Of course the name of Wanganui is originated from a Maori word, however, since it has entered general usage in English,  it should not be treated as a  term for an exclusive group.

The name of Wanganui has its value too. It is the reflection of the history of interactions between Europeans and Maori, and the evolution of local iwis. I remember my teacher once said that the pronunciation came from a tribe from South Island, but it's no longer there anymore. This is history too, and the name of Wanganui reflects this fact.

Name change requires a lot of money too, and this country has too many important things to spend money on rather than this. I think a good solution is to make Whanganui a offical Maori name but continue to use Wanganui in general usage. If people starting to like the way it is spelt with h, then change the name. At end of the day, language is the movement of people, not bureaucracies.

So what kind of financial potential a university graduate may possess? In a recently published OECD report (PDF) on education, it is suggested in New Zealand, on average, a male university graduate would earn about NZ$ 170,000 more in his lifetime than those with only high school qualifications.

It may sounds like a lot but it's the earning increased in lifetime. Put that in context of a typical working life of a Kiwi (age 22 - 65), the average increase in wage works out like $80 a week, about 10% - 15% percent increase from the average wage in New Zealand.

Furthermore unless you are lucky enough to have rich parents,  you'll have to pay for your tertiary education nowadays. In my situation, I estimated that I need at least 12 years (4 years university and 8 years full time working) before I can reclaim the amount I invested in education. This estimation is actually too optimistic, as you are less experienced and earn less in first few years.

Inflation would make the repayment a bit faster, thanks to the interest-free student loan.  However, that does not help in the long run as your other costs would also increase.

The return rate for your investment in tertiary education varies, largely depends on how much financial support you get from your parents and the government, but 10% - 20% in the long run should be a pretty accurate estimate. It does not sounds too bad, but there are also risks. It depends the wider economic environment is tied up to your employment status, if you don't work, you no longer receive the return on your investment.

From a pure monetary sense, I would rather invest my money in real estate market than education. However according to MasterCard, there are things in life you just cannot put them in  monetary value. The report suggested three: people with tertiary qualification are generally more healthy, has more interpersonal trust, and are fairly interested in politics.

The bill is not finalised so I'm not going to put it here. You can view the most updated version here. In a nutshell, the bill prohibits a district plan that prohibits tree removing, unless the tree is expressively protected in the district plan.

There are at least several concerns for this.

Firstly central government should not intervene local government businesses at such level of detail. District Plans have to give effects or at least have regard to several national documents, is not that enough? Every part of the country has its unique environment and situation, why the central government thinks it knows better than locals?

Secondly, this bill removes an important mechanism to protect urban enviroment. Environment minister Nick Smith argued that 98% of tree related concents are granted, therefore it is just a waste of time. Now here is an example of incompetency, he seems to forgot that consents can be granted with conditions and modifications.

Thirdly, it is likely to add unnessary workload for local authorities. I do expect an increased number of surveying in order to put more trees in the schedule after the law is passed, but happens for an area of unprotected bush? Waitakere is a good example - scheduling each single tree would be a process that you would never want to do it again.

The Government has backed an Auckland 'super city' council and says it should be in place in time for next year's local body elections. ... Rather than having six local councils, there will be between 20 and 30 community boards. These will not be able to raise revenue or appoint staff. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Local democracy was identified by many, including myself, as the major problem of the Royal Commission report. However, I don't see this is best the solution. I disliked community boards from start, waste of time, not many actually attends, and its power cannot change much for the community. I prefer the parliamentary electorate style, each community elects its own member to the Auckland Council, the member manage local issues and represent that at the higher level.

Anyway, the difference in government recommendation[pdf] is, community boards will gain extra power, such as :

• advocate for their local community and have input into the Auckland Council’s plans
• develop local operational policies for local issues, for example dog control, liquor licensing and graffiti control
• influence the Auckland Council by petitioning for extra services that their community wants. Services would be paid for through a targeted rate for the local area, a local rate rise or a change in priorities. The local boards will not have the power to set rates, so any rate rise would have to be agreed by the Auckland Council.

Can you imagine 30 sets of dog control and and operational policies? Anyone who still thinks the change will save their rate bill should check if the sky in their little world is still blue. Also I did not notice anything in that report mentioning the delivery of council services,  does that mean all people need to travel to Auckland CBD to get their resource consent done?

The grand council will increase overall efficiency but I don't see a way that could reduce overall costs in both Royal Commission and government report.

Also another thing worth noticing:

Privatising water services?

Nice try. So National.

• replacing regional fuel taxes with smaller increases in national fuel excise and road user charges, which feed into the National Land Transport Fund
• confirming the government's commitment to Auckland rail electrification
• committing an additional $258 million of the government's capital allocation to land transport over the next two years
• amending the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding to make more money available for state highway construction

I wonder how rural people, especially the nats would think of the first point. But it's a fair measure I have to admit, as the whole country can benefit from a well-funtioning Auckland.

Councils say they will not be able to stop people cutting down native bush and coastal pohutukawa in cities under planned changes to environment laws.

The Government wants to take away councils' power to stop trees over a certain size being chopped without permission. If the change goes ahead, landowners will be free to cut down any tree on their land unless it is listed in their council's district plan. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Oppositions to the councils' tree management claim that "it's their land so they should be able to do anything they like", but let's face it, it's no different than how a teenager feels like "I'm free and independent so I  can do what ever I want", we all get that kind of feeling during our adolescence time, most grow out of it, but sadly, some don't.

The basic principle of the Resource Management Act is the "effect based approach", as long as you can demonstrate that you can minimise the adverse effects on  environment, even a non-complying activity can get a go ahead.  I was a "tree hugger",which means that use trees as an excuse to stop development in quite a few cases,  in one case, a two storey new residential development is proposed on about two lots away from my friend's house, developer wants to chop down a 60m+ tree to provide an extra one or two parking spaces.

From my friend's  point of vew it's actually quite hard to see that tree, just the top part,  but I still criticized the development plan anyway because this is just too ridiculous. If development cannot get ahead without chopping down that tree I may just let it go, but such a tall tree for a mere parking space? Quite a lot of people still don't treat environment protection as part of citizens' responsibility, and think that as optional.

Property right was never absolute, before the current law system there were several common law principles existed, such as good neighbourliness, as long as you don't affect your neighbours' economic well-being then you should be fine. But we don't live in the beginning of the industrial age, we understand the value of our environment more than just a place to dump all our wastes for free.

Not a good one from National, I say, central government should minimise its influence on local government.

I don't have time to read it yet, I'll try to do that this weekend to see if there's anything interesting. So far it looks like they didn't change the definition of environment, that's a good sign.

The bill is currently before the Local Government and Environment select committee, and the submission is open until 3 April.

Since the RMA nobody, no political parties have changed the definition of the word "Environment", it's the footstone of the legislation, change it would mean a new law is created. Well I guess that's why National wants to change it, that's the most easy way to divert the way we were heading without abolishment of the whole law.

So for those who are not very familiar with the RMA, here's current definition of "Environment":

Environment includes:

(a) ecosystems and their constituent parts, including people and communities; and

(b)all natural and physical resources; and

(c)Amenity values; and

(d)the social, economic, aestheic and cultural condition of which are affected by those matters

Second part of (a) is most vulnerable to the next law change. Act would definitely like to see it removed, National ... don't know, old guards like to see it go, don't know much about how John Key take on this issue.

Some pats in (d) are also vulnerable.

I think for most people, the question "whether we are part of the environment" should be a no brainer. The real issue here is whether Resource Management Act should cover people like us - well go and check the purpose of the RMA:

Sustainable management means managing the use, development ... which enables people and communities to provide for their social, eocnomic, and cultural wellbeing and for their health and safety while ...

:)

Another strange thing regarding RMA from Nats' policy is about the resource consent. If a council did not process it on time, then it's free.  I don't want to spend too much time on this, because you don't need a brainy Chinese kid, even a dumb one can tell you council can simply use gibberish excuses to decline the consent application before exceeds the the statutory timeframe, not to mention there are also some clauses that allow councils to extend deadline, legally.

To get the job done, you either exploit people's labour, or pay enough.

Auckland region is NZ’s economic powerhouse and has about 1/3 of total New Zealand population. Any changes on how Auckland is governed should be considered in national, even international context. As a student in this area I was fully aware of the issue, and made a submission myself.

In my opinion, a super, single council is simply not viable, and I believe the Royal Commission should understand this fact too. The coverage of the authority is just too wide, if it controls 1.4 million people from Wellsford to Bombay, this council will grow enormously big, effectively become another central government of New Zealand, creating even more confusion and more red tapes to make this monstrous authority work.

Another risk of creating a big, super council is that, no matter who runs it, that Lord Mayor is likely to run the whole region the way he managed his smaller council before. Now there’s problem, most of us think all district councils in Auckland region as part of the same “Auckland”, but in real life each district has its own local identity and, sometimes culture as well. An obvious example jumped out of my mind is Waitakere City’s “EcoCity”.

Auckland will become one, super city eventually, but not now. The problem facing Auckland is not much of the red tape, it’s local councils' very short sighted, self centred vision and lack of policy consistency across the region. The region, especially metropolitan areas are becoming more connected and a lot of decisions, like the Rugby World Cup, will likely to affect several councils.

I think there’s two ways to go. First is to create a new super council but with smaller jurisdiction area. What I prefer is to include Auckland Metropolitan Area and some parts of rural land for future development and buffer. Regional Council stays but all city councils must go.

I also liked the idea of elect councillors based on electorate-like wards. If this is the case, however, I don’t think there’s a need for a Lord Mayor, or even councillors. Each City elects one Mayor as a person should be enough, and those mayors become councillors of the bigger council.

The only viable route for a region wide super council, is to maintain current local councils to be at least some kind of services branches of a super council.

No matter which way it goes,  our adolescent-like urge to change is likely to stay for a while longer.

So I feel very unease to talk about a "balance" between combating climate change and accommodate economic growth.  Environment, the global weather system is still something that we don't fully understand how it works and when it will strike, yet it is so closely connected with  the future well beings of  mankind. Nature should be something that every one of us respect, not something that you can do "trade and exchange" or mess up with. Our survival solely depend on environment, not economic development.

For this review, any significant change that denies the existence of the climate change will send a wrong message to the world(yes, I'm talking about Rodney Hide). This looks unlikely for now, but there are still chances for surprises in the final select committee report, for example, extracted from the terms of references:

• identify the central/benchmark projections which are being used as the motivation for international agreements to combat climate change; and consider the uncertainties and risks surrounding these projections
• consider the timing of introduction of any New Zealand measures, with particular reference to the outcome of the December 2009 Copenhagen meeting, the position of the United States, and the timetable for decisions and their implementation of the Australian government

Well, what you say? The submissions close on February 13 - it's shorter than usual, but hey, at least they didn't sneak it through the system before the Christmas.

I wasn't watching this case so there isn't much I can comment on. However, it still serves as a notice to all the developers out there - plan early, give the process plenty of time, and ... bug National and ACT to let them get away with any necessary democratic and judicial processes, as NZ Herald reports:

"The stadium still needs consent for its final stages and the Eden Park Redevelopment Board is concerned this could get bogged down in delays and appeals ... "

"The Government would therefore give "serious consideration" to legislating "'because that is the option that delivers absolute certainty, and certainty is what we need.'"

I 'm only interested in the Resource Management Act part, so here's what the briefing said.

• Devolved RMA decision-making has exacerbated capacity issues in local government and led to variability in planning controls and consent processing. It is often difficult (both practically and politically) for councils to factor national benefits, priorities and strategies into planning and decision making when the costs of decisions fall locally.
• Central government is now making more use of the RMA instruments that offer greater national direction, involvement and guidance. Because there is no overall strategy for use of these powers, there is a lack of certainty about when and how central government will intervene.
• Under current RMA practice, effective and efficient resource allocation is not occurring, and new or expanding high-value uses are not being provided for. Problems are most keenly felt where resources are approaching or at full allocation in some areas: fresh water, coastal space, and air-sheds.
• The current ‘first-come-first-served’ system evolved from case law in the absence of central government direction, in a period of less resource competition.

Another thing worth to notice is that MfE stressed that "Meeting New Zealand’s international climate change obligations" as part of critical issues for environmental sustainability - bit harder for Rodney Hide to explain why he wants to dump the carbon credit system.