Ani O'Brien: Rot - Taxpayers are paying for special unlimited paid leave for Māori staff

Oranga Tamariki and Ministry for the Environment have race based leave entitlements

Duncan Garner kicked a hornet’s nest this week by reporting that Māori staff at Oranga Tamariki can take “discretionary” paid leave that other staff can’t, and that it’s effectively unlimited in practice.

Peter Williams: What is MfE up to?

The Feds reject their bribe

There’s something very sinister going on at the Ministry for the Environment.

Quite possibly with encouragement from Minister David Parker’s office, the Ministry has tried to get organisations like Federated Farmers, and other NGOs, non-governmental organisations, to take part in planning, resource management and freshwater management processes in the weeks before the election.

Roger Partridge: Productive land hocus-pocus

 

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman once quipped that David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage defined who counts as an economist. Because every economist understands comparative advantage and its related notion of “opportunity cost” and practically nobody else does.

With that in mind, we must assume that no economists were involved in the drafting of the Government’s new National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land.

If anyone needed a textbook example for ignoring opportunity cost as a factor for analysing choices between different options for production, the Government has just delivered it. It shows the pitfalls of making policy that ignores basic economic insights.

Eric Crampton: Misplaced ambition

It isn’t crazy to claim that New Zealand’s school system lacks ambition. Or, if it is, our shop has been crazy for a while.

But if you were going to complain about a lack of ambition in the New Zealand school system, carbon accounting seems a ludicrous place to start.

Unless you’re the Ministry for the Environment.

Newsroom reported this week on frustrated Ministry for the Environment officials unable to get school boards to fill in carbon accounting paperwork. They briefed Ministers that the education sector lacks “sufficient ambition.”

Eric Crampton: Why I don’t like the Ministry For The Environment’s reboot of Seinfeld

The ministry's proposed plan to impose a 20-cent deposit on almost every beverage container sold doesn't add up, and with a 10c bottle deposit difference between Australia and NZ, we'll be making smuggling great again too

There were a lot of truly classic episodes of Seinfeld, but among the very best, at least for economists, was “The Bottle Deposit”.

And we may be in for a repeat if the Ministry for the Environment has anything to say about it.

In the Seinfeld episode, Newman, a postman, tries to figure out how to profit from the five-cent difference in the can and bottle deposit between New York and Michigan. Truck rental fees, tolls, and fuel for the thousand-kilometre trip seemed to make it impossible – until Newman figures out a way of using a postal service truck to make the run.

But trans-Tasman container shipping is a lot more cost-effective, per tonne, than freight hauling across the United States.

And the Ministry for the Environment has just closed off submissions on a proposed container deposit return scheme that, among other problems, would set a 20-cent deposit on beverage containers. Australia’s deposit is 10 cents. And it could well be viable to send a container of crushed cans across the Tasman for fun, profit, and a Seinfeld reboot.

We will come back to some rough numbers on the Ministry for the Environment’s attempt to Make Smuggling (and Seinfeld) Great Again.

But first, the scheme.