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Distribution is key

October 10, 2022 by emweb

I want to vote for Labour again. I do. But the fact is, Labour is a nominally left-wing party, and that makes it hard. Because why would I vote for a nominal party?

You have to ask yourself, what sort of society have we created when a government is more afraid of a few rich people that of a great many poorer?

There are many problems with New Zealand, but most of them can be solved by just sorting the main one: equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth. And that’s what the true left concerns itself with the most, which is what generates so much fear amongst the wealthy.

New Zealand Labour has never had the nerve or bravery to ever really address this issue, apart from a little fearful noodling about at the edges. Now once again we’re heading into an election cycle where the only consideration is to not startle the centre with any prospect of any real change.

When Jacinda Ardern first ascended to the Prime Ministership, she outlined commitments to national wellbeing and social issues including child poverty, homelessness and the mental health crisis. Labour might maintain progress has been made, but really? Do you feel these things have improved?

If Labour has, why hasn’t the government provided compelling evidence? Who is convinced?

I believe these promises were heartfelt. So what, or who, stopped any progress? It was either fellow ministers, the rich lobby or that fearsome, yet all powerful Middle New Zealand.

Possibly Ardern’s most risible mistake was declaring there would never be capital gains tax. It’s a terrible mistake for any politician to say ‘never’. And Ardern is very smart, so what on earth led to this ridiculous position, and even worse, the public statement of it? We may never know. But that, I feel, was the point at which this government really staked its position as being afraid to make meaningful change, and that it was, in fact, already prostrated at the feet of powerful and wealthy lobbyists.

And then Labour selfishly decided it had the votes to rule alone.

In retrospect, it appears that was Labour’s last brave act, even though I believe it was foolhardy to exclude the Greens.

Some ministers have read Piketty’s Capitol in the 21st Century – it’s a long volume, but if you boil it down, the message is simple: what Piketty calls ‘rentiers’ – landlords – lock up capitol while they impoverish their tenants. Their property does nothing for the nation while keeping wealth from circulating.

Ardern may be afraid that her New Zealand legacy might be that she was ‘the COVID Prime Minister’. And she, and her ministers, handled that extremely well, as evidenced by New Zealand having few deaths from the deadly disease. (I personally lost three relatives in the UK to COVID, by contrast.)

If Ardern wants to be remembered for anything else, I think she’s lost her chance to be bold, as that would have been at the beginning of the second term, since now apparently New Zealanders would rather vote for a human thumb than for her. Is there time to put the house in order before the next election? If that was done well, perhaps that would actually get through to voters.

In essence, Labour has the following problems:

No clear vision or message. (As a microcosm, look at the Auckland mayoral campaign. Winner centre-rightist Wayne Brown appears to have had so few actual policies, he was afraid to talk to media once he land-slid in. But he campaigned on simple messages that anyone could understand. Meanwhile, Efeso Collins had no clear messages apart from free transport, which made everyone think ‘shit, the bloody rates would have to go up even more to pay for it!’ Also, Efeso and his backers failed to mobilise the young vote while the old vote went to Brown. You can mobilise the young vote with messages of hope – the old react more to messages of fear. Why can’t the left understand this, as the right so clearly does?

Lack of bravery to push the issues it supposedly believes in.

Terrible advice (one example: Three Waters is a good idea, but a good idea badly sold is no longer a good idea. If the policy is designed to protect people from rate rises and make the system safer, why in hell has Labour been unable to get this message across? Instead, it’s just assisting all its critics by supplying the ammunition).

Inability to convey the successes it has had in fulfilling any of its aims.

If Labour is spending a fortune on advisers and specialists, maybe consider firing them all. They’ve been next to useless for decades already. Labour needs no help in digging the hole it is in any deeper. Why pay people to help deepen this hole? It makes no sense.

I like Jacinda Adern. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and I absolutely believe her heart is true. I believe the praise heaped on her beyond these shores is well deserved.

But the problems at home need addressing.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments
Lefter 74 ~ Ashamed.

September 21, 2014 by emweb

The results are in. Not so much that the left was defeated as the floor was wiped with them.

How does that make me feel?

Ashamed.

Ashamed that so many New Zealanders have so emphatically supported a regime that cares virtually nothing for their New Zealand countrymen with little: low incomes, poor housing, substandard diets and healthcare, little access to education. Cynically, New Zealanders voted in droves – again – for the former currency trader, trusting him despite considerable evidence that he has been deeply involved in misleading New Zealanders (he’d only step down if it was ‘proven’), involved in dirty politicking, involved in character assassination.

Voted in droves for a party that has no plans for the next three years apart from ‘business as usual’. That ‘usual’ business has been the creation of a whole new class: the Working Poor; bolstering the economic reliance on primary industries beyond everything else, and despite the dramatic recent falls in dairy prices; making it easier for the wealthy to gain ever more wealth while further victimising those desperate for work while taking away their rights; further victimising those struggling on diminishing benefits; making it harder for anyone but the rich to benefit from full tertiary educations; selling off our assets in land and farms and selling off our sovereignty by cuddling up to the TPPA; selling State Houses out from under people’s feet so developers can make fortunes off what used to be Government land built and maintained for the benefit of its peoples.

To me, the most telling image of the election was Hone Harawira’s distraught expression in a draughty hall up north. The chairs were white plastic; little kids were running around. Then, National’s election HQ on the Auckland waterfront: well-dressed people, descended on the city from Remuera Heights, holding champagne flutes. Self-congratulatory young men with tailored hair, women wearing Zambezi or worse, happily dining on some flash meat I’d never even heard of, basking in their privilege.

Well done you. How smug you must feel.

However, the blame can’t be laid only at the feet of the voting population …

Labour, what the fuck?! I’ve been saying all this for years in these blogs now. If ever there was a time to redesign your party, philosophy, structure – everything –that time is now.

Actually, that time was a decade ago, but it’s even more needed now.

Because I was shocked that Helen Clark disappeared off to the UN without even starting to set up a decent evolution in her absence, or the beginnings of a succession plan. I had admired her greatly until three years before. That’s when I started thinking more critically of Labour, because Labour only just won that previous election, but didn’t seem to notice how its support had ebbed, didn’t seem to be mindful of it. Labour’s incumbents seemed oblivious to wanting to do anything about it. It was like they weren’t taking it seriously.

Now, after six years in opposition, Labour still hasn’t addressed the fundamental issues of what the party means to New Zealand in the 21st Century. It has pole position to do this:

What is Left?

How can the Left benefit New Zealand?

How can Labour encapsulate those benefits so that people can clearly understand them?

Instead, we get a bellicose Cunliffe yelling that he’s going to lead us into the next election. From where I’m standing, that sounds like the Charge of the Light Brigade – straight down the valley into the fire of the assembled artillery.

I wasn’t the only one on the left who shuddered, I’m sure.

Helen Clark polled just under 35% when she stepped down. Goff went down to just under 28%, and moved aside for David Shearer. And Shearer polled at 35% before stepping aside.

Mr Cunliffe, you said the only poll that mattered was Election Day.

That poll put you and your party at 24.8%, David … 24.8! Even areas that voted Labour candidates in with healthy majorities were giving their Party Votes to National. How in hell do you work out anyone going ‘Shearer – tick. National – tick’?!

The future of Labour, if it’s anywhere, is not with David Cunliffe. It’s with Jacinda Adern, Grant Robertson, Stuart Nash who did so well in Napier, and with Kelvin Davis and with other under-50s. You Labour over -50s owe it to New Zealand decency to help guide these people into dominant roles, and to help guide the party not the future. You have, so far, let us down.

A party I admired would be fostering people like these, not pretending they don’t exist and/or easing them inexorably down the list.

Labour, it’s time to fundamentally sort out your shit: Philosophy – left-wing and progressive, because National has won the Centrist ground – and look where it’s taking us.

Structure.

Messaging.

Media relationships.

I keep using this phrase and it’s boring even me. But it’s still true: none of this is rocket science … so why in hell can’t you do it?

Meanwhile, those of the left need to be talking, engaging, demonstrating and collaborating. This is what I charge us with – or we may as well all just leave now.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: election,Labour lost,Maori,New Zealand left politics right Labour National the world | No Comments
Lefter 70 ~ The country should be rousing about housing

May 16, 2014 by emweb

Are you pleased with the budget? It does nothing to counter the crazy rise of house prices, most notably in Auckland. It does nothing to make more houses affordable, though at least National has been putting some thinking into the issue. What National’s plan amounts to is to allow in immigrants at the current rate (which is escalating) despite evidence that immigration is one of the primary factors in pushing up house prices, while also keeping the pressure on house availability, which is constrained. Why? Because rich people own houses, and they stand to gain from this. Meanwhile, National is changing the rules for state housing: a state house used to be for life, in a contract signed with the Crown. The contract changed a few years ago, to be with the government, and went to a three-year term … except nobody ever saw one of these contracts. Certainly, nobody was told about these contracts – not even the tenants of state houses.

Glen Innes and other poor Auckland suburbs are currently having their state houses moved off, to make the land available to developers. This is the other part of National’s brilliant plan. Contrary to the Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan, which aims to keep Auckland within its bounds and make it denser, National’s brilliant idea is to scrape the state houses off their sites, getting rid of the tenants in the process. Fifteen families in Glen Innes got their marching orders last week – 90 days to get out. This process, largely kept out of the papers, allows developers to build those godawful suburbs you see everywhere. Simultaneously, National intends opening up land on the verges of Auckland to developers. In other words, so Auckland can sprawl more.

If you think Auckland has problems with traffic congestion and a pretty crap public transport system, it’s because of that very sprawl. At least the council is trying to deal with this, by improving public transport and trying to institute denser housing developments. This is why the council is at odds with National – letting Auckland sprawl more only suits one group. You guessed it: the rich. They get to make huge profits from the houses and land. And yes, the rich vote National (or worse). The greedy always want more – with National, they get it.

National working for the average New Zealander? Not bloody likely. Your government is evicting poor families to add to Auckland’s problems by contributing to sprawl for the benefit of one of the lower forms of life: property developers.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: Maori | No Comments
Left 64 ~ Labour leadership: where’s Jacinda?

August 23, 2013 by emweb

I feel I have to weigh in on Labour’s leadership. Everybody else is. Do you judge people by their faces? There’s a theory that by around 30, your life experience etches itself on your face so it more truly reflects your personality. Look happy or calm, that’s because you have been happy or calm a lot and so on.

Andrew Little looks a bit bitter, don’t you think? Grant Roberts looks like a baby. Cunliffe looks like a Cheshire cat, sure, but not like negative experiences have dictated his life – while Shane Jones somehow looks defeated already.

But of this somewhat unsatisfying foursome, Jones would be my pick if he made a run (I don’t expect him to). He’s savvy, clever, quick and a good debater.

Jones would help get Maori back on side and a lot of men, anyway, would forgive him the porn thing. The stupid thing there, sorry to say, was that Jones used his ministerial credit card to purchase porn in a hotel – not the porn itself. Under the surface, that’s what many guys would actually think, since the figures of men actually looking at porn is high, and just not generally admitted to. So it’s disingenuous (if awful) for many men to castigate Jones for looking at porn.

But using that credit card showed an incredible naivety or, worse perhaps, simple lack of thought, and that’s a worry – attention to detail was Helen Clark’s big strength. I don’t think he has that – or at least, he didn’t. Has he now?

The likely winner is Cunliffe. Grant may have the numbers outside caucus, but it’s caucus that brought Shearer down. Cunliffe has caucus support, he’s smart and he’s combative – he would certainly take the fight to Key, which Key might be anxious about (not a bad thing). But Cunliffe has a mean streak and he’s made dedicated enemies because of it.

Some people reckon Grant could get the numbers to trump Cunliffe, but the problem is I don’t think he’d get the vote of the country come election time unless Grant really ups his game and looks much more decisive in front of the camera. He needs to develop some gravitas.

Yes, Grant is gay. This is hardly insurmountable. The CEO of Apple is gay and he’s widely perceived as effective, decisive and at the top of his game.

Being gay is ever more tolerated in New Zealand (thank goodness). It’s not a bad thing at all as far as many women are concerned, and even for NZ blokes most will admit the onus is on effective leadership, however perceptions around sexuality may make them feel. The church isn’t exactly on side with Labour anyway, thanks to all the advances for gay rights championed by Labour – and this means the most challenging sector of Labour’s traditional base for a gay leader is South Auckland Polynesians, who are already feeling alienated.

With smart handling, none of this is impassable – but currently Grant, to my eyes anyway, simply doesn’t look ready.

But I wish Jacinda Adern would put her hat in the ring. Jacinda’s name is already being mentioned by people, including in the media, as a contender for leadership. Sure, many would say she’s not ready (I think she is –many people just aren’t ready for her). My point is, if Adern goes for leadership now, it puts the party, Labour supporters and the country on notice that she’s a future contender for leadership. Adern is not that far past 30, she’s already incredibly accomplished, smart and successful, and she already has enviable international experience. And Adern is assured and erudite in front of the camera.

If she does put her hat in the ring, she will draw some support. She probably won’t win – but it puts the country on notice she’s a possible future leader. Which I think is a really good thing, to give many people hope for a revived Labour that can be relevant for people under (and over!) 50.

If Cunliffe wins, he might keep Adern at arm’s length as a possible rival, but is that such a bad thing? He’s 20- years older. She’s going to outlast him anyway, one way or another. Or he might, if he’s as clever as people say he is, keep her close, to help him engage with younger voters. Either way is not so bad, I reckon.

And if Grant wins (I’d be most keen on him upping his game and winning) he would probably keep Jacinda Adern close anyway. He’s smart, she’s smart. Their ages are fairly close and they’d make a wonderful combo, along with other young and effective Labour MPs. The party would really appear infused with fresh blood, which it desperately needs. The blood’s there, it’s just mostly invisible. Move into the light…

The other thing like about Jacinda is that she’s not scared of the Greens. Shearer couldn’t seem to take them seriously and Goff treated them as irrelevant even when they had become clearly relevant. And Adern and Turei, now that’s a power combo!

Problem is, at the end of the day, Labour still doesn’t seem to know what it’s about. And if Labour doesn’t, nobody else does.

Whoever wins, I still want to know what Labour actually represents. Succinctly and clearly. Please!

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: Maori | 2 Comments
Lefter 63 ~ the Key to failure

July 1, 2013 by emweb

It’s a salient feature of New Zealand politics that personalities – and personal issues – soon overtake actual politics. Depressingly, this fact doesn’t seem limited to New Zealand but let’s not go there (Australia’s Labor pains have been embarrassing as well as divisive). Regardless, as John Key’s incipient nastiness increasingly emerges, so does a little desperation. They are, of course, related.

The National Party has been gambling on increasing it’s majority to it can govern alone, so has been steadily eroding and emasculating the Māori Party. Actively or not, it has also presided over the decline and fall of United.

Meanwhile, National has been implementing it’s standard Tory-style policies of privatisation and of further elevating the elevated classes (of which Key is a salient member, having clawed his way to wealth via the immoral and counterproductive route of currency trading). Everything is up for privatisation. Mines, transport, primary industries sure – that’s standard stuff for the right. It doesn’t work, but that’s hardly the point. The point is that when you privatise, the wealthy make more money, and then when it fails, the burden is carried by the rest of the population, then baled out by government using the tax money paid by what’s left of the besieged middle class. And since the very rich pay bugger-all tax and have loads of money, it doesn’t effect them. It’s actually another oppressive measure disguised as ‘economic necessity’ that further erodes the middle class while doing no good whatsoever to the underclass.

But privatising education, and even enquiries into domestic abuse? That strikes me as a new plateau of disdainful cynicism. Fortunately the Glenn inquiry is collapsing under its own weight, making National look as bad as, oh, say an underhand deal with a casino. Which in itself is an unspoken poverty and stupidity tax.

Anyway, as the Maori Party grinds itself into an impossible position, and Dunn reaps the rewards of his own lack of a clear position (which has, till now, always allowed him to deal with anyone who’ll have him), National needs to pull some dramatic moves to ensure it can win the next election.

Hence the u-turn (an apt metaphor) on Auckland’s transport woes. This is quite a desperate act, but it acknowledges the power of Auckland. Previously the government was diametrically opposed to the left-leaning council helmed by Len Brown. The mayor must applaud the shift, because he gets what he wants, but it also puts him in the invidious position of being in bed with Key. Let’s just wait and see how this all pans out. Personally, I think Len Brown is just a populist jerk who enjoys the limelight, but I guess the jury is out till the next local election.

However, the real worry is that Key’s ploy may just work. Aucklanders are rightly pissed off at the sorry state of transport, and it’s expensive to fix, but it has to be done. If Key looks like he’s behind it, it will bring back his wavering middle supporters.

Meanwhile, in the Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election, Labour retained its majority but the most important fact is that, while Mana (avowedly left-wing) trumped the Maori Party, together they got more votes than Labour. The by-election was both a triumph for the left and a clear signal of where NZ Maori sympathies still lie.

Can you see the two Māori parties coalescing? I can’t. If Pita Sharples sorts himself out and steps down and Tariana Turia also goes, Tu Ururoa Flavell takes the (co-?) helm. He still needs to sort out his differences with Harawira, which may not be possible. If anything, the two Māori-focused have become more opposed philosophically: one of collaborationist versus one embracing resurgence of the distinctive Māori culture. An accord between the two Māori-representative parties would make them a force to be reckoned with once again, but it may also be a blind alley. There’s a distinct place in our culture for the political and cultural values of Hone Harawera’s party, but the Māori Party’s aims have become far from distinct. And it’s hard for lap dogs to change their ways.

Mana leans more towards Labour (which has been, of course, traditionally more affiliated to Māori, and which has certainly done Māori a lot more good over the decades than National). National will have to move to shore up the Māori Party’s position – and this will go down like a cup of cold sick with many of its remaining supporters and make them look even worse. Key’s only option is to try and further demonise Mana.

So wait and see what Key does in this space.

But does Labour deserve our support? My own support is never available unconditionally. Labour has done some unforgivable things in the past, including the Foreshore and Seabed act that created the completely unnecessary rift between the left and Maori in the first place. And there were lots of personal issues involved in that process as well.

But sure, we can move on. I’ve said it before: Labour is nowhere near left wing enough for me but I’d rather live under Labour (and/or the Greens) than anyone else.

But Labour with who at the top? Shearer is on notice, apparently. I think he’s a nice bloke. So? In the spin when he was running for Labour’s top job, we heard he ‘stood up to warlords’ in African climes. There’s little evidence of that mettle back here in New Zealand. And he’s still getting really basic things completely wrong.

News bytes, David. I paraphrase but fairly recently, John Key accused the Labour Green joint announcements as wacky evidence of the extreme left.

This is the kind of thing National supporters will gleefully seize on and brandish at every opportunity. So what do we get in return?

Shearer said ‘that’s just a line’. Blah.

So National supporters can yell at me ‘wacky extreme left’ (quite truthfully) and I get … Nothing. I know this kind of thing is rubbish, but it’s important rubbish – especially in the age of instant social media.

It reminds me of my criticisms of Phil Goff. I conceded he may have been a very intelligent and worthwhile leader (and indeed, he proved this in his vigorous, if frighteningly solo, election campaign) but wrote that his advisors patently needed firing.

It seems they haven’t lost their jobs.

Increasingly, the next election looks like National’s to lose. But I’d rather have it Labour, Greens and Mana’s to win.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: Maori | No Comments
Lefter 62 ~ Welcome to Mexico!

May 20, 2013 by emweb

From Texas to Mexico … I love Mexican food. Mexican beer can be great, tequila has its uses … Mexican music is awesome. The weather sounds good (haven’t been there) and the beaches look fab, in films anyway.

Then of course there’s the drugs, the kidnappings, the drug-related violence and lawlessness, the terrible scourge of widespread low income, the corresponding shanty towns and slums — and the child poverty rate that is at a shameful rate of 26%.

And some of these things we have in common. New Zealand also has some excellent beer, the weather can be great, we have excellent beaches, some pretty good music… drugs don’t exactly rule most communities but they certainly rule some, and the corruption that goes hand in hand is at about a commensurate rate.

But where a correlation is stronger is child poverty. New Zealand has a lesser rate than Mexico. One percent less. Relieved?

You shouldn’t be. If you ever needed evidence that this government doesn’t care about its people, this should be it: 25% of our kids live in poverty. It’s got worse in National’s term – the NZ rate in 2006-2007 was at a still shameful 22%.

Unfortunately, there’s plenty more evidence of this government’s shameful lack of concern for the citizens it pretends to represent.

For example, let’s talk about Auckland. Like it or not, Auckland is the economic powerhouse of the country. Even if most of our wealth does come from farms and other sources with a land-based provenance, it either goes through the port of, or is administered from, or is somehow otherwise touched by, Auckland.

The Auckland Council has a plan for sustaining growth for the Queen City. Unfortunately, the council has a nominal lefty for a mayor in Len Brown, and the National Government does not like Len Brown. So the Key Government has an alternative plan for Auckland. It’s about as opposite as you can get from the council’s Unitary Plan. Who do you think is going to win this?

Interestingly (or it should be) is that Auckland has growth plans – almost nowhere else in the country does. If other NZ places had growth plans, Auckland’s wouldn’t be so important. Or so necessary. It’s a tacit acceptance that every other region of New Zealand is stagnating or worse.

Auckland Council’s plan isn’t perfect, but does, sensibly, try and limit the growth outwards of this massive, sprawling city by allowing for higher density housing within current city limits. You know, like the housing in most big cities of the world. High density housing can actually be done very well, and has been done very well, in various places. But it does require thinking through.

Shame it’s not going to happen. National’s plan, you’d think, would be written for the benefit of the people. You know, those very people among whom sits that startling and shameful figure for child poverty. But it’s not – it may as well have been written by developers. That’s who it suits. Developers put money into land to ‘develop’, making for themselves a massive profit.

National’s plan makes more land available on the outskirts of Auckland, which developers want, simplifies the consent process (which developers want), says virtually nothing about public transport while extending routes to work ever further, allocates more money to roading and, most cynically of all perhaps, has created a 3 cents per litre tax rise per year on petrol for three years. This will pay for more roading. More roads, more cars, more petrol, more tax, more roading … It just goes around generating money, and congestion, for Aucklanders.

Key could care less. He probably gets home to his Remmers mansion by private helicopter anyway.

This petrol tax bill was put through under urgency.

Meanwhile, Pacific Island Aucklanders have been shown (by the Salvation Army) to have been hardest hit by this recession. Anyone surprised?

Money first, people last. And we voted Key in.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments
Lefter 60 ~ Great Track Record

February 12, 2013 by emweb

So, have you been looking back at National’s triumphs over the last term? It’s a pretty impressive record. New Zealanders voted for a party with money sense, you see, to get them through tough times.

Shame it hasn’t paid off. One iota. Unless you’re in the wealthy minority.

First of all, you get countries out of recessions by boosting employment. National has resoundingly failed to do this while simultaneously widening the gap between the haves and have nots by giving the better-off a tax break they didn’t need.

Is this a government that cares about all its people? Demonstrably not.

Luckily it has partners. OK, maybe not for much longer. Under National’s embrace, ACT and Maori have almost ceased to be viable parties, because National gambolled on the undeserved electoral love it maintained through the first term to be big enough to govern without them in the third.

Woops.

What do you do when things look bad? Well, you can fix things, like Labour has always done. Labour got New Zealand through the Napier earthquake, the Great Depression and World War Two. Labour, in the early Noughties, left us with a much maligned ‘Nanny State’ that had employment at a record high and money in the bank. But people didn’t like that, even though it was being clearly forecast that a major recession was on its way.

Or you can go the other way and get people to focus on an external threat, real or imagined, to take attention away from internal dissatisfaction. Germany’s Hitler chose the Jews. England’s Thatcher chose some miserable islands no one had heard of and the under-gunned, and safely outclassed, Argentinians. Australia chose the terrifying bogeyman of the starving and destitute refugee.

John Key recently went this way too, demonstrating the incredible depth of his imagination. That being no depth, and no imagination. John Howard in Australia picked on lowly, impoverished and desperate people in leaky boats heading, purportedly, for Australia, playing on White Australia’s fears to such an extent they actually believed a human tidal wave was going to overwhelm them. Australia can’t afford to help people, you see. Unfortunately, it worked.

It worked so well, Julia Gillard, even though she’s Labor (sic), carried on the policy, widely condemned by humanitarian agencies the world over, to maintain her own support. So Australia has been rounding up the tiny numbers of refugees who actually get that far and putting them in inhospitable and distant camps where they commit suicide, go on hunger strike and sew their mouths shut. Welcome to the free world.

Now John Key has seemingly joined in. He reckons New Zealand could take 150 a year from Australia’s concentration camps, thereby condoning what White Australia is doing, and worse, might even send some refugees there himself. Stunning. Way to go, Key. (His own mother was a refugee. Doesn’t seem to matter. Luckily she arrived when there were still state houses and a fully functioning state education system. If she tried that now, she’d be in a sweltering camp on Nauru.)

On that note, National has totally sorted out the teacher’s pay, right? National introduced a scheme that has been a ‘rolling maul’. Of utter disaster. The twit who presided over this is still there (Hekia Parata – she might be incompetent but at least she’s Maori and a woman, two things National needs). She now has Stephen (re)Joyce as her titular boss. So far, nothing’s happened. Check this guy out, he’s your next National Prime Minister. What has NovaPay actually cost the country? We don’t really know. Yet. Perhaps we never will. It certainly has galvanised a typically anti-National bloc (teachers) against National. Good work.

Meanwhile, joining the catalogue of dodgy National MPs in office (a group that includes Nick Smith) is Maurice Williamson, who has dealings, as a director, with a company contracted to Mainzeal. Which just collapsed like a house of cards in an earthquake.

Prime Minister Key approved Construction Minister Maurice Williamson’s directorship of a company involved with failed building company Mainzeal. Mainzeal’s collapse is already costing jobs up and down the country. This is an incredible conflict of interest: a Minister of Construction on the board of a construction company!

Doesn’t matter. Need I remind you that former National Prime Minister Jenny Shipley was on Mainzeal’s board of directors? Funny, that.

Then new Speaker, National’s ‘I need to try and be non-partisan’ David Carter refused permission for three MPs to host a parliamentary function for Benny Wenda, a United Kingdom-exiled West Papuan leader agitating against Indonesia’s iron-fisted control of his country, which it invaded several decades ago. Wenda has never been refused a parliamentary function anywhere else in the world; then he came to good ol’ liberal ‘integrated’ New Zealand.

Just to add to New Zealand’s socially enterprising liberal image on the world stage, Prime Minister John Key said on 11th February that providing New Zealanders with a living wage is not high on the Government’s agenda.

Well, who’d have thought? I’m shocked. OK, hardly. The wellbeing of New Zealanders, if they’re not rich white men, has never been on Key’s agenda.

Mainzeal was just the type of company that should be rebuilding Christchurch, right? Two years on, and how’s Christchurch doing?

Napier was rebuilt in two years. In the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, house prices keep going up. Unemployment is high, poverty increases, housing is short. Yet there are no houses to buy, state housing is being shut down and the land turned over to developers so they can profit from it, including at Hobsonville in John Key’s electorate which was supposed to have had social housing as a component. Doesn’t matter. All while the wealthy keep speculating their property prices up and borrowing more off the back of it, living the life of Riley.

Building houses employs people, as well as … creating homes for New Zealanders to live in. Hardly rocket surgery.

But the beneficiary figures dropped – why? Because people are leaving for Australia, where they no longer have basic rights despite their taxes going into Australian government coffers. Or they’re here, but in certain programs that don’t figure in the figures.

But Key does listen to some people. Rich people. Here, he’s equal opportunity – it doesn’t matter if you’re rich New Zealander or a rich American from New Line Cinema getting a deal from a banana republic to make even more money from a union-busting movie maker (Peter Jackson). Why, you could be a rich German with a dodgy track record that includes trading convictions, peddling material you don’t have the copyright for, or a rich Chinese wheeler dealer. Doesn’t matter. You’ll have his ear, and he’ll bend over backwards to proffer New Zealand at you.

How does Key take criticism about any of this? Yes, in public he’s increasingly nasty, mean and short tempered. He’s feeling the pressure. He can’t work out why people don’t love him anymore.

I can.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments
Lefter 59 ~ The promise of 2013

January 24, 2013 by emweb

What do you think National will do this year? Let me lay a few predictions on you, cynical as they might first seem.

Strangely, New Zealand’s unemployment figures keep going up but there are less people on the benefit. This has actually been delivered as some kind of government success, but apply logic. With unemployment rising, there are more people in need, for sure.

So where are they? Some gave up and moved to Australia, where they now have diminished civil rights and no access to social welfare or medical treatment. Even though their taxes go into Australian government coffers. There’s a National Party success right there. And there are other ways of fudging the benefit figures.

But you haven’t seen anything yet – wait till they get to work on the sickness benefit. Our ‘government’ (is that what you call it?) reckons the sickness benefit is some kind of rort in order to get a more money. In some cases this may well be true – the majority, though, of people on sickness are victims in genuine need, getting a little more while they cope with illness, medication and all sorts of other stresses.

Meanwhile, far flung schools are getting teachers who have only had six weeks training. Six weeks training!

To this government, people in far flung communities mean little. They’re marginal already, so why not marginalise them further? Who cares? (We all should. This is utterly unconscionable in a modern society.) Rich people live in cities and send they’re children to private schools. The wealthy land owners and farmers in the country use boarding schools, as they always have done. Every one else … well, they simply don’t matter.

Key will continue to dismantle state housing. Labour may have set out on this path a couple of decades ago (with Helen Clark as Minister of Housing), but getting National in on the coat tails has been a disaster. The main bugbear seems to be that poor people have been housed on prime real estate, or at least real estate that has become prime, thanks to spiralling out-of-control and inequitable house prices that … rich people profit from. Poor people are supposed to be hidden in South and West Auckland, Porirua, Wainuiomata etc. Michael Joseph Savage should be spinning in his grave. He’s probably generating untapped power in his mausoleum right now.

Meanwhile, our houses continue to get more expensive thanks to the failure to introduce – or even entertain – a Capitol Gains Tax. Why? Capitol Gains Tax is an equitable measure. It would mitigate the greed of the class that … supports and votes National. So it doesn’t have a chance. But you knew that, right?

The gap between rich and poor is being widened on purpose. If you’re not rich, National has no reason to care about you. If that wasn’t obvious to you before, it sure will be soon. And those with money and power can buy the votes of the poor either quite directly, or simply by hiring PR gurus who specialise in wool-over-eyes.

Key will make way for Joyce, who will be next National Prime Minister, since Key is getting bored even though it’s harder work than he thought. Mr Fixit is sure as hell going to fix you, soon, if you are poor and marginalised already or heading that way. Joyce has more leverage than ever, in the latest cabinet reshuffle. He’s dangerous because he’s been the power behind the grinning Key’s throne – and Key’s election campaigns – for a while already. He’s most likely the person responsible for the gentle, slow destruction of the Maori Party, which Flavell must have figured out, unlike the patsies currently running that doomed show.

By the way, do you think Joyce will fix Nova Pay for teachers? That’s not really what he’s there for. Nova Pay can’t go belly up as then we’ll find out what it’s actually cost us. Mark my words – Joyce will make it work so we don’t find out too soon what an actual expensive mess it’s been, so as not to spoil National’s election chances. That’s why Hekia Parata has been kept on – she knows too much. Can you think of any other reason she’s still there? She’s a walking disaster. Meanwhile, virtually off-the-radar ministers have been summarily dismissed. But at least Joyce might make it work. If National wins the next election, Joyce will be our fuhrer.

Meanwhile, the economy won’t grow. No jobs are are being – or have been – created. More middle class people will be forced into the margins.

But for the lower class, things are, and will continue to be, so much worse.

Have a great year.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: Maori | No Comments
Lefter 58 ~ The Wrong Turn versus the Perfect Car

November 19, 2012 by emweb

I don’t necessarily believe in constant growth, economically. Is there any reason for a growth fixation other than pure profit?

The current model means success is usually measured by percentage of year-on-year growth, as well as by financial returns. On the small scale, you’re not supposed to be focused on setting up a successful small business – you’re supposed to be fixated on the long term success via more branches, heightened recognition, potential franchising opportunities or the possibility of a hefty sale price for your brand once you reach a certain critical mass. Why isn’t it acceptable, or even desirable, to want to be really good at running your small business on one site? NZ has a huge number of small businesses, but these expectations add to the high number of small business and startup failures.

While we celebrate, or at least discuss, sustainability, the economic fixation with growth is anything but. It leads to results like monopolies, slash and burn expenditure lowering, weakening of control and, eventually, collapse. The centre doesn’t hold.

One area where economics and industrialisation coalesce and have done for over a century is the automobile industry. With manufacturing in general, we long ago departed from the axe analogy which goes like this: once upon a time, you bought an axe, and when you splintered the handle, you replaced it, and when the head broke or became impossible to sharpen, you replaced that. Ad infinitum. Perhaps you upgraded that axe haft to a better wood, or that head to better steel. And this is possibly still true, at least for a few axes, but if the axe maker has also since followed the pattern for most other goods, the handle is irreplaceable for some reason to do with materials and manufacture, or the head is attached by a proprietary device, or integral even, or you simply can’t find a replacement, or it can’t be added on outside the factory, or the cost of shipping an axe head to you is the same or more than just buying a new axe, since the composite parts are not stocked. So most people these days do just buy a new axe, since even if it is possible to replace the shaft and/or head.

Back on that original axe model: 100 years ago, a good axe (a bad axe being highly undesirable, not to mention dangerous) was a major expense. Part of that cost, if you like, can be predicated towards the longevity of that product through the possibility of continuous and sustained replacement.

Now we just buy cheap stuff.

With cars, in Japan the government had a policy of no warrant of fitness for seven years. You blithely drove your new car for seven years. Then the test was so unbelievably strict, most cars failed even on cosmetic damage like scratches, so most got rid of the car and bought a new one. This was done expressly so Japanese people bought new Japanese cars every seven years, as a terrific boost to the local industry and a considerable barrier against entering the car market in the first place.

Ironically, as a consequence, the canny Japanese manufacturers built their cars to last about that long – why engineer cars to last longer when they are just going to be crushed? Trouble is, New Zealand started rescuing these vehicles from the Japanese crushers and importing them as ‘used imports’. A seven-year-old Japanese car that’s been sold in the Japanese home market is rubbish. But that’s another story. (But with so many on our roads, I do think there’s at least some merit to keeping NZ’s strict every-six-months WoF regime.)

By the way, a Japanese car designed for sale, new, in New Zealand is an excellent car with much longer life and all round reliability built in than a seven year span. That’s why the phrase ‘NZ new’ – even on a used vehicle – fetches a higher price. It really does mean a better car.

Thing is, cars are just consumables now. A car manufacturer wants you to love their brand, and replace your car with another from their brand. Some car companies do have loyal customers, so this does work to some extent. That’s also why individual models evolve, becoming bigger and more luxurious, as both expectations and (hopefully) bank accounts expand. Compare a 20-year-old and ten-year-old Corolla or Civic with the current models and you’ll see what I mean.

For New Zealand, by the way, the two largest groups of new car buyers are fleet followed by retirees. It’s hardly a massive market.

But why do we have cars like these? Apart from the oil and petrol they burn and the heating and pollution they add to the atmosphere, a short-life car is full of hard-to-recycle and replace parts that all ends up as very highly developed, manufactured, assembled, maintained, marketed and delivered across the seas … land fill.

This is absolutely crazy.

Somewhere along the line, when manufacturing first became a big factor in the world, we diverged. At first, industrialisation’s promise was to deliver good products mass manufactured for economy of scale, delivering uniformly good products at an achievable price to a new range of consumers. For a while, industrialisation delivered on that promise.

This was revolutionary, but what has tit become? Now a car is essentially manufactured as a revenue gathering commodity on an ever shorter journey to landfill, with various people clipping the ticket on the journey.

Cars did not need to become like this, but it’s partly because of that growth fixation. The Ford Model T, for example, was seen as a starting point when it left a Ford factory. Even Henry Ford declared it so.

My mother used to say “Why aren’t cars made of bouncy rubber? They’d be safer to travel in and would hardly be damaged in scrapes and collisions.”

She had a point. But that would put panelbeaters, third-party manufacturers and parts suppliers out of work. But so what? Because … why hasn’t a car manufacturer developed an extremely sturdy, mass-manufacturable chassis that can be adapted endlessly? Axles go on, wheels, drive-train, transmission, one of four body shapes, and includes some kind of economical standard engine.

‘Bolted in’ are be the operative words. Although I don’t think standard bolts, I think some sort of special, super strong bolts that need a certain tool to undo, but that can’t come undone by themselves. You buy the bog standard car and you get the tool with it. The car is warrantable straight out of the factory in any country it’s sold.

From then on, buyers can buy better or different bits and change them themselves. Want to swap the carburettor for fuel injection? Bolt off, bolt on, fire it up. Axles? Wheels? Body panels? No problem.

Don’t trust yourself? Go to a mechanic.

As this all fosters, rather than displaces, third party specialists and bespoke parts makers. Even body makers. Also, your entry into your first new car would have a much lower price point, but you could end up years down the track with the original chassis, but having evolved it through three distinct body styles and many other modifications. You could go to four-wheel-drive, a hybrid or diesel engine, automatic transmission, more power, leather seats, tinted windows … all easily, rather than at great expense.

To me, this makes absolute and perfect sense.

Yet it’s the polar opposite of what we have.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought, Uncategorized | Tags: | 1 Comment

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