A string of Bad News Down-Under - 08/01/2015

As I turned the radio on this morning the news was full of bad news - none of it a suprise.

Firstly, the el-Nino was acknowledged (sort of) while climate change was not. 

Concerns over strong El Nino

NIWA fears this year's El Nino may be as bad as 18 years ago, when widespread drought cost the country a billion dollars in lost exports

Radio NZ,

1 August, 2015

The research agency said guidelines indicated a 97 percent chance of the El Niño weather pattern continuing for the next three months, and a 90 percent chance it would continue over summer.

An El Nino typically sees the west wet, and the east very dry.

NIWA fears this years El Nino may be as bad as the one in 1997/98 when there was widespread droughts costing the country about a billion dollars in lost export.

International guidelines indicate a 97 per cent chance of El Niño continuing over the next three months and a 90 per cent chance it will continue over summer.

El Nino typically sees the west of New Zealand wet, and the east very dry.

Niwa's forecaster, Chris Brandolino said it was looking like it could be as significant as the El Nino in the nineties.

"There are some indications it could be a very strong El Nino, it could rival the 97/98 one. It is probably premature to say that for sure, but some of the ingredients for that are in place.

"That is mainly the unusually warm water temperatures east of the date line. That is the fuel which sets off a chain reaction starting with more rainfall. That has a domino effect, which could have consequences for New Zealand.

"A strong El Nino doesn't always mean strong impacts.

"In other parts of the world there is a connection between strong El Nino and strong impacts, in New Zealand we can have strong impacts during a strong or weak El Nino."

There goes our coal industry, the first part of our 'rockstar economy' to go belly-up-  which has been left to collapse under its own steam by the present government.

Solid Energy raises possibility of liquidation

Debt-ridden state-owned enterprise Solid Energy has raised the prospect it could be liquidated.

Radio NZ,

1 August, 2015

In a statement, the company said it had told staff three options were on the table.

"In our staff updates, we have explained that there are three potential paths for the company under consideration - some arrangement that would allow us to trade on, some kind of controlled sell-down, or liquidation," it said.

The statement stressed no final decision had been made, and there was no timeline for doing so.

However, Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) West Coast organiser Garth Elliott said he expected a decision within weeks.

"The rumours did come out earlier this week that the company was going into liquidation, so I called the head of HR and she assured me that the company had not made a decision," he said.

"But I understand within weeks a decision will be made."

Workers attend a meeting about job losses at Stockton Mine in May 2015.

Photo: RNZ / Georgina Stylianou

In April, Finance Minister Bill English ruled out the Government putting more money into the company, which is struggling to service about $320 million of debt.

Mr English would not comment last night.

The Labour Party's spokesperson for state-owned enterprises, Clayton Cosgrove, said the Government had run a company that used to turn a profit into the ground.

He said someone needed to be held to account.

"This potentially has a knock-on effect to other entities like KiwiRail, businesses, suppliers to Solid Energy and it appears the only people paying the price for the incompetence, lack of governmental oversight and mismanagement are the local communities and workers."

The falling coal price has led to Mr English attending regular briefings on Solid Energy's financial state for more than a year and a half.

Its viability was questioned in April after revelations former chair Pip Dunphy quit because she did not believe any more could be done for the company.

Solid Energy has already cut almost 300 jobs at Stockton Mine on the West Coast.

Huge trucks carry high-grade coal at Solid Energy's Stockton Mine in 2009.

And the news that we don't want. The potential to drill for oil 

off our coasts - and for a major oil spill for which there is (and 

can be) no plan

Major oil potential in Canterbury Basin

New Zealand Oil and Gas has flagged a potentially significant oil find off the coast of Canterbury.

Radio NZ,

30 July, 2015

The company said the Barque prospect in the Canterbury Basin contained three prospective formations, which it said had the potential to be the largest hydrocarbon discovery in New Zealand to date.

The energy exploration company said it was still early days, but the Barque prospect appeared promising.

It said the largest of the three formations it had assessed may contain the equivalent of 530 million barrels of oil.

It hopes to drill the site, which is 60 kilometres from shore and between 2500 and 3000 metres below sea level, in 2017.

The company said it was in discussions with potential partners who had significant experience in operating in such environments.

The company also revealed it had assumed control of Australian-based explorer Cue Energy after acquiring a 48 percent holding. It now has three representatives on Cue's five-member board of directors.

The company's quarterly report also showed net operating cash flows of $1.4 million in the June quarter, and $8.6 million for the year.

And in the silent rush to a police state (and fascism) police are now going to carry tasters at all time - the thin edge of the wedge

Tasers policy 'rushed in', says campaigner

A civil liberties campaigner says the move to have front-line officers carry tasers at all times while on duty has been rushed in without public debate.

Radio NZ,

1 August, 2015

Until now, they have only had access to them from lockboxes kept in vehicles.

Barry Wilson, from the Auckland Council for Civil Liberties, said it was a major change in public policy and should have been introduced as a law change only after a proper debate in parliament.

He said there had already been cases where officers had broken protocols and used excessive force with their tasers.

Mr Wilson feared it was a step closer to arming the police with guns.

The roll-out of the new policy began yesterday, though it could be weeks or even months before all front-line officers are carrying tasers.

And the further slide in this country with the corruption and use by the executive for political ends. Our leading investigative journalist gets raided by police while right-wing scumbag blogger, Cameron Slater gets away with theft under plain view and is left untouched by the Law

Response to Dirty Politics claims 'inadequate'

The Labour Party says police's refusal to take further action about allegations made in Nicky Hager's book Dirty Politics is deeply unsatisfactory.

Radio NZ,

1 August, 2015

Senior Labour MP David Parker wrote to police in September last year to ask them to look into allegations made in the book, which include the hacking of the party's computer system.

Police responded yesterday with a letter saying the computer breach raised privacy and ethical issues, but there was no evidence of criminal offending.

Labour general secretary Tim Barnett said that response took far too long and was a dismissive way to treat serious allegations.

He said the police closing the case was not the end of the matter for the party, which would be taking further action.

And then there's the TPP and a government that is determined to sell off our democratic rights and our nation's sovereignty for - it seems, NOTHING

Groser should pack up and leave TPP without good dairy deal - but he probably won't

The TPP has the potential to transform the economies of the 12 Asia-Pacific nations - but the devil, as always, is in the fine print.

NZ Herald,

31 July, 2015

It shouldn't take much for Tim Groser to exercise his theatrical talents and tip the chess board over and walk away from the Trans Pacific Partnership talks if New Zealand does not get a decent deal on dairy access.

The ministerial negotiations in Maui are timetabled to finish early this afternoon with a news conference to be screened on YouTube.

But realpolitik dictates that the trade minister and his boss Prime Minister John Key are more likely to opt for a sub-optimal deal rather than walk away empty-handed from the lengthy negotiations. That's because both politicians have invested substantial personal political capital in chalking up a TPP outcome.

New Zealand has a natural interest in getting to the finishing line on a race it started.

The problem is it's quite unclear whether the gains from greater access for New Zealand dairy interests in Asia Pacific markets which are currently heavily protected - such as Canada, Japan and to a lesser extent the US - will offset the impact on some of the country's other economic interests that will inevitably be affected during the TPP trade-offs.

The US did not help the dairy negotiations by withdrawing an offer it previously made to Australia for increased dairy access. The conjecture was that US Government officials could not sell the move if Canada and Japan did not also reduce their dairy barriers.

New Zealand has been playing at brinkmanship in what has been billed as the TPP endgame. But so have the other 11 nations - something which is frequently overlooked. The negotiations are not binary.

When the intention to form the Trans Pacific Partnership was first announced in New York in 2008, former Labour trade minister Phil Goff said New Zealand would pursue a comprehensive and high-quality agreement; this negotiating position was underlined when Groser succeeded him at the 2008 election.

Unsurprisingly, the partnership agreement has since morphed to provide some new rules for the economic integration which is already under way in the Asia Pacific region. But what the United States has billed as a 21st century free trade agreement has become a platform for the other nations to dance to the US playbook when it comes to complex commercial areas like intellectual property. New Zealand has largely gone along with this.

But there is little evidence in the various economic studies that have been published on TPP as to where the upside will be for New Zealand's ICT entrepreneurs and others who are leveraging the digital age.

Cabinet ministers have also not made a strong case for the TPP. It is only now as the endgame is in play that Key has fronted up and said the Government would fund any changes which bump up the prices New Zealand will have to pay for some medicines as a result of the TPP. In the past, Key has obfuscated. Fronting up makes sense when the talks are themselves bedevilled by leaks from parties seeking to overturn particular negotiating lines or advance their own interests.

Groser has had little of substance to say since the talks began.

It was left to New Zealand's agricultural trade envoy Mike Petersen to fly a red flag by telling Inside U.S. Trade that the Key Government had signalled it was willing to delay the conclusion of the deal beyond this week's ministerial negotiations. Particularly if pushing the talks out into August would pave the way to securing an acceptable outcome on dairy market access.

The US Trade Representative's office has booked a slot on YouTube for a live news conference from Maui early this afternoon - complete with a live countdown - on the outcome of the TPP negotiations. This is a useful piece of pressure tactics from the US side.

But at the time this column was written there had yet to be a breakthrough on dairy which New Zealand politicians and officials have determined is the major benefit for the country from the negotiations.

The TPP has the potential to transform the economies of the 12 Asia-Pacific nations. It can also help to progress the World Trade Organisation's multilateral negotiations which have essentially been stuck in a groove. But the devil, as always, is in the fine print.

Meanwhile the key factor in the 'rockstar economy' is going to hell in a handbasket. Milk commodithy prices are falling throught the floor and farmers who have borrowed on the promise of everlasting propsperity are faced with going to the wall

Kiwi Dollar Falls As Dairy Prices Plunge At Latest Auction

16 July, 2015

The latest Global Dairy Trade auction was another shocker, the GDT price index dropping by 10.7% from the last sale a fortnight ago and with wholemilk powder prices registering their biggest fall in 12 months Whole milk powder – which is responsible for about 75% of Fonterra’s farmgate milk price – fell in price by 13.1% to US$1,848 a tonne to its lowest level in six years. Fonterra’s current milk price forecast of $5.25 per kg of milksolids for 2015/16 is based on GDT prices reaching about US$3500 a tonne towards the end of this season. Dairy NZ estimates $5.70 a kg to be the breakeven point for most farmers. AgriHQ dairy analyst Susan Kilsby said the auction result was “disastrous”.

“Farmers now face two consecutive seasons of extremely low milk prices,” she said in a commentary. “The majority of farmers can’t breakeven at such a low milk price.” Economists estimate a $1/kg drop in the milk price equates to about $2 billion less income for dairy farmers. “Farm debt levels will rise. Rural communities will suffer as farmers reduce spending to the bare essentials,” Kilsby said. AgriHQ’s theoretical 2015-16 farmgate milk price has decreased to $4.22 per kg milksolids – down 83c on a fortnight ago and $1.27 lower than a month ago. The dairy auction result was responsible for taking around 40 pips off the Kiwi dollar, and the NZ/Australian dollar cross rate dropped to below A89.50c.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/economy/news/article.cfm?c_id=34&objectid=11481405