Rewrite turned into taxing task

Price of power Science and scepticism Well and truly over it

Simon Farrow’s Economists’ English (Letters, Nov 29) made me laugh. It took me back to my days as the lead law drafter on the rewrite of the Income Tax Act.

The rewrite project was launched with great fanfare in the early 1990s. The idea was that the IRD would turn the incomprehensible language of the act into something that reasonably normal people could understand. The decade went by and nothing emerged.

I began work on the rewrite in 2000 and four years later the major part of the work was done.

It seemed to me that the IRD could not make progress on the rewrite because the place was riddled with economists, accountants, and tax lawyers.

To them, this provision made perfect sense: ‘‘This section applies to revenue account property for which an amount derived from the extraction, removal, or sale or other disposition of the revenue account property is gross income of a taxpayer under section CJ 1.’’

To me, an experienced plain language law drafter, it was the stuff of nightmares. I knew it was English, but what could it possibly mean? (And I’m not making it up – it really was section DJ 13A(1) of the ITA 1994.)

No-one at IRD or in the tax industry was grateful to me for pushing the rewrite on and actually getting something achieved. However, the lack of gratitude then is more than made up for by my having a good laugh with Simon Farrow now.

Margaret Nixon, Ngaio Neil Harrap (Letters, Nov 23) suggested that because a regulated United States market produced an average electricity kilowatt hour price of NZ17.5c, versus his 32c figure for New Zealand, we needed regulation, illustrating the dictum ‘‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’’.

The relevant August 2018 price comparisons in New Zealand currency are 20c for the US (excluding sales tax) and 25.5c (excluding GST) here. These prices have nothing to do with the merits of regulation.

The 1998 Contact Energy privatisation regrettably allowed shareholders to extract surplus value from its hydro dams through selling electricity at the (higher) marginal market clearing price, underpinning 15 years of electricity generation retail price rises to March 2014.

However, since the March 2014 year, government data show the average real retail price of generated electricity has fallen slightly.

Meanwhile, the regulated lines component, 40 per cent of the total average 29c GST-inclusive price, increased over 10 per cent. My own household’s kilowatt hour electricity price is way more than 10 per cent below its 2011 level: switching makes a difference!

Four years of flat real retail energy prices: no need to panic. Our market system needs ‘‘tweaking’’, not US-style regulation.

Clive Thorp, Kelburn

Are we the virus?

I don’t need scientists to tell me the planet is warming, I know because I ride a bike. This winter has been very warm, so warm in fact that I haven‘t had the need to wear long pants while cycling.

I’ve got drawers of thermal underwear waiting to be used. Now we are heading into summer.

What makes me laugh is the billions and billions of dollars they spend putting robots on to Mars and sending probes into space. What are they looking at? Answer: What Earth will look like if we don‘t do something more about global warming.

As they say in the movie The Matrix, an organism that takes over its host and kills it is called a virus, which is what we are doing to our planet. Are we the virus? Have we passed the point of no return? Do we need a nuclear winter to stop this warming? Can we save the planet without nuclear destruction?

As I sit here with my energyefficient lightbulb and my reusable shopping bag, I feel safe in the knowledge I’ve got drawers full of thermal underwear just waiting to be used. Roger Wright, Hastings Of course we need scientific scepticism on climate change, as Bruce Kohn proclaims (Letters, Nov 29).

Scepticism is the basis of science, ‘‘. . . for by doubting we are led to questions, by questioning we arrive at the truth’’. So why object to the editorial (Quick! Save the planet, Nov 28)?

There is already plenty of scepticism around climate science. Current advice to New Zealand councils is to plan for sea-level rise of just under a metre by 2100, but other estimates range up to more than three metres. Scientists are working towards the truth.

Kohn’s real objection is that you reject unscientific climate-change ‘‘scepticism’’, the kind of orchestrated nonsense that has sown doubt for 30 years or more. Which is why you now say we ‘‘might be able to hold global warming to 1.5C’’. Good editorial, good decision, thank you.

Kerry Wood, Wellington Seriously, after 33 years we still see the Commando movie on prime-time TV. For God’s sake can we have a movie we haven’t seen over and over. I’m sure then the ratings will improve.

James Patience, Woodridge