Hello, everyone. I just got back from New Zealand, and although it is a beautiful country with great people, it is nice to be home.

I hope all my liberal friends missed me. I’ll use this time to touch on numerous small things before I get back into gear for my next column.

I have never met people so warm and courteous as New Zealanders. They consistently greet others on the street, even strangers. Whenever I had a map out looking up directions, it never failed that I had a Kiwi come up to ask if I needed help.

The political polarization is nowhere near like we have here, and it’s nice to have serious and mature discussions with others of a different culture.

I can say all these nice things even though New Zealand has a socialist-leaning government with the Labour Party currently in control.

This is true even though it holds only 50 of the 121 total seats. It has formed a coalition with five smaller parties to give it a total of 66 seats.

One extremely interesting agency New Zealand has is the Accident Compensation Corporation, which was created by law in 1974.

As a part of the government, it provides for personal-injury claims and covers citizens, residents and temporary visitors. Costs covered include the rehabilitation, financing, transport and treatment of the affected individual.

On the other side of the equation, people don’t have the right to sue for personal injuries sustained.

What a concept!

People are actually responsible for their own acts of carelessness. Therefore, if you spill hot coffee on yourself or you trip on someone’s sidewalk, your medical bills are paid, and you get reasonable compensation if you have to miss work for any period of time.

You don’t immediately sue anyone and everyone to pay for your own mistake. If the injury results in permanent disability, the Corporation will pay for such improvements to your home so that you can live a reasonably normal life. You will also receive a reasonable amount of compensation for as long as the disability is present.

I can’t imagine how it was possible to get such an act through when the vast majority of Parliament members are lawyers. Can you imagine the Johnnie Cochrans of the legal profession in the U.S. going for such an act?

The funding for the commission is provided by employers (on average $1.21 per $100 of payroll), self-employed individuals ($3.50 per $100 of net income) and by a levy on automobiles, which is about $200 per vehicle.

They have very severe consequences for those individuals who try to take advantage of the program. There is a range of detection methods, including individual reporting and a zero-tolerance level for fraud. People seem to be quite pleased with the program.

One night, I had a very nice meal down by the harbor, which had a very pleasant ambiance except for the Greenpeace ship docked there at the time.

At least it was where it should be, tied up to the dock for at least the week I spent in Auckland, rather than out causing trouble on the high seas.

It also seemed that they were having trouble raising funds, for I have never seen such a poorly maintained, rusting vessel.

I don’t know if it made the news back here, but a man was actually thrown off a Qantas airplane for wearing a Bush-hating shirt that said, "World’s number 1 terrorist." The airline didn’t care that the clown’s right to free speech was violated but instead cared about upsetting the other 200 or so passengers.

Finally, there seems to be a company that is willing to stand up to these idiots. Hopefully, more companies and individuals will follow Qantas’ lead.

On arrival in Los Angeles, I of course watched the president’s State of the Union address and the Democrats’ response.

Why wasn’t there more coverage about freshman Democratic Sen. Jim Webb’s response?

In addition to saying nothing constructive and shooting down the president’s proposals for energy and health-care initiatives, he actually said that the majority of U.S. troops don’t support the war!

What a liar.

It is typical of liberals to make such irresponsible statements with no basis in fact and the mainstream media giving them a free pass.

If he is an example of the Democrats’ efforts to reach across the aisle in a bipartisan way, it’s a strange start. Let’s see how much bipartisan action they actually initiate.

It will be enjoyable to see the Democrats make an attempt to lead with ideas instead of offering nothing but the whining and nastiness of the last six years.

At least the next two years will be interesting.

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Tom Sears is a professor of accounting at Hartwick College in Oneonta. He can be reached at SearsT@hartwick.edu. His column appears every other week.