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Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It is a great honour to be given the opportunity to deliver the Trotter Lecture... This evening I am going to speak about the accelerating economic convergence taking place globally as the living standards of the 5 billion people living outside the historically rich part of the world rapidly catch up with income levels in the West.
Recently Prime Minister John Key was caught musing over whether New Zealand should follow Australia’s lead and sign up to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Let us all hope that he doesn’t. This inane piece of bureaucratic ‘rights speak’ does few favours to anyone, and its paucity of substance should make it laughable.
Many of us are scared this global depression will lead to the abandoning of free trade and a rash of protectionism – like the last one did.
Crimestoppers has been an extraordinary success in the UK ; I set it up over 20 years ago, have been involved with it ever since and am extremely proud of being the Chairman of the Trustees of a charity that is making a serious impact in the fight against crime in the UK . But my discussions with the police, government and business leaders in New Zealand, looking at the idea of setting up a similar venture here, came about through an unexpected and unplanned direction.
During a recent radio interview I was asked, is this a bad time to be talking about reforming welfare? No, I replied with little hesitation. There is no bad time to be trying to reform welfare.
When preparing my today's remarks, I took into my hands - looking for an inspiration - my last year's speech here, at the Heartland Institute's Conference. It did not help much. It is evident that the climate change debate has not made any detectable progress and that the much needed, long overdue exchange of views has not yet started. All we see and hear are uninspiring monologues.
The Finance and Expenditure Select Committee inquiry into the emissions trading scheme will be mainly concerned with examining the potential impact of envisaged climate change mitigation measures on the New Zealand economy and the future well-being of New Zealand citizens, as well as the likely effect of any ‘breaking-ranks’ on our diplomatic and trade relations. But it cannot avoid also addressing the extent to which the underlying scientific assessments are in doubt.
On 16 February Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier gave a speech to a hui in which he questioned the value of stopping violence programmes (Boshier, 2009) . He recognises that there are problems with the current “one-size-fits-all” approach of current anti-violence programmes. Some might see this as a significant development. Others will be sceptical.
Some little while ago, I was invited to contribute to a study on the social and economic progress of Maori. It was suggested that I might examine the Maori seats in Parliament. A moment’s hesitation and I said “yes”. My decision did not take long. Before me was, as it were, a blank canvass. I had not had occasion to consider the Maori seats and I had no views on whether they should be retained or done away with. So I set about examining the issue and came to a decided (indeed considered) view: that the separate seats compromised the Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) system and should be abolished.
Most businesses in New Zealand will be unaware of this, but by the end of the month they will be at risk of having their Internet access terminated, if they are accused of repeat copyright infringement. They do not have to be found guilty. They do not need to have been infringing themselves.
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