Speaker by Various Artists

On Q&A's minor party leaders debate on Sunday, the minor parties responded to Labour's proposal to raise the retirement age.

ACT is all for it, and the Greens, far from closing the door on the idea, have welcomed the discussion -- as a party favoured by youth, a rise in the pension age that keeps super sustainable for future generations is in their constituency's best interests.

Maori and Mana dislike it because of Maori's poor mortality rates. They believe a raise in the age would be unfair to Maori, and they have a valid point.

United Future is proposing a graduated pension: retire at 60 to get a lesser pension, retire at 70 to get more. It's a fiscally neutral policy that has some social merits but does nothing for the economy. Winston Peters did not appear on Q&A, but he did appear on The Nation, and when pressed he would not explicitly rule out working with Labour even if it meant raising the age. I suspect even Winston, champion of the grey, knows it needs to happen in his heart of hearts.

The retirement age is not a left or right issue. It's an intergenerational issue. Because of a general increase in longevity and a shrinking tax-base to keep paying super at the current levels, the age has to go up. It's simple demographics. But who is going to pay and when? Fairness would place the greatest burden with those who give rise to the greatest costs. That is not the generation retiring in 10-30 years and beyond, it is those retiring in the next 20 years. The moment for putting the burden where it belongs may have passed and it may be Generation X's sad fate to assume the role of martyr, but they would probably be happier if that was signposted now, rather than suddenly and messily forced upon them in a decade or two. 

Should National form a government, which looks likely, they may not have the numbers to keep the retirement age at its current level. Labour may not be in a position to form a government after the election, but they could submit a private member's bill on the resumption of parliament. If that bill were drawn, there may be enough support in the House of Representatives to get a retirement age change through. Should ACT return to parliament, they must vote for it or go against their principles and long-standing policy. If ACT doesn't return, National may not have enough coalition partners to keep the change from happening. United is crucial, and if the Maori party turn out to be kingmakers, they may work with Labour and vote for the bill if some form of concession is made for Maori, perhaps something like Peter Dunne suggests.

A graduated scheme, balanced on the fulcrum of 67, might be socially palatable to the minor parties and abate Labour and ACT's economic concerns. It's only National that won't negotiate, and despite current polling it doesn't look like they'll have enough seats to govern alone.

The wildcard is John Banks. If he wins Epsom and assumes control of the ACT party as Patrick Gower speculates, his conservative proclivities could see him side with the Nats to block any bill to change the age. And if that happens, the ACT party as we know it is well and truly over, and they may as well drop the pretence and team up with Colin Craig.

If the bill got through, would National attempt to reverse it?  I think not. A large number of the National Party faithful want a change, they just can't be seen to support a change without alienating their voters and undermining their leader. A change will make the job of balancing the books that much easier. That said, the further out the change is, the more opportunity they will have to campaign on a reversal. If they do that, however, they'll need to outline what the costs would be. And they would be immense.

On Q&A, Steven Joyce argued that it was ridiculous to be debating this because any benefits are 40 years out. It is true that many of baby boomer generation will be dead in 40 years, and that if they're at the older end of their generation they can safely shut their eyes to the problem, and to the idea of a New Zealand that exists after they are gone.

But what's also true is that we are, right now, living with the decisions made 35 years ago and will continue to do so for years to come. In 1975 the people of New Zealand voted against a compulsory superannuation fund that would be at Brian Gaynor's 2007 estimates worth more than 240 billion dollars now. Steven Joyce and his generation may not have to live in the world of 2050, but they will nevertheless live on in the memories of the young as villains or heroes. Muldoon was popular in his time, but history has not been kind to him. It will be less kind to a government that was given a second chance and failed to seize it, no matter how popular that government may appear to be today. 

Labour has done the right thing in starting this debate, and has put the change out a sensible distance to assuage the fear that people might feel about it. But in the interests of fairness, the changes should come sooner.

This talk of having enough warning: how much is enough? Do you need 8 years to plan to work an extra two months? 20 years to plan to work for an extra two years? To paraphrase Churchill, planning is essential but plans are useless: how can someone really plan for a given number of years of retirement, when no one knows the day or the hour of their demise?

God, if you believe in him or her, has a habit of laughing at plans. It's been suggested that people who work longer tend to live longer, and they are healthier and happier too. Perhaps the best retirement plan is to keep working until you absolutely need to retire. If you are healthy and fit, as most 65-year-olds are these days, why wouldn't you? 

But if you cannot work past 65, the government could offer a so-called transitional pension or the unemployment benefit to carry you through to your first pension. We still have a relatively strong welfare state, and it is robust enough right now to take care of those that can't work until 67 for whatever reason, provided we deal with the more general superannuation problem.

With a third of retirees in 2010 choosing to work past the age of 65, and with that number growing, it seems unconscionable to be paying those people a second income when our society is riven by inequality and our economy is strained and cracked like the streets of Christchurch. A lift from 2013, still starting at two months per year, would ease the pressure on the government's books and restore our esteem with the ratings agencies.

Preventing people from drawing a pension while working would help even more. It would be a strong message from the retiring to the working and the young: we care about you, and we care about your future. We've worked our entire lives to create a better world for you, and we'll volunteer to be the first to work a little more so that you can afford to live in it. 

With the increasing disillusionment of our young, which breeds rancour, hopelessness, and crime, this is a message our youth desperately needs to hear. Our youth, despite their lack of engagement, still take their cue from their elders. A generation that puts its self-interest ahead of its kids' needs may find, too late, that the next generation is too selfish to look after them when they really need it.

During yesterday's parliamentary debate about the problems at Party Central and the Minister's ‘solo’ attempt at fixing them, Phil Twyford reminded us that several government agencies explicitly -- and unsuccessfully -- argued against Auckland's transport functions being split from the Council into a Council-Controlled Organisation (CCO).

That split introduced yet another layer into a situation already messed up by the corporatisation of the 1980s and 1990s; one that separates service providers from policymakers and funders for largely ideological reasons. These layers reduce responsiveness and accountability. And we've seen that play out this week.

Auckland's 'supercity' changes weakened geographic silos but strengthened functional ones in local government. The region's restructuring brought together staff of similar functions like transport or events into the new CCOs and into the huge new Council's various departments.

In parallel with the supercity changes and their precursors like the 'One Plan', Auckland's former Councils and CCO agencies started working together years ago to plan the event for the Auckland region, collaborating closely with central government agencies and the Rugby World Cup 2011 joint venture company.

That's just like other regions have done, but with added complexity from being the only place large enough to accommodate sufficient visitors to satisfy the IRB for the opening and finals events, and to leverage associated economic opportunities as our only world-scale city. There just aren't enough beds or businesses in Christchurch, Wellington or Hamilton.

For the tournament, the buck is ultimately meant to stop in two places: the Rugby World Cup Minister and the Mayor of Auckland Council.

However … the current government set up the supercity so Council has an arms-length relationship where it is only meant to set and monitor the strategic priorities of the CCOs, while their own boards (appointed mainly by the government) decide how their staff will deliver. In turn, they often have to negotiate with contracted suppliers -- such as Veolia or event companies -- over what is provided to the end customer: us.

Joel Cayford has an excellent blog post going into some more detail about the contractual issue. Basically, it can be an awfully long chain from any citizen's experience to where the buck stops.

In effect, a lot of effort and goodwill has gone into making relationships work more sensibly than that. However, it seems natural that some of the professional silos remain and, if anything, are strengthened by the new structure.

To me, that helps explain some of the issues like Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED) only paying attention to the event 'footprint' they had decided on -- without proper demand forecasting, which seems inexcusably unprofessional for an event of this scale. Likewise, the sheer lack of thought about how to simultaneously deliver people to the stadium, to the hyped waterfront and to normal working day destinations (and even scheduling the event on a regular workday at all). Like not ensuring everyone was working to the same overall numbers.

Much of this is reflected  in the reports prepared for Wednesday's meeting of the Counci's accountability and performance committee. You can read the reports here.

ATEED’s report also confirms that television marketing considerations and the perceived importance of ‘Party Central’ -- government priorities -- drove placement on the waterfront and overruled options like opening more dispersed fanzones or extending provision inland to places like Aotea Square or the proven Auckland Domain where huge crowds are hosted for events like Christmas in the Park. Downplaying the success of their own pre-event marketing must also have been hard to swallow.

There are obvious coordination failures, and some pretty basic delivery ones. However, putting it right gives a chance to work closer together and to forge a more united purpose.

That's why the pissy trust-destroying antics of McCully and his colleagues this week are so deeply disappointing - and for what gain?

Government has every right to step up to make sure this event that reflects so much on them is delivered properly. There are clearly some howling failures that deserve deeper accountability after the event is safely wrapped up (and perhaps we'll see some government-appointed CCO Board members symbolically replaced). The Mayor and the Councillors share responsibility for not adequately verifying the assurances they were given by the staff who report to them and to the CCO Boards.

There are also some great lessons for what the city could be like in a couple of decades, especially for its form and connectedness; its transport links and the way people enjoy its spaces and each other. Friday was like fast-forwarding 20 years and seeing how today’s business-as-usual would cope. Council’s long-term plan for the region’s future is due out for consultation next week.

Without losing sight of those opportunities, I'd welcome us focusing for now on the spirit of celebration that has been so obvious throughout the country, and being great hosts for our treasured visitors. That's something all the cultures and people that make up this wonderful place have in common. We deserve leaders who reflect that to the world.

 Sacha Dylan is a consultant and strategist who has worked with several of the region’s councils and agencies over the last decade, though not directly on the Rugby World Cup preparations.

I don’t know.
 I hate that I can hear sirens on Coldharbour Lane at the end of my road – but then again, I can hear sirens on Coldharbour Lane any night of any week. I just have a more clear idea of what these ones might be doing tonight.

I hate that ‘my’ Brixton, which has been doing so well, and making such great strides with fantastic local businesses stepping up (especially in Brixton Village) is going to suffer harsh setbacks after all this has died down. There’s no money though, so the money to refit and refurb won’t be coming anytime soon that I can see, not with the global markets crashing around our ears.

I hate that the news is reporting “London on fire” – it’s not. Not all of it. Not even most of it. Small pockets. And yes, those pockets are ghastly, terrifying, nonsensical (Croydon? Really – Croydon?! why??), but it’s still not the whole city and it isn’t anarchy and no, we do NOT need troops on the streets, or water cannon, or any of those other extreme far-right tactics that have worked so well in Libya and Syria this year.

I hate that Twitter and Facebook seem to have a ghoulish excitement for the worst of the news and I suspect that rolling news only makes the stupids looting out there think that what they’re doing is newsworthy.
As I write this there have been no mentions of any fatalities from the rioting, but I’m scared that can’t last.

I hate that the rioters are mostly spoken of as young black youths, when the pictures clearly show other races and young women as well. I hate that we have so demonised young black men that they are the first image people seem to conjure when they hear of riots.

I hate that our Met Police were so effective at kettling and rounding up school children and university students demonstrating against education cuts some months ago and yet seem absurdly powerless to do anything about a bunch of kids with large sticks attacking Bodyshop in the high street.

I hate that they’re attacking their own back yards. Young people smashing in and stealing from and closing the shops where they themselves work, eat, shop.

I hate the consumerism of the rioters. I wish they were chanting slogans, I wish they were carrying placards, I wish there was a clear political point to what they’re doing. I wish they didn’t seem to be so clearly shopping.
I do think that any riot is political, even without a clear political point, but I wish the people taking part in this one were channelling that energy into something constructive.

I hate that Woolwich has had fires set. Woolwich, which is already such a poor relation to its neighbouring Greenwich, which is trying – and then it gets slapped down again. Anyone would think there was a vested interest in keeping the poor and disaffected in their place. (Hush now, conspiracy theorists.)

This certainly isn’t the first time London has had to deal with looters, and even that “Blitz spirit” wasn’t always all it was cracked up to be – my Mum had stories of her bombed-out home in Kennington being looted during WW2.
I think it’s laughable – and utterly typical – that our PM and London Mayor have both only just agreed to come back from holiday to deal with this mess, that they had to be shamed into coming home because neither of them could be bothered doing so sooner.

And I do find it scary, but I find the fear engendered by rolling news and over-eager reporting and ghoulish fascination even more frightening. That fear is easily turned against us.
I hate that really normal parts of London are being set on fire while all the big fancy places stay aloof and safe – and no, OF COURSE I don’t want them attacked too – but I do hate that it’s always the poor that suffer, always the poor that end up attacking the poor (either in the armies of the rich or, as now, at home).

Because, more than anything, this feels like it’s about class. It may have been sparked by the shooting of a black man, but it’s shops that are being targeted, ownership, property. And that feels like a class target, not a race target.
And finally, I hate, really really hate, that the EDL and the BNP and any other extreme right body (and sometimes not that extreme) will use this as a reason to decry immigration, non-white British, to attack anyone they see as not-English.

And here’s what I love: I love the woman who tweeted that a group of 9 youths escorted her home from Camberwell to East Dulwich because she’s a woman. I love that they did.
I love the number of people on twitter who are offering to get out tomorrow morning and clean up Brixton and Croydon and Hackney and Liverpool and Birmingham and anywhere that needs it.
I love that London has seen this all before and will no doubt see it again.

I love that woman that everyone’s been posting, telling off the kids for stealing and looting.

I love that this surely must signal the end of Dave as PM.

I love that the firefighters must now be safe from further proposed government cuts. (Oh shut up, conspiracy theorists).

I love that people still went to glorious Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park tonight (and said the roses smelled great too) and the South Bank was gorgeous yesterday afternoon, and Brockwell Lido was cool and welcoming this morning, and people went to work and did work and came home and maybe they were scared and maybe they didn’t find it easy but they did it.

I feel guilty that Christchurch and Japan had earthquakes and didn’t turn to looting (at least as far as I know) and people here have seemingly done so as their reason to be out on the street.

I feel very sorry that other uprisings in Syria and Egypt and Libya are being ignored by our press as they focus on this.

I know this will pass. And we’ll get on, but getting on in a recession is harder than getting on in boom time and places like Woolwich and Brixton, which have worked really hard to pick themselves up, to attract new investment, are going to have an even harder time. All over again.

I don’t think it’s playing Pollyanna to keep reminding myself and others that it’s NOT the whole of London, or Birmingham, or Liverpool; that it’s NOT every young person; that we’re not – quite – going to hell in a handcart. (And anyway, I’d always rather play Pollyanna than Cassandra, the latter is so damn smug when things go wrong.)

I’m especially keen that those making rolling news and sending out twitter hoaxes get a good night’s sleep. I do think the passion of the news reporting and the tweeting and all the rest of it does something to stoke the fires. I’d like the kids to get a good night’s sleep. Because the really sad thing is, even with suggestions (some seemingly very likely) that many of those disturbances are gang-related and well organised, some of them aren’t, and some of them involve 14 year olds out on the street.

I’ve just done a Skype interview for TV3 in NZ, for Campbell Live. I was trying to make sense of it for people who are so very far away. I’m not sure I can make sense of it from here.

I’m going to bed. Like most of us I’ve been watching the news all night, most of today. I don’t think it helps. See you in the morning. Tomorrow is another day. (er, today.)

London-based novelist Stella Duffy grew up in Tokoroa. This post originally appeared on her blog.

Your National Library exists to collect, preserve, and protect documents, particularly those relating to New Zealand, and to make them accessible to you. It is also charged with assisting other libraries in New Zealand and overseas. That’s from the Act, more or less.

It’s a simple mission, but a complex organisation. In fact, it may help to think of it as three libraries: a legal deposit library, a research library and a school library service, responsible for the General Collections, the Alexander Turnbull Library Collections, and the Schools Collections respectively. Each has its own unique collections and character.

(It may sound like we’re overdoing it, but there are no rules about what a national library should and should not do, and other countries take things even further by merging their national library with their national archive or parliamentary library.)

The collections are made up (as the Act says) of documents. But what, you may ask, is a document, in this day and age? As it happens, the Act has a handy definition that includes traditional forms like books, magazines and newspapers, but also images, music, film, “any writing on any material”, information stored in a computer, and various other things. Digital information is clearly included, so the National Library is collecting more and more digital documents each year, but this doesn’t mean that there are fewer paper documents. In fact, paper publications are still increasing year on year (but “peak paper” can’t be far off, surely).

The National Library is a legal deposit library, which means publishers are required to provide two copies of every document they publish to the National Librarian. One of these enters the General Collections, and is available for you to view in the reading rooms, or to borrow by interloan through your local library. The General Collections also include works purchased from overseas, and access to databases and subscriptions. And other odd stuff that I have only learned of since writing this commentary, such as the Motor Manuals Collection.

The second legal deposit copy is added to the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library. This ensures the research library comprehensively collects the nation’s published output, but the Turnbull also has vast unpublished collections, including manuscripts (by which we mean people’s personal papers), photographs, oral histories, drawings, paintings and prints. The unpublished collections are largely built through donations and purchases, and can be accessed by registered readers in the reading rooms.

Five years ago legal deposit was extended to include Internet documents, which includes websites. The rules are a little different for websites, in that the Library takes a copy rather than the publisher providing one, but the intent is the same: to “assist in preserving New Zealand’s documentary heritage” (that’s the Act again). The Library accomplishes this in two ways: an ongoing programme of selective web harvesting (i.e. copying websites one at a time) and less frequent domain harvests (i.e. copying the .NZ internet).

The Library therefore has large and growing digital holdings, which we think of as either born digital or digitised. Born digital means documents like web pages, digital photographs and word processor files that have never had an analogue form. Digitised, on the other hand, means digital reproductions of existing analogue documents. All these digital documents have unique collection, storage and access requirements, and we have developed the National Digital Heritage Archive to ensure they can be preserved in perpetuity. 

(But as an aside, our Collections Policy treats digital as just another format: the Photographic Archive includes images from both film and digital cameras, for example, while the Manuscripts Collection includes both handwritten letters and emails that were tapped out on keyboards. I can only think of one all-digital collection, and that’s the New Zealand Web Archive.)

For library users, digital material has an important characteristic that analogue material does not: it can be copied and distributed extremely easily. This has revolutionised the way that libraries provide access to collections. Over the last ten years the National Library has digitised more and more collection items in order to put them online. Here are a few examples from the last few months: 81 volumes of parliamentary papers, two major Auckland newspapers (in partnership with Auckland Libraries), a range of other newspapers (with more to come shortly), several thousand digitised photographs, a substantial research collection that our collaborators in Auckland will announce in due course, and a continuing stream of selected pictorial and audio content (such as these).

You can find and access this digital material through a variety of National Library websites, even if you are unable to visit and view the originals in Wellington. By far the most popular is Papers Past, which is a goldmine for genealogists and historians, and frequently offers a very different perspective from modern media. Topical example: did your paper report that the Emperor Penguin tastes like hare and will live after his skull has been “most hopelessly smashed”? Other large digitised collections include the papers of Donald McLean, the Appendix to the Journal of the House of Representatives, and the Timeframes image collection. To find online material on an arbitrary topic, you can search the Library’s combined catalogue then click on the “Online” button at the top of the search results.

Digital material has another intriguing characteristic: it amplifies rights issues. The National Library has an Access Policy to guide its decisions about providing access to documents, but it is based on a slightly dated definition of access: the ability to view a document for the purpose of private study. With some exceptions, access does not come with the features that many of our more vocal online users require: high-quality digital versions, plus the right to reproduce and re-use them in new works. These demands are only going to increase, so the Library is addressing the issue using best practice public service techniques.

The starting point for these discussions is that the National Library remains committed to collecting documents, and “making them accessible for all the people of New Zealand”, as this is our purpose under the Act. However, the Act also says we should do this “in a manner consistent with their status as documentary heritage and taonga”, and “subject to conditions” that control the way that the collections are accessed and used.

There are a number of factors that influence the Library to provide more or less access to digital items. On the side of increased access we have the institutional mandate to provide access, the increasing demands from customers for better access (including reproduction rights), and the NZGOAL Framework which encourages the use of open licences for all government data (which probably includes collection items and catalogues). On the side of increased control are the requirement to treat the documents as taonga, obligations to donors (including written and implied agreements), obligations under copyright law and negotiated agreements with publishers, and the fact that many documents in the collections don’t actually have usable rights information. Frankly, it’s a bit of a mess, a concentrated mixture of the intellectual property rights issues that our wider society struggles with.

Despite these complications, the National Library and the Turnbull are continuing to make our analogue and digital taonga available online. Providing access is the part of the Library’s work that is most immediately useful and appreciated, and that attracts the most attention, but it is only one of three core purposes. We therefore have to balance the provision of access against our two other responsibilities: to collect today’s documents for future generations, and to preserve what we have already collected.

By way of disclaimer, I work for the National Library of New Zealand on digitisation, web archiving, and various other projects. 

Many of us in the Red Zone realise the government package is probably the fairest approach to finding a solution for the damaged land in the east of Christchurch. If we could take our money and access good land and property we would be happy to go. The reality is we can’t! We can’t afford properties in the west of Christchurch, and we can’t afford to build new homes with the money we will get for our properties.

Why? Simply, the Red Zone area in Christchurch has low rateable values in relation to much of the city. The average house price in the Red Zone is $270,000-$280,000. But much of the cosy eastern suburbs where people were able to find affordable housing are now gone. We have no option but to head towards good land where the insurance companies will insure us. This land is significantly higher in price than our current properties. It is much like asking someone in Panmure or Onehunga to take their Rateable Value and buy in Epsom or Remuera. You just could not do it! Basically 5,100 people (plus many people now in the orange zone) will have to go and buy in the rich areas.

The property developers know this and have begun to buy up land. Prices are increasing as I write. I talked to a real estate agent today and her client had an offer of $200,000 on a section. Yesterday, the seller put their price up by $35,000. I contacted a subdivision in the weekend and they were putting up their section prices for the second time in the space of a week.

My land is valued at $170,000. This is higher than many, but even so I would need an extra $80,000 to get land in the city of comparable size. Put this together with trying to build and I would have to take out a mortgage of more than $200,000. Fine if you are a professional in Auckland—but way too much for most working class and retired folk in the Red Zone. As a consequence, I know of no-one in our neighbourhood who is building a new home. The Christchurch rebuild will not be as large as people may think, especially now the insurance companies will not rebuild the many Red Zone homes that they have deemed ‘repairable’.

There is little doubt in my mind that the overseas reinsurers have said to our government, “If you force us to honour our full replacement policies and rebuild people’s homes, then you will threaten insurance throughout New Zealand”. Somehow, the Australian government forced insurance companies to rebuild homes on new land after the 1989 Newcastle Earthquake but ‘little’ New Zealand is being held to ransom by Corporate America and Europe. Basically, the Red Zoners will become the scapegoat in saving insurance in our country. Is this how New Zealanders really want to treat the mums, dads, kids and retired grandparents in our country? If this package stays as the government has set it up, it will cripple thousands of people with debt for decades.

Our options in the Red Zone are these:

• Try to purchase land and get torn apart by the property developer sharks keen to make the big dollars on the back of our large mortgages.

• Fight the insurance company sharks to rebuild our homes according to the ‘Total Replacement’ policies that we have.

• Rent and be at the mercy of the landlord sharks .

Mr Brownlee, please create a second half to the land package—provide sections we can afford to buy using CERA’s powers to purchase land. And be tough with the insurance companies so they will rebuild Christchurch with the premiums that we have paid for decades.

Please do not leave us in shark infested water!