nomination and the general election by going directly to the public. Over 50 million Americans follow Trump on Twitter and Facebook. The Washington-New York media have become completely irrelevant to the Trump Administration and to Trump’s America.

President Trump has revolutionized the way policy is created, promoted, and implemented. The establishments within the Federal Government, Congress, media, academia, and policy forums, still do not have a clue about what is happening before their eyes.

America’s post-Cold War drift through four failed Presidents has come to an end.

Reagan won the Cold War by using skills he developed in movies and television to command the world stage. Those skills destroyed the Soviet Empire, relaunched the U.S. economy, and redefined the role of government. Trump is using his business and reality television skills to command the world stage for himself and the United States. Like Reagan, Trump is seeking to defeat tyranny, in this case radical Islam, relaunch the U.S. economy, and not just redefine, but completely reinvent government. The establishment dismissed Reagan until he succeeded. The establishment is dismissing Trump, and will be just as embarrassed should he succeed.

Conservative talk radio speaks for Trump and puts his actions and tweets into context. They aggressively expose the liberal media and the Democrats when they promote fake news and conspiracies about Trump. Trump watches Fox news, listens & calls into conservative talk radio, and avidly follows their social media posts. Each validates the other. The most articulate and insightful conservative commentators are Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levine, and Chris Plante. Washington-based WMAL radio hosts all three.

Broom to Boardroom Career Path Praised & Recommended for Public Sector Take up .

The MSC Newswire service sector panel again this year highly commended the New Zealand service sector for the way in which it consistently presented a cheerful and helpful approach to customers. The retail sector was singled out for special praise.

Panelists singled out the way in which the grocery and hardware multiples especially infused their staff work with a sense of promotion scope and therefore opportunity.

The multiples were also praised for their staff selection procedures which at the outset and regardless of age or formal qualifications obviously identified two key personal elements---aptitude and attitude.

In the technical category of proficiencies observed the panel included inventory/re-stocking, along with IT and credit and cash-handling skills, and also product knowledge.

Also singled out was what the panel described as a “broom to boardroom” career path, meaning that staff were presented at the start with the opportunity of a through career path starting with everyday chores and culminating at top management.

The multiples were praised for blending their own mix of on-the-job training with targeted tertiary academic study.

The panel considered that the multiples had struck the optimum balance between applied and theoretical induction and training.

In this survey the panel evaluated both New Zealand and foreign-owned multiples.

Also singled out for mention was the way in which the multiples had integrated staff of all ages.

The panel identified employment selection based on age as elsewhere a continuing New Zealand personnel problem.

The panel made special note of the way in which the multiples offered opportunities to mothers returning to the work force.

The survey was empirical and based on impressions gained nationwide.

The panel suggested an official and formal study of the way in which the multiples had successfully solved the problem of blending basic operating technical skills with people skills. Elements could and should be implemented in the public sector, the panel advised.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  ||  Monday 13 February, 2017  ||