Fonterra

Labour and the Greens get their beans from the Herald editorial writer:

Earlier this week, a Herald editorial suggested people thinking of buying Mighty River Power shares had little to fear from David Shearer’s statement that the Labour Party planned to shake up the electricity market when next in power. That, however, was before it was known how far back in time Labour planned to travel and how errant its policy would be. The details, released yesterday, have serious implications for the profitability of the state-owned power companies to be partly sold by the Government. A 3 per cent fall in Contact Energy’s share price soon after Mr Shearer’s announcement confirmed as much.

It really is a 1930s command economy solution not unlike Soviet Russia would employ. Worse it wiped $190 million off the value of power companies overnight, a nice little landmine from Labour and the Greens for Kiwisaver accounts.

Labour proposes to set up a single buyer, NZ Power, to purchase all electricity generation at what it deems a fair price, based on the actual cost of production. This, it says, will reduce the average household’s power bill by between $230 and $330 a year, a 10 per cent drop. Among its myriad functions, NZ Power would also be able to direct generators to use available capacity, and play a key planning role, including determining future investment needs for both generation and transmission. It would run a tender process for new generation, signing long-term contracts, so successful bidders received what was considered a fair return on their investment.  Read more »

via: cbsnews.com

In the world politics, it doesn’t pay to lead with your jaw, especially when you’re a tiny nation in the Pacific.

Opponents of the Kyoto Protocol have stated that New Zealand’s contribution to “reducing Global Warming” wouldn’t even go to one day of pollution in China, and therefore it was at best a token gesture.

Not to our collective checkbooks, of course.  And the effects of that dumb decision is still echoing through our economy just this week with the Fonterra milk chemical scare caused by a fertiliser farmers use to… wait for it… try to reduce greenhouse emissions.

It is therefore good to keep some perspective as to what on earth we’re doing to ourselves economically as a meaningless international token gesture, when people in Bejing can’t even breathe?   Read more »

I am on The Huddle with Larry Williams and Josie Pagani this evening at 1740.

Our topics will be:

• David Shearer gets real about what 300 thousand can buy in terms of a house in Auckland
• Then we’ve got the WOF issues – seriously do the MTA et al not think we can’t see through them?
• And last but not least the beat up over the Fonterra milk

You can listen through usual methods or online.

I will post the full audio tomorrow.

After Lucy Craymer and Charles Anderson’s frothing up a story caused export markets to question New Zealand’s agriculture products, I thought a look at DCD was needed.

Talk about rank hyprocisy.

The Green Taliban’s Steffan Browning couldn’t help but put the boot into Fonterra while seeking some grand agrarian socialism for the farming sector. By his measure, only then will New Zealand clean green marketing be achievable.  Read more »

The Crafar Farms deal settled yesterday. Shanghai Pengxin issued the following statement:

Two years after it made a successful bid for the 16 North Island Crafar farms, Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin has withstood all legal challenges and finally been able to settle on the properties and take possession.

The properties, have been purchased in the name of a subsidiary company, Pengxin New Zealand Farm Group. They will be managed by a new joint venture company, Pengxin New Zealand Farm Management Ltd, a 50/50 joint venture with Government-owned Landcorp, which will be the managing partner, and which is increasing staff numbers to run the 16 farms.

The 13 dairy farms and three dry stock farms total almost 8,000 hectares and currently carry some 16,000 cows. The company is committed to investing $15.7 million in the next three years to upgrade the properties and increase milk production, which will initially be sold to Fonterra.

Great stuff, now we can get on with the other aspects of the deal opening up new access and markets in China.

Farmers are just businesses like everybody else. Some aren’t very good, and get into financial trouble. Unlike the rest of us they seem to think they have a god given right to be supported by the state because they are “the backbone of the country” or some other bullshit.

Governor Graeme Wheeler said dairy sector debt had grown rapidly from $11 billion in 2003 to around $30 billion by 2009, where it seemed to have stabilised.

“The worrying thing from a prudential point of view – and it is something the banks need to think about – is that half the debt is held by the 10 per cent most indebted farmers.”

The report says that under the current Fonterra payout forecast of $5.65 to $5.75 a kilogram of milk solids for the current season, more than a third of dairy sector debt would be held by farms with negative cash flow if their working expenses remained unchanged.

The arse falls out of the diary market and a quarter of the farms will be in strife. This is not sustainable, and we are not socialists so we should let the banks foreclose.

With more than 25 per cent of debt held by farms with loan-to-value ratios above 80 per cent, troubled operations could expect less forbearance by the banks than after the last sharp fall in export prices in 2008, the Reserve Bank believes.

No bludging, dairy farmers. This blog is watching you and especially the socialists in the National cabinet, David Carter and Amy Adams, who think that hand outs for farmers is what New Zealand needs to do.

I received this email from a School Principal. The correspondent is known to me and regularly contributes privately via email.

Hi Cam

Thought you would be interested in an exchange that took place in my office earlier today that illustrates the utter nonsense of this “Schools Should Feed Kids’ campaign.

We are a rural, decile 2 school.  As with every school, the decile rating only tells a very small part of the story.  We have some very wealthy families at our school and a number of families that live in a very deprived setting.

A group from one of our Maori whanau arrived in my office this morning.  They had a complaint.  I’m not going to go into the detail of the complaint because they were very respectful about the way that they conveyed it and to some degree I could see where they were coming from.  It was a relatively minor matter (in my view), but could see that it was very important to them, and is largely brought about by different cultural values.

After I (genuinely) apologised for the unintended offence caused by the actions of one of my staff the anger in the room dissipated.  We got to talking about other ‘grievances’ that they wanted to bring to the surface.

Anyway, in the course of the conversation one of the whanau asked me when we were getting ‘breakfasts’ at school.  To this I replied that I had no intention of starting up a ‘breakfast’ regime at our school. I was asked, “Are we promoting food in schools or not?”  My reply, “John Campbell might be promoting this but I am not”.  They asked why.  I explained that when I was asked about my (our) school by outsiders, one of the ways I most often respond is by saying I am proud of the fact that our whanau (families) all care about their kids.  Some are probably very poor by comparison to others but they still put their children first.  Our kids (with the occasional exception) all come to schoolwith lunch.  They are all appropriately clothed.  The vast majority pay their way by paying for trips and stationery and the like.  I don’t often pry into what children have for breakfast but, again, the indication is that food is provided.  Some homes expect their child to get breakfast for themselves and you might argue that the parents could/should provide some more structure for 7 or 8 year olds – but who am I to say they are wrong to expect kids to get their own breakfast.  My pre-schooler gets her own breakfast if she wakes earlier than Mum or Dad.  As far as I am aware, the children at our school are not routinely neglected.  (Note: I am not saying that they are all in happy nurturing homes – but none are starving).

I looked directly at the whanau and said, “That is you guys I am talking about!  You care about your kids.  You feed your kids.  Your kids come to school with lunch.  It is your responsibility to feed your kids and you do it.  So why would I change that?”

This, to my surprise, met with complete agreement.  ”Yeah, that’s right,” they said (almost in unison), “we look after our kids”.

One of the whanau then told me how on the occasions she has taken her son to Pac ‘n’ Save he would refuse to nominate what he wanted for lunch because he said that if he took lunch to school the eating time would cut into his playing time. So he preferred to wait untill after school to eat.

Another told me that there was always food in the cupboard, and if there wasn’t her boy knew that he could “go to Aunty’s next door for a feed any time”.

“So are you telling me that you have no real problem having food in the house?”

“Yeah, we always have something,” came the reply.

“So why would the school provide breakfast?  We are here to teach your kids – not to feed them”.

“Well,” I was all ears at this point, “my boys find it hard to get up that early to get breakfast.”

The conversation then shifted to why we were not part of Fonterra’s milk in schools programme.  It followed a similar pattern.  I didn’t sign up for it (largely)  because it would just be another distraction from our core reason for existing:  teaching and learning.

This is only a couple of anecdotes but I think they start to tell some of the real story.  I don’t want to be disrespectful to this whanau.  Their answers were genuine and honest.  They are probably among our poorest, if not the poorest, wider family group in our school.  But doesn’t this conversation say a lot.

When is someone going to present the alternative message to the socialist propaganda.  Schools taking on the responsibility of feeding ‘the poor kids’ will not change their circumstances.  It will simply mask the neglect that is taking place in some situations and free up a bit of discretionary spending money for others who are willing to take advantage of a programme that wouldn’t actually be intended for them.

Until we change the policy settings to rid ourselves of the ‘entitlement’ culture that seems so entrenched among some, we as a country will continue to produce generations of young people who are genuinely mystified as to why they aren’t receiving even more handouts than they already are.

This made me laugh

Details of a working-holiday agreement between New Zealand and the Philippines are expected to be announced during the visit to New Zealand of Philippines President Benigno S. Aquino III.

The Philippines has about 10 million nationals working abroad, many doing the type of jobs others won’t do.

New Zealand is home to about 35,000 Filipinos, says the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, many working as farm labourers in the dairy industry and in rest homes.

Cannot see it being a two-way thing and looks like Fonterra and bludging farmers have just got a cheap supply of labour incoming.

Wonder how the Unions will react?

New Zealand’s unemployable 16-25 year olds should be shipped over so they can see what their future is really like.

And just while I’m nursing an interest in these troughers and their ideas, all this talk against plain packaging from big tobacco reminded me that these troughers also want plain packaging on infant formula.

Seeing New Zealand’s biggest company Fonterra is proudly selling its Anmum product in countries like Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam earning NZ much needed export dollars, I thought I’d scare the horses by showing how their loopy ideas like plain packaging would look for infant formula.

These troughers don’t want anything on the product that seems or may send a positive message to mums. So those happy smiling mum/baby pics would be replaced with an image of a mother that looks depressed and all Aunty Mingy-like, a baby that looks unhappy, a big warning label (now required in the Philippines) and let’s not forget take away the colour is another seducing factor. Whammo

I’m no fan of Fonterra, but the problem I have is that large corporates sit there all high and mighty thinking that loopy ideas that impact on one industry won’t happen to them. Well plain packaging is stalking Fonterra now as it is stalking the booze companies. It is the thin end of a very large wedge.

Meanwhile the troughers who are bitterly against various causes, i.e. the troughers that think infant formula manufacturers are evil, keep pushing their ideas through their government providers. Before you know it, their ideas are written up in reports and presented to government as ideas that have the endorsement of “stakeholders”.

All this talk makes you wonder whether the Government has looked at its values recently…

Cows kill more people than sharks.

Between 2003 and 2008, 108 people died from cattle-induced injuries across the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 27 times the whopping four people killed in shark attacks in the United States during the same time period, according to the International Shark Attack File. Nearly all those cow-related fatalities were caused by blunt force trauma to the head or chest; a third of the victims were working in enclosed spaces with cattle.

Boing Boing think there is a valid argument to have a Cow Week given the reputational bias against sharks in the media.

I found out yesterday that August 12 through August 16 is Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. So I thought I’d provide a nice counterbalance here. From now through August 18 I will provide you with one example of cow-related killings every day.

Watch out for little Fonterra and Federated Farmers PR flacks as they run campaigns to counter this evidence through local schools with the handing out of free milk. Tell the kids not to sip on the white kool aid and ponder the statistics on the killer nature of the cow.