The PM may or may not have a political problem over the GCSB appointment, made awkward because that body's constituting law did not authorise its Dotcom surveillance.

But there is no reason for him to bow to the media consensus that it would be improper for him to have shoulder tapped someone he knew and trusted to head that body, provided (as appears to be the case) that independent scrutiny confirmed the candidate's credentials. A PM confident in his knowledge of the constitution (or confident in his advisers on such matters) would simply dismiss the media parrotting of the left allegations of cronyism, and counter-attack, with a list of the awful fellow traveller appointments made by the previous government.

He would be doing us all a service too, if he counter-attacked the theory that politicians should not be choosing their key administrators and advisors. That theory is a not-so-subtle attempt in the eternal establishment campaign to nobble democracy. Academics, professionals, and others who worm their way to high salaries and influence by promoting complex procedure, are naturally hostile to the crude changes that democracy entails. We dump the powerful at elections because we want change. We want to upset the status quo.

The establishment are instinctively threatened by that. So lawyers and bureacrats and priests and journalists find ways to make it improper for democratically elected leaders to change very much beneath them.

It is futile and unfair to expect any leader to be effective without the power to select managers and advisers they can trust to act on their programme. It is trite knowledge from business that few can ever reform themselves from within, even in the face of complete collapse. Real change almost invariably requires the injection of new executive management, and implict trust between the leaders and those who must develop and implement detailed action plans.

So the theory that politicians should somehow eschew influence on the appointment of their primary agents to implement the policies for which they are elected, almost guarantees a high degree of frustration and failure for all but the most charismatic and determined elected leaders.

Of course it is justified by high-minded objectives. Cronyism can be a curse. It is useful in our system to give the bureacracy the power to slow and to temper democratic swings of policy. Independent vetting and opportunities to block demonstrably unsuitable appointments will maintain those protections.

But we badly need a PM with the mana and the knowledge and the confidence to put constitutionally dangerous elite ninnies firmly back in their boxes.

A BBC report highlights the two thirds decline in wine consumption per head in France over a few decades.
It projects the trend to continue with another halving. The report features the near ending of wine drinking among people under 30.
Rather like newspaper reading.
Does this portend temporariness for the revival in the fortunes (I will avoid saying spirits) of our vineyard owners?

Though I had to butt in to get space this morning on Q & A  (after being criticised by friends and mocked by others for politely waiting last time to be invited to speak) I enjoyed it.

I was particularly pleased to get the chance to support (however briefly)  the Hon Nick Smith's argument with Len Brown on the gobbledygook that is the Auckland (spatial) Plan, and now the draft Unitary Plan. 

I was surprised by Jon Johansson's support for my view that we should apply the blunt Aussie attitude to immigrants and the dole –  "bludgers need not come",  instead of our current policy.

On the other hand both the on camera discussion of Te Ururoa Flavell's predicament, and afterwards was disappointing. Here was a flagrant demonstration of the idiocy in an egalitarian democracy of handing more and more power to a race defined warrior class aristocracy.  Weak governments are vesting 'participation' powers that are exercised as valuable veto and hold-up rights, in unelected elites who routinely abuse power for personal gain. Thought they are good at the rhetoric of democracy (the notion that leaders serve their people, at the pleasure of the people) in fact their actions show the people are expected to serve the leaders. Rangatiratanga still operates on the aristocratic principle, that the leader's interests are paramount. The group interest is subordinate to the glory of the leader because his or her mana is the measure of the group's power. Collective meaning and identity are expressed through the respect the leader can extract.

I was disappointed (though not surprised) to find that NZ political 'scientists' have not been exploring the implications of this bizarre recent New Zealand policy. The panellists seemed to think it sufficient to expound on the necessity for success by Maori organisations of respect for  familiar succession mechanisms. They did not seem to think it of interest to look at what actually happens throughout Maoridom – where power stays with people who gain it till they leave or are kicked out in divisive fights.  Many Maori institutions are risible, because much of Maoridom simply does not do intelligent democracy – we are so familiar with corruption and theft by leaders from Maori organisations that it is scarcely news, and routine succession in power without crisis frequently just does not happen until the fossilised holders of power have run their organisations into the ground .

Take the NZ Maori Counci for example – they can't dump Sir Graham Latimer, so they are stacking the Council with like minds –  latest appointment being of crooked Donna Awatere-Huata. it ought to have made them persona non grata with the government, but has not. Such tacit endorsement of corrupt people is corroding our self image as incorruptible, and the reality will follow.

Two heartening pieces of blunt common sense from two wildly different Ministers this week  – Judith Collins referring simply to Annette Sykes as a stupid person, and Chris Finlayson QC bluntly identifying the lack of elementary leadership in the dithering dopes we've elected to Wellington Council.

The appointment of Dame Susan Devoy, could be a wasted opportunity despite Michael Laws' instinctive judgment that it can't matter because it is a non-job.. I'll wait to judge. She could be a success as stuning to the media chooks as  Lockwood Smith's Speakership. But I wish the Minister had used the sinecure position to install someone more likely to take on the racism of the Treaty industry from a position of academic superiority. It would not be especially  difficult for the right person. But to stare down the people infesting the HRC, with their genuine qualifications in fake knowledge (like de-colonisation studies) and their sincere bigotry, she would need enough knowledge of the fake studies industry  to spear them with their own illogic.

I doubt that she will acquire that strength, but perhaps she will skewer their pretension anyway with 'naive' common sense. Simply ignoring their refined theories would go a long way.

9700 more people being implored to feel violated and anxious and entitled to compensation because someone made an innocent mistake with data about them.

Who cares?

A few days ago I referred to impending changes in our expectations that someone else will pick up our financial risks of earthquake loss. There are steep increases in the costs of getting others to carry our risks. It may become irrational to continue to insure as we have in the past.

Pam McMillan, a solicitor at our law firm, has pointed out that according to the OECD Insurance Statistics Yearbook for 1999-2008 NZ may not, in fact, be “the most insured country in the world”.

According to these statistics, out of all the OECD countries NZ is the  lowest in terms of penetration (gross premiums as a percentage of GDP); the lowest in terms of life insurance as a percentage of GDP; and towards the bottom half of all countries in terms of non-life insurance as a percentage of GDP.

These statistics appear inconsistent with the view that we are "the most insured country in the world" for earthquake risk. They do not separate out earthquake cover from other cover. Earthquake cover has been standard here. Elsewhere it is a specific additional risk in many policies. But the statistics still suggest caution in concluding that we have been over-insured. Perhaps another factor could be extraordinary historical cheapness in our insurance that meant we got the extended coverage for much less than other countries.

A Massey University study conducted for the Financial Services Council and reported in 2011 suggests that we are 'under-insured' for personal risks (life, disability income and trauma/dread disease). So perhaps our customary full insurance of earthquake risk is not a reflection of an overall risk aversion.

Does anyone know? No doubt we will find out in due course, but if we are now staring at less insurance off a low base, we better learn more self reliance and resilience rather quickly……

The DomPost editorial yesterday made a well put argument for protecting press freedom against its enemies who gather to chip away at it each time they can muster enough clamour of "scandal".

The editorial's timing was good, as the Law Commission ( Prof Burrows) is shortly to give us its final report, following submissions on its discussion paper suggesting over-arching regulation of broadcast speech (including new media). Then the government will tell us what it will do with the Law Commission recommendations. I'm putting my faith in the Minister of Justice (Judith Collins) to protect us from those who want new laws to punish bad manners.

The potential for future establishment misuse of those powers does not worry the proponents. They expect to be the establishment. They are oblivious to the likely actual uses of such powers, because they believe so strongly in the virtue of their intentions.

The editorial was also well timed in relation to yesterday evening's Victoria University annual Lord Cooke lecture, though the editorial may not get much attention from the lawyers. Many lawyers would have been there to anticipate and congratulate each other on their advancing powers to second guess and control elected and administrative decision-makers. Lord Cooke had confidence in the virtue of judicial interventions. His disciples seem equally satisfied that they can improve us all with more power to punish rude and unlearned journalists, and those who employ them.

The Rt Hon. Lady Justice Arden, an  English Court of Appeal Judge, delivered a demonstration of the unresearched confidence of the lawyers in this area. They just know that more supervision of irresponsible media will be for the best. They treat as sufficient reason the fact that the media often pretend no purpose more noble than to cater for popular demand.

Nevertheless I looked forward to a penetrating justification for the advance of the cleansing rule of lawyers. Despite the topicality of press freedom and “proportionality”, I could not help feeling disappointed. The key issues were mostly missed, or dealt with by way of bland assertion that they could be dealt with. The Law Faculty Dean saved Dame Mary from questions after the lecture by hurrying us all to the refreshments.

Normal judicial condecension toward elected leaders Dame Mary's description of context was competent enough, but pedestrian, and uninformative to anyone who stays abreast of UK politics and legal events. She revealed her expectations of an important role for judges in defining the codes and influencing the decisions of the proposed media regulator which is to emerge from the phone hacking furore and the Leveson reports. However the address was disappointingly  non-analytical,  though revealing all the same.  She made an obligatory bow to freedom of speech then took sides against the UK PM, with a supercilious approach to his concerns about Leveson threats to that  freedom. She did not engage with Cameron’s arguments. Her dismissal relied on the familiar implicit sneering at the motives of politicians that assumes her audience shares her prejudices and assumptions. .

If her approach was an insight into the reasoning processes of the judges who are expanding the role of the judiciary it was the opposite of reassuring. She seemed to assume her audience would be gratified by legal second guessing of administrators and elected leaders. Her eagerness revealed little awareness of the hazards in judicial administration (micro-managing discretionary decision-making).  For example there was no exploration of the unsuitability of courts to prioritising among intensely competing courses of action with heavy political freight. Court processes sift evidence at leisure, applying strict rules to exclude unverifiable (and second hand) information.  

Political and administrative decision-making information needs are often the opposite. They may be required under intense time pressure and unavoidable uncertainty. Political processes are therefore designed to maximise the range and quantity of information. It is all ‘admissible’. The decision-maker balances it intuitively, applying personal experience and implicit weighting factors that may be completely antithetical to the rules binding a court. They may be elected precisely because the electorate trusts in those intuitive values more than the alternative decision criteria. Good administrative decisions ( at least those that remain outside the reach of arrogant administrative law) may similarly be best made taking into account all that is known or suspected as the decision-maker thinks fit.

Proportionality defended? I thought Dame Mary's defence of ‘proportionality’ was particularly weak. She seemed unaware that we were learning nothing more from her  than that she was confident that her “case by case” picking of the Goldilocks point (neither too hot not too cold) would be an improvement over the point chosen by the subject administrator.  She did not discuss whether the kind of analysis the courts would impose might be more costly, or result in fewer decisions with more delay, or exclude factors not susceptible to review that should nevertheless weigh in decisions. She did not consider whether what she would intend as salutary interventions might just drive decisions into other fora, outside her jurisdiction, or impoverish internal discussion, as decision-makers constructed carefully sanitised records of their processes and the factors that should prevail.

Admittedly Dame Mary conceded several times that some of the decisions on which intervention and second guessing might be urged would involve issues not susceptible to the type of evidence testing that is the comparative advantage of courts. But there was no other acknowledgement of the courts’ disabilities in balancing policies and compromises that are the collision points of community disagreement.

The Judge eagerly anticipates using assimilation with European law as the excuse for dumping the judicial restraint of  Wednesbury reasonableness. That traditional test confines judicial review to correcting egregious errors of administration. Instead she looks to the golden days coming, where judges need no excuse to usurp administrative and political decision-making whenever they feel they could make a better decision, taking all the circumstances into account.

Where is the rule of law in all this?  How remote that is from the conception of law as rules that enable one to know in advance the legal consequences of one’s conduct. Dame Mary apparently looks forward to teaching people how to behave by hind-sight categorisation of their behaviour as variously ‘acceptable’ (or unacceptable) and ‘appropriate’ (or inappropriate) or ‘responsible’ (or not responsible) and so on. There was no explanation why the role for the judge should go so far beyond whether the conduct is ‘lawful’ (or unlawful) according to clear, previously known boundary rules. Plainly, rule of law notions are now quaintly unambitious for this one of Her Majesty's judges.

I should try to give Dame Mary more benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she is not necessarily lacking in perceptiveness. Perhaps she and her colleagues will have the self-restraint to stop short of forfeiting formal constitutional respect, by not often stepping into the shoes of politicians and administrators even though they are asserting the power to do so.  Perhaps there are reasonable excuses for what I found to be an uninspiring address. Possibly she would find my condemnation to be disproportionate! I note however, that Steven Price was also underwhelmed.

Or perhaps there are more mundane explanations. Maybe she was wrongly advised that her audience included lay people who  needed a beginner's introduction to things like Wednesbury reasonableness, or the written paper will have the argument and penetration missing from the delivered version. Unfortunately, even if it does appear in the written version,  it is unlikely that VUW Law School will get the benefit of the public debate that should have been generated by an address on the chosen topic

Today I went to an interesting lunch address hosted by the Property Council (Wellington Branch – the most organised civil society force for an active Wellington). Seismic engineering specialist Dr Kit Miyamoto referred to New Zealand's extraordinary expectations of insurance by way of side comment..

He described us as the most insured country in the world. Our insurance had been comprehensive, astonishingly universal, and very cheap. He contrasted that with California and Japan. Though his address focussed on commercial building, he mentioned in passing that in those places households are not effectively insured for earthquake risk. It is too expensive and the deductibles (broadly the excess) make it not worth the cost.

He urged us to focus on spending our money on making ourselves more resilient, making buildings less susceptible to damage, instead of just trying to shift our loss risks to others with insurance. The premium cash flowing overseas should instead be spent here on strengthening, where ever it was economically rational to invest in such improvement.

That is some way from how most public discussion of insurance is trending. People are demanding that the government step in where private insurers are stepping out.

He was also sceptical about the usefulness of government attempts to regulate for optimum resilience and safety. It appeared that he agreed with some of the questioners, that the demands of informed tenants were driving toward the right balance, and property owners should not wait for, or expect stable regulatory standards. The sentiment of the meeting was that officials will always be more focussed on arse covering. Instead landlords should strengthen now, to keep tenants. Where there is not the income from tenants, just do what is ecnomically feasible.

The constructive energy of the property people is heartening. It contrasts with the usual media and political bleating on earthquake risk issues.

How New Zealanders still think they are nature's sturdy and practical (number 8 wire) people I do not know.

The popular and political obsession with avoiding meeting the cost of looking after ourselves, and instead demanding that life's exigencies be socialised, show what cradle to grave swaddling government actually does. Whining dependency is much more characteristic of the modern kiwi, than stoic self-reliance.

Some get jaded after decades of life. They find little to surprise and excite them. I’m finding the opposite.

Perhaps I’m lowering my expectations? Two weekends this year have far exceeded my expectations.

Several weeks ago Alan Gibb’s sculpture farm did it. I’d been there several times, the most recent in 2005. So I joined the Wellington Sculpture Trust trip solely for the picnic with family and friends. But new sculptures and new manicuring of the land made it as fresh as the first time.

Last weekend a new section of the John Key cycle way also exceeded all expectations. Eight of us with very mixed experience cycled the Timber Trail. No one punctured or had any bike problem or fell off. The distance was 90km including  the side trip to the comfortable Blackfern Forge lodge – a whimsically converted wool shed.

The Timber Trail will officially open on 30 March. I’m sure it will become a New Zealander’s ‘must do’, ranking with the Otago Rail Trail and the Tongariro Crossing.

It will be a wonderful family trip. The packed clay and pumice surfaces and the gradients are so kind we thought it could be classed as beginner, not intermediate. It is less jarring than the Rail Trail. Perhaps the creators are not confident that the current perfection of the track surface will survive winter rain. All you need at the moment by way of preparation is enough riding to get fit, and to harden the glutes against sore bum. Just like the Otago Rail Trail.

We divided the two day trip into two 40km sections, with a night at Blackfern to look forward to after day one. The trail should be ridden from north to south. Ignore anything that says otherwise, or you will miss the best sustained downhill run you can imagine:

Then begin many kilometres of fast sweeping downhill. This section is moulded to the topography, looping and swirling down the mountain’s gently scored flank.

Starting in the north new track that threads through the thick shade of native trees interspersed with stands of maturing plantation firs and radiata. All have healthy undergrowth but the pumice soil is not fertile enough to create the gloom that can be the main impression of virgin bush

• It climbs gradually toward the summit of Mt Pureora. Unfortunately it only skirts the summit and does not provide look-outs near it.
• The track emerges to the welcome open sky of areas that have been cut over, in various stages of verdant regeneration, though it stays mostly within the virgin forest strips that were left among the harvested areas.
• The second half of the first day flows beside and occasionally on well formed forest roads. They run down what are becoming by that stage prominent ridges separated by deep riverbeds.
• Those river valleys are crossed by a series of magnificent new suspension bridges exclusively for cyclists. They’re not swing bridges – they’re stabilised not to swing.

That first day ended for us with a 6km run through pine needle cushioning to our lodging, and a home cooked dinner for $25 extra.

The second day started with a climb back through the pines to reach the gentle gradients of a remnant network of bush tramways that hauled logs out of thousands of acres of plateau:

The track crosses the biggest suspension bridge, 141m long and 55m above the river below;

• This day, like the first is never silent. At times there are choirs of tui.
• The country gets more fertile as we go with some awesome standing trees and monster abandoned logs.
• This section is well set up with explanatory panels, at the site of former camps and villages.
• Clearings are the only visible trace of those settlements.
• The track skirts cliffs and cuts through ignimbrite spurs;
• The most exhilarating sustained downhill I know falls around 400m over 20km of impressively engineered railway roadbed
• It ends in typical King Country farmland.

All it needs now to become legendary, like the Otago trail, are:

• Some entrepreneurial types to rebuild camp cook houses and huts for meals (though there is a good range of local accomodation);
• A spur track to the summit of Pureora.
• More view shafts particularly toward Lake Taupo.
• Interpretative panels on the northern section as good as those in the south.

I've had feedback on my radio scepticism (Jim Mora's Panel Thursday last) about the "Appeal to Parliament" group promoted by Sir Alan Mark. I said they were wasting their time, that I'd have to be paid to listen to their list of concerns because it sounded like Moaning Report concentrated, and that they were likely to generate the same reaction as 'Citizens for Rowling" – that is anti-elitist resentment.

The are wasting their time because they share the common conceit of intellectuals (left and right) and business people and others who pay lip-service to democracy but essentially despise it. They are sure that politicians and other decision-makers who are not following their advice must be stupid, ignorant or consciously evil and motivated by sinister forces. They believe that for those who are not evil, all that is needed is careful loud and repeated explanation until the decision-makers grasp the wisdom of their advisers. To them the rest is obvious.

They rarely think it is worth debating with those who disagree with their diagnosis, or, to the extent they bother with them, their prescriptions. They are dismissive of cost benefit study, on the basis that their purposes are so pure it is improper to weigh them against grubby matters like cost. Whether or not they are of the left, they become Lenin's useful idiots for the left, because they supply the need of their media kin for events with which to bludgeon the rest of us 'people' who are suspicious of their balance and their clerical zeal.

Nevertheless I should have been more respectful because they are undoubtedly well meaning, and Sir Alan has acheived much. But I was irritated by the smugness of it all. What politicians desperately need, and look for is not another recital of the problems they face. They are invariably all too well aware of them. What they look for are solutions. Solutions that respect the clash of objectives, and the devastating conundrum of modern politics – that is decision-makers being ejected from power for looking not nice if the chosen solution means something has to give, if it means that some desirable cause or outcome must be sacrificed to acheive another.

Because often stupid swing voters decide the course of democratic leadership, and they pay little attention to unavoidable trade-offs. All across the western world we see government paralysed in the face of that dynamic.

To be sure, Sir Alan's crew will add in their tuppence worth to the balance, but far more useful than berating politicians from their numpty thrones, would be practical demands of fellow citizens to reduce the influence of those who want only nice outcomes and no costs falling anywhere.

An acquaintance with a high position in academia was reassuring. He confirmed I was right on the academics involved.

And he noted "an “important and influential” citizen to sign up against climate change is Wayne Smith…. Rugby coach….   Who happens to have flown recently ( with a team of 30 odd) all the way to South Africa for two games of footy. His team may repeat this flight later on in the season ( semi final)  and also several trips back and forth across the Tasman. Doesn’t he see the irony……  ???"

 My friend went on to say

"if these people were doing something constructive about climate change I would not object. In science we have a similar situation… many people are being well funded to just continually show how bad the situation is ( and its  bad) , but the people who really are trying to engineer solutions are quietly chugging away out of the limelight. For example there are  a devoted group of physicists and chemists  ( At Vic, Cambridge, and elsewhere) who are trying to develop cheap solar cells made from organic polymers that can be painted on roofs, car bodies etc . This ,  to me , is the most promising way forward…    If successful, it could reduce carbon emissions everywhere, especially in the developing world."