tobacco

Tonight the government has used extraordinary urgency, not to ditch the ETS, but to raise taxes yet again. Again on tobacco under the pretext that they are trying to stop people from smoking and as a sop to the Maori Party. The highest tax increases were also on loose tobacco, socking the poorest even more.

Tobacco tax goes up 10 per cent from midnight, raising the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes by about a dollar to around $11, and two more hikes are in the pipeline.

The Government brought the legislation to Parliament under extraordinary urgency today and it will go through all its stages, putting in place three excise duty increases of 10 per cent – one at midnight, the next on January 1 next year and the third on January 1 2012.

Loose tobacco used by pipe smokers and to make roll your own cigarettes is being socked with a 14 per cent increase immediately to bring it into line with cigarettes.

Associate Health Minister Tariana Turia, a strong anti-smoking campaigner, introduced the bill and said the debate on it was going to be about life and death.

This is of course not at all about life and death, it is simply about taxing people who are addicted to a legal product and freely chose to suck into their lungs. If it was truly about life and death then the Government would have made cigarettes illegal and unable to be sold in New Zealand and classified tobacco as a Class A drug. As they didn’t do that it is only about revenue.

The National party used to be about personal responsibility and freedom of choice, now it is nothing more than a nanny-statist over-lord deciding what is and isn’t good for you.

Only the congenitally stupid amongst us would willingly take up smoking given all the available information about the deleterious health effects. The fact that in the past 5 years the numbers of smokers has remained constant at about 700,000 people shows that previous tax increases are meaningless, especially to the truly stupid of this country.

Since the government are going to raise taxes I thought I might share with just where those taxes will probably be going. The increased taxes will go to more Maori troughers, like Shane Bradbrook,  intent on spending as much of the poor addicted tobacco users cash as humanly possible on themselves, carting their useless arses around the sights of world so they can un-furl protest flags and promote the palestinian cause by wearing a keffiyah at the same time.These pictures are from his state-funded tours around the world saving Maori smokers, in India at the Taj Mahal, in the Washington DC and in Tokyo.

It is kind of ironic that Shane Bradbrook identifies closely with Palestinians because there are huge similarities between palestinians and Maori especially when it comes to troughing and grievances. Maori are still wailing over injustices perpetrated more than 100 years ago, palestinians are still creating greivances and living in refugee camps. Maori suck massively off the public tit and palestinians suck massively off the UN. The longest running welfare system in the world is the UNDP mission to Gaza, sucking literally billions of dollars off the world and giving it to palestinians as “aid”. The fact that the money has not made one single zak of difference to them escapes almost everyone, and Maori have had millions spent on them trying to stop them being fatties aand smokers and that too hasn’t made a zak of difference. Palestinians and Maori are perhaps the biggest beneficiaries and aggrieved peoples in the world and yet they will not make personal choices that will stop them from getting the same deal. Palestinians won;t stop chucking bombs, rocks, missiles and bullets at Israel and Maori won’t stop chugging on booze, quaffing vast quantities of poor quality food and puffing up large on as many ciggies as they can get their hands on.

The pity is that this measure won’t do a thing except increase the power of the gangs in New Zealand’s poorest neighbourhoods and make tobacco a much more profitable drug to sell illegally than even methamphetamine. This measure is only making larger profits for gangs and smaller profits for legal tobacco companies. Chinese tobacco merchants will be making a killing.

Politicians lie when they say this is to pay for the cost of smoking. The Smokefree Coalition and the Cancer Society provide figures that show that revenue from excise taxes on tobacco raise more than $900 million per annum and the government spends about $250 million on smoking related health costs. Smokers, unlike the rest of New Zealand society actually pay their own way. We should be giving these folk medals for killing themselves before they take a pension. New Zealand benefits economically from having smokers in every-way.

National disgusts me. They have betrayed their founders, their constitution and their own beliefs. It seems that this country no longer believes in personal freedoms or personal choice and no longer believes in personal responsibility for ones own actions. It is all about the state and what it believes is best for you.

PRESS RELEASE from WHALEOIL

For Immediate Release

Date: 9 March 2010

WHALEOIL to Appear Before Select Committee to Expose Ministry Incompetence & Troughing

Well known New Zealand blogger Whaleoil (Cameron Slater) is appearing before the Maori Affairs Select Committee to expose the excessive troughing of tax-payer funding by anti-tobacco groups.

“I expect the Committee to be shocked and outraged when I present my findings to the Committee tomorrow as they hold their inquiry into the tobacco industry” said Mr Slater.

“I will be bringing along a wine box of documents obtained under the Official Information Act to demonstrate a complete disregard for the accountability of taxpayer money by the Ministry of Health, alongside the incompetence of anti-tobacco groups who have received millions of dollars with little to show for it.”

“Groups like Te Reo Marama and its director Shane Kawenata Bradbrook received hundreds of thousands of taxpayer funding from the Ministry to help Maori stop smoking, yet spent most of the time on overseas junkets to exotic destinations like Hawaii (3 times), Bangkok Thailand, Durban South Africa, Helsinki in Finland and Mumbai India.

“And all the Ministry got from Mr Bradbrook was a couple of reports and a performance which resulted in a “damning” internal Ministry audit report.

It simply is not good enough for New Zealand to continue pouring $55 million into stop smoking programmes for little or no return. The only people it is helping are the NGO troughers rorting the system, who are now asking the select committee to recommend they get more money.

Of all the submitters I am the only one with zero conflicts of interests, there is nothing for me to gain or lose by my submission. The rest are either involved in receiving government money, or deciding who gets the government money or in a few cases doing both.

……….

Whaleoil

(Cameron Slater)

whaleoil@gotcha.co.nz

nicked from Oswalds site

I wonder if Cigarette manufacture is carbon neutral or carbon positive.

Cigarette Smoking is good for the environment

The last fews days have seen me expose Te Reo Marama and Shane Kawaneta Bradbook as troughers extraordinaire. The organisation so far has lightened the taxpayers pocket to the tune of almost $2 million dollars and there is more yet to come. Despite a damning audit report the Ministry of Health continued to fund Te Reo Marama to the tune of $500,000.

Yesterday I revealed that Te Reo Marama had also gone dipping in the DHB troughs for additional funding and today I will reveal an extraordinary programme that they received funding, not once, but twice for that the Outcomes report for each of the programmes show little was actually achieved.

In July 2007, just months before the damning audit report was to be released, Te Reo Marama applied for and was granted two contracts to deliver what they describe as Tika/Pono Programmes, one for Wairoa ($29,560) and one for local schools ($27,160) in the region.

These programmes are designed, according to Te Reo Marama’s description as acting as an intervention enabling maori youth to halt smoking or if not yet smoking resist the evil advertising onslaught from the multi-national tobacco companies.

Yet the Output reports suggest that the Hawkes Bay District Health Board might have better spent the $60,000 on putting up posters saying “Stop smoking you Thickies” for all the good these programmes did.

Output Report Schools
Output Report Wairoa

If you look at those reports they are actually damning. Worse if you look closely at the contracts there is far more reporting requirements stipulated than a couple of two page reports. For $60,000 the HBDHB essentially received 4 pages of output reports at a cost of $15,000 per page and no discernable or measurable reduction in smoking in Maori Boarding schools or in Wairoa. Hell’s teeth for $60,000 you could have employed a security guard full time to check school bags that would have been more effective at stopping smoking at school, or paid a bonus for the teachers to actually remove their prodigious arses from the the staff room and patrol the grounds.

Bear in mind that the HBDHB has refused to release many more documents regarding the contracts and performance and costs of Te Reo Marama.

We are still awaiting the OIA documents from NZAID and other DHB’s to see the total size of the trough that Te Reo Marama built for itself. Te Reo Marama is jut the tip of the iceberg though. Next week we will release documents that show other Stop Smoking organisations are troughing it up even worse from the Ministry of Health and reveal documents that show that ASH and the Health Sponsorship Council are amongst the worst troughers again with little measured results. On a more serious note we will show serious discrepancies in reporting of expenditure and the reluctance of the Auditor-Generals Office to get involved.

What is clear from the case of Te Reo Marama is that there is a division in the Ministry of Health that simply doles out money willy-nilly in vast quantities and then cares not a jot for any outcomes. Only when the troughing becomes obvious do they get audits done but then they bury those and continue funding.

What is also clear is that there is an organised anti-smoking lobby out there working together to push funds the way of their mates, pat each other on the back and run interference whenever someone comes poking their nose into their cozy, comfortable little state funded world.

Only the most stupid person in New Zealand would now choose to take up smoking with all the evidence that is before us. Sure once started on smoking it is an addictive product and difficult to stop but the point is that at some point an individual made a conscious  choice to have a cigarette.

The actuarial evidence would suggest that instead of maligning smokers we should in fact be congratulating them on sacrificing themselves for the better good of the nation. Their early death and paying of extra taxes ensures that there is more to go around to those smart enough to never have smoked in the first place.

Next week we will also name Ministry of Health officials who have turned a blind eye and signed off on reports that were clearly, obviously and demonstrably false in their declarations.

This is a Whale Oil Beef Hooked Exclusive series and will be running for the next few days. The reason I can’t run this story in one post is simply because it is too big. I have obtained under the OIA a large box of papers about one organisation purporting to be at the forefront of stopping Maori smoking. The only problem is that the organisation isn’t. It isn’t in the forefront of anything other than the self promotion of its principal Shane Kawenata Bradbrook and is spending up large on the taxpayer with little observable results.

On top of that WOBH has obtained an 88 page audit report (the full report and extracts will be published in subsequent posts) of the performance of Te Reo Marama which damning to say the least. Despite this the previous government kept on funding Te Reo Marama and its egregious troughing from the public purse for an additional two years.

This post serves as a preface if you will to the coming posts on Te Reo Marama and the huge wastage of public monies that have simply been used to enrich the life of Shane Kawenata Bradbrook. One other thing should be noted, whenever Shane Kawenata Bradbrook or Te Reo Marama comes under the microscope Shane Kawenata Bradbrook resorts to threats and intimidation, this blogger is used to such threats and will not be stopped from telling this story. Shane Kawenata Bradbrook also likes to say that he is mates with Pita Sharples and Tariana Turi and so “can’t be touched”. Well we will see about that shall we?

Just by way of example Te Reo Marama was established to combat Maori Smoking yet somehow Shane Kawenata Bradbrook saw fit to expend some $77,000 on international travel in the space of just three years. These figures are obtained from the OIA documents. Not only that over the past nine years under Labour Shane Kawenata Bradbrook has visited Chicago, USA in June 2000, Helsinki, Finland in August 2003, Hawaii, USA in November 2005, New York in April 2006, Washington DC in July 2006, Cairns, Australia in November 2006, Bangkok, Thailand in July 2007, Hawai again in Oct 2007, Broome, Australia in Nov 2007, Hawaii again!!! in May 2008, and Melbourne and Tuvalu in the same month, Durban South Africa in Nov 2008, Mumbai, India in March 2009, Perth, Australia in May 2009 and finally Darwin just recently in October 2009.

He has been quite the gad-about going to all those amazing places all in the name of stopping Maori smoking. All paid for by the taxpayer. Not only that Shane Kawenata Bradbrook claims all sorts of positions that there is no evidence to suggest he even holds such as being on the Executive Committee of the World Conference on Tobacco or Health. Even a Google search cannot find any evidence of such a claim.

Clearly Shane Kawenata Bradbrook thinks travelling to New York, Helsinki, India and other exotic places  must come before the good of the people. Speaking of the people let’s look at some of the statistics that Shane Kawenata Bradbrook is supposed to be trying to affect.

46% of Maori are regular smokers compared to 21% of non-Maori
The median age of Maori smoking initiation is 11.6 years
Maori of all age groups have higher smoking rates than non-Maori
Maori smoking prevalence is 50% in low socio-economic areas compared to 26% in high socio-economic areas
Maori women have the highest smoking prevalence of any ethnic group at 49%
The smoking rate of Maori females aged 25-29 is almost 4x that of non-Maori females in this age group
73% of Maori smokers use Roll your own
50% of Maori youth have smoking mothers and 48% smoking fathers

But wait there’s more…

Mortality rate for cancers overall for Maori was 77% higher than that for non-Maori during the years 2000-2004
Lung cancer is responsible for over 31% of Maori cancer deaths compared with 17% for non-Maori cancer deaths
Cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke) death rates were 2.3x higher for Maori during 2000-2004.

Source: data from the New Zealand tobacco use survey as listed in the Ministry of Health Report on Maori smoking for the Maori Affairs Select Committee 12 June 2009.

It is clear as the nose on my face that millions of dollars of taxpayers money are being wasted on organisations like Te Reo Marama and the likes of blatant fraudsters like  Shane Kawenata Bradbrook. This blog over the next few days will expose just how wasteful that spending is and has become with a particular focus on Te Reo Marama.

Tomorrow: Troughing 102 – How to keep your funding despite a damning audit report.

I have had contact with a loyal reader with a story to tell about Genesis Energy. I’ll let his words explain.

My daughter and her asthmatic boyfriend moved out to a new home and advised Genesis that they had moved into xxx Coatesville-Riverhead Highway and would like them to be their energy supplier. Genesis says thanks and sent them out a welcome letter to that address (which they received).

Now this house is one of two on a bit of land, and this is where the problems come in.

The kids can show that their address is xxx Coatesville-Riverhead Highway. – They a have tenancy agreement for that address, have their bond lodged against that address, have receipts for payment  at that address. They have NEVER been told that there address is any different, but Genesis in their infinite wisdom refer to their home as xxxA Coatesville-Riverhead Highway – because their system doesn’t allow two meters to be listed on the same address.

So at about 10.30 in the morning of the 9th July Genesis sent a contractor out to their property to disconnect power because they had not made any “application for power”. The home was clearly occupied, and there was music going, windows open and the tenant was in the shower.

The contractor didn’t make efforts to provide warning or more importantly to check if anyone inside relied on power for medical reasons, simply leaving a card on the door (addressed to “the occupier” disconnecting the power and running off (They actually saw him leaving).

Being a country home on tank water (requiring a pump) – they were left with no heating, no running water and no ability to flush the toilet.

We contacted Genesis within 15 mins of the disconnection and continued to contact them during the day, and well into the evening (the last call at 9pm lasting over an hour). During all this time we were told several times that the power had been fixed – each time it hadn’t (Genesis never thought of actually calling back and checking with the customer).

In the evening the home was too cold to remain in so the kids packed up and came to our home to sleep. Because Adam had been sitting in the cold/damp for the entire day waiting for Genesis his asthma started playing up and by the time he arrived at our home he was having trouble breathing. We could not get it better – and he ended up having to go to Northshore hospital to get it under control before it broke into a fully fledged asthma attack.

The next morning we were advised that power was restored – the kids returned to the house and (you guessed it) – there still wasn’t power.

Finally Genesis worked out that they have disconnected what ‘they’ called xxxA.

We were advised that Genesis chose to disconnect as they had it listed as a vacant possession and they do this for safety reasons.

We call bullshit as:

1 – this isn’t actually the address of the house

2 – It is very obvious that the house IS tenanted and that there was someone there at the time – this is all visible from where the card was left.

3 – The card gave a totally different reason – it was addressed to “the occupier” and that the reason was that they had made no application for power (which they had)

Power was finally restored around 1pm the following day.

I spoke to the company over two important points:

1. How can they disconnect power to a property without warning or notice to the person in the house – especially after all the issues with the death of a customer last year – do they not learn anything.
2. Compensation should be forthcoming to the tenants – after all they had been disconnected in error, had been made to wait out there for Genesis for an entire day in the cold, without water or flushing toilets. And there were many, many lost hours on the phone – driving between properties as theirs was unsuitable to sleep in, and the contribution that this made to Adam’s health subsequently requiring him to go to hospital.

I spoke to a number of people – finally finishing with Richard Gordon the “Public Affairs Manager”.

His views were interesting. He told me that the contractor has knocked on the door and verified that the house was vacant.

This is obviously untrue for all the reasons I mention above.

Then he told me that they were not entitled to any compensation as “They had told is their address was xxx Coatesville-Riverhead Highway and we don’t call it that – So its their own fault for giving us the wrong address”

I explained that Genesis could call it whatever they wanted but they gave the correct address – he would not be moved, so I told him I was going to lodge a complaint with the disputes tribunal and contact the media – He seemed quite happy or even amused with this – so I have – And that is HIS own fault.

This will in all likelihood now turn into a PR disaster for Genesis Energy. Why do so-called PR people always call people’s bluff when they say they are going to the media? Silly, silly man.

Front up Genesis Energy, admit you made a mistake and do it quick before this turns into another Jetstar.