Centre-left agrees joint education budget (Dagsavisen)

The Labour Party, Socialist Left Party and Centre Party have demonstrated how the centre-left alliance can be cemented over time. In the Storting’s Education Committee the three parties negotiated their way to a penny-for-penny agreement on the education budget. Despite the fact that the agreement does not have a chance of being adopted by the Storting, the parties of the budding centre-left alliance emphasize that it is important for them to show that they can cooperate. They believe effective cooperation in the Storting’s various committees can provide a platform on which to build a more formal collaboration, such as a coalition government.

Director General of Public Prosecutions wants to keep SEFO (Nationen)

The Special Police Investigation Commission (SEFO), the body designed to investigate alleged police misconduct, has come in for fierce criticism, with both politicians and the public expressing doubts about and lack of confidence in its decisions. Yet despite this, the Director General of Public Prosecutions, Tor-Aksel Busch, wants to keep the SEFO as it is today. Mr Busch is therefore on a collision course with the Police Directorate and the Police Union, which are backing proposals to transfer the investigation of police officers accused of misconduct to a newly created, nationwide investigation unit. Last year the SEFO brought charges against just two officers out of a total of 591 cases.

Power rationing on the cards this winter (Aftenposten)

Petroleum and Energy Minister Einar Steensnæs has called on the Norwegian people and businesses to join forces in an immediate voluntary effort to cut electricity consumption. Turn off the lights and turn down the heating. Everyone who is able should switch to wood for heating. Industry should switch from electricity to oil for heating purposes, and offices should turn off the lights at night. The reason is that the level of water in the reservoirs supplying Norway’s hydro-electric power stations has fallen to a record low. Mr Steensnæs is not ruling out the necessity of rationing electricity as the winter wears on.

Regional health authorities told to borrow cash to pay for care (Dagbladet)

Health Minister Dagfinn Høybråten has no extra cash up his sleeve, and has told a reluctant hospital sector to solve its financial crisis by arranging a working capital credit facility with one of the high-street banks in order to pay day-to-day running costs. The aim is to prevent the hospitals’ straitened financial circumstances having too serious an impact on the level of patient care they provide. The Ministry of Health has explained that a working capital credit facility is a bank "overdraft", with interest set at the current market rate. The recently approved national budget for next year does not include any provisions to pay for the interest expenses such credit facilities would incur.

Call for amnesty for illegal immigrants (Verdens Gang)

While the police are spending millions of kroner to track down illegal immigrants, the Norwegian Organization for Asylum Seekers (NOAS) has called for several thousand of them to be given an amnesty in Norway. "Giving an amnesty to people who have lived here illegally for several years is something the politicians should consider. This also applies to asylum seekers who cannot be sent back to their homelands, such as Iraqi Kurds," said NOAS secretary general Morten Tjessem. This call from NOAS comes at the same time as Operation Advent, the biggest hunt for illegal immigrants the police have ever mounted. In the past few days alone, 40 people found to be illegally in the country have been expelled.

Norway under pressure to change military strategy (Klassekampen)

Norway is under pressure from Nato to make significant changes in the Norwegian Armed Forces’ priorities. All the changes relate to measures enabling Norway to attack targets in foreign countries. One of the measures is to increase stock-piles of guided air-to-ground missiles. Defence Minister Kristin Krohn Devold has already accepted Nato’s demands – without referring the matter to the Storting.

Government told to speed up installation of train safety system (Aftenposten)

The opposition parties in the Storting, the Labour Party, Progress Party, Socialist Left Party and Centre Party, have once again joined forces to inflict a defeat on the Government. The opposition is demanding the immediate installation of the GSM-R safety system on the railways. The Government wants to put the contract out to tender. The opposition claims this would delay the project by a year.

1. Worth Noting

• Lars Fause, chief public prosecutor in Troms and Finnmark, has indicated that it may be possible to reopen the police investigation into the 1982 Mehamn air crash. But at the same time he emphasized that the statute of limitations had already expired. Up to two kilos of body parts were hosed overboard from the salvage vessel which raised the wreckage of the aircraft from the sea, according to one witness.
  (Aftenposten)
• So far this year police and customs officials in Norway and Sweden have seized 1.2 million Rohypnol tablets, with a street value of more than NOK 230 million (sold individually). Most of the pills were destined for the Norwegian market.
  (Aftenposten)
• The Norwegian Centre for Gender Equality published its equality barometer today. The already extremely low proportion of women in business has fallen still further. Many of the largest and best known Norwegian companies still have no women on their boards of directors.
  (Vårt Land)
• Several of Norsk Hydro’s international oil exploration projects have ended in costly failure. The company has now run out of cash, and has therefore decided to pull out of a major gas project in Venezuela. This year Norsk Hydro has invested NOK 1.8 billion on oil exploration projects abroad, and NOK 600 million in Norway.
  (Dagens Næringsliv)
• Former Labour minister Tore Tønne has been paid NOK 1.5 million for helping Kjell Inge Røkke to take over the troubled Kværner group. The job is not thought to have taken more than six weeks.
  (Dagbladet)

2. Today’s comment from Aftenposten

According to unconfirmed reports, the Government has apparently decided to appoint former Foreign Minister Bjørn Tore Godal as Norway’s next ambassador to Germany. It is a good choice, because it gives Norway a diplomatic representative in Berlin with considerable clout. Mr Godal brings to the job extensive experience as Trade Minister, Foreign Minister and Defence Minister, as well as membership of a political network that also includes the social democrats who govern perhaps the most influential country in Europe today. The appointment is unusual, and has been met with the usual chorus of criticism from career diplomats’ union representatives. This criticism should not be dismissed out of hand. The Foreign Ministry would indeed be weakened if its officials were to be excluded from senior diplomatic positions – as happened recently at Norway’s EU delegation in Brussels. For this reason such external appointments must be an exception, and must be based on the individual’s greater weight in terms of authority and competence. The selection of Mr Godal meets these conditions better than previous party political appointments. He will be able to promote and defend Norwegian interests in an important European capital. It would therefore be wrong of Norway not to make use of his extensive foreign policy experience in an international role. In this field Norway does not exactly suffer from an embarrassment of riches. It is also right that Foreign Minister Jan Petersen, a Conservative, is now showing a much greater degree of generosity towards a former Labour counterpart than the Labour Party in its day showed towards former Conservative Prime Minister Jan P. Syse.