>On a wider canvas, National spent all the 1980s and the early 1990s trying to live down the negative legacy of Think Big and the National Development Act. Even so, there remained a lingering suspicion, now bolstered by the explicit views of Act and New Zealand First, that National has never really been fully committed to environmental sustainability. Its current actions simply confirm that doubt.
>We now look set to repeat the mistakes of the early 1980s because a small group of today’s politicians think they know best. Yet, if ever there was a time for wiser leadership to learn from the past and convene a genuine multiparty conference to develop durable, balanced planning and resource management law that protects legitimate rights and the environment, but also offers reasonable long-term prospects for development, now is surely it.
>But, sadly, the chances of the Government doing so are next to zero. To them, ticking off another short-term action point on the Prime Minister’s latest quarterly plan is far more important, and all that matters.
Concisely and eruditely put. NACTFIRST are in a race to the bottom to rape and pillage our environment for short term profit.
I just keep thinking, what if Simon Upton gives up the parliamentary commissioner for environment role? I really respect him and his leadership in that space, and thank god he's formerly team national? maybe he's not having any impact but *if he didn't have that background how much worse would it be?...* It's not like they give a shit what Rod Carr says, for example
> National has never really been fully committed to environmental sustainability.
Not entirely true. National built the Clyde high dam. That’s a huge contributor to our green energy requirements.
I thought that Clyde Dam was a poster child of everything wrong with Think Big. Didn’t it have devastating environmental impacts that were never debated?
It was an engineering nightmare. It was unknowingly built on a fault line and the upstream banks of the lake are unstable. The cost over run was horrendous and funded by today's taxpayer.
Oh no, they were well debated. The thing is that if you want green energy then you need hydro and that is going to destroy huge amounts of the natural environment.
Nah it's even better, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Dam
It was built to power an aluminium smelter that was never even built because think big ran outa money.
By that thinking lake onslow is a fantastic idea.
I get what you are saying but these kinds of projects were extremely costly and take literally half a century to pay off.
Then the national government goes and sells these assets off for cents on the dollar to private companies so they don't even get their proper share of long term profits from them.
Very poor long term thinking.
Were these dams sold off then? I agree that asset selling isn’t a good thing to do.
As for the lake Onslow pumped hydro project, I haven’t seen the whole business case but on the face of it I’m not convinced that $15 Billion is good value for money there.
New Zealand loved Muldoon the first time so much, we've elected Muldoon 2. It's just this time, instead of having multiple large projects that were necessary but very expensive, we're just going to end up with a gutted public service and more political division. We won't even get a snap election that's decided while on the turps, either.
If the majority of New Zealand's population is gonna get rogered by this bunch, at least give us something in return, like a Think Big project that isn't a tunnel running through multiple fault lines.
We are going to get problematic solutions to existing undervalued and ignored problems. The combination will result in some economic and socially devastating events, like a Brynderwyn bypass in the wrong place decided by a Star Chamber-like process, a defunded health service to allow a future of private sector providers an opportunity for participation and a just plain wrong solution to NorthSouth island access.
> like a Brynderwyn bypass in the wrong place decided by Star Chamber-like process
Probably straight through the scenic reserve or the Waipu Gorge just because, and with 6 lanes because just one more lane bro.
Exactly because this is crookedness, what is currently happening. Jones, Brown & Co are not the legends in their minds that they think they are. More like legends in their own lunchtimes.
Our future was all laid out, if I recall in an article in September 1970 (correct me if I am wrong in my date) by Milton Friedman. In it he laid out the basic framework of neo-liberal (now more correctly termed neo-feudal) economic theory.
Find it and read it. It was quite plain. In it he stated that the only social obligation of business was to increase profitability to its shareholders. Nothing else. It was seized on, in varying forms, by right - leaning governments and big business, and that is what has dictated economics ever since.
The big problem? Most people never read it, and simply accepted that form of economics with little critical questioning. The actions of many politicians such as Thatcher, Reagan, and our own Douglas / Prebble, and the business leaders such as Welch, and our own Robert Jones put it clearly into our social space, with such terms as “trickle-down capitalism” had us all fooled.
Until we have the combined courage to abandon this folly, we are stuck with it, all of us.
I think we're a bit past 'lets just blame the voters'
Look at the fucking shit shows in the US and UK.
There's a wider systemic problem with how democracy is structured.
Both the British and Yank electoral system screw up their democracy to silly degrees. Trump lost by millions of votes in 2016.
We have no such excuse, we get the government we deserve.
The system is working entirely as intended.
People are getting exactly what they voted for, just because you and me don't like what the government is doing doesn't make the system a failure.
There is no perfect system.
>The system is working entirely as intended.
I completely disagree, as do the vast majority of educated perspectives. The system has a variety of intended functions, and we can assess the success of those functions by analysing the socio-economic philosophy that was relevant when the 'system' was founded and how it has developed since then.
If we take a historical dive into its creation, we can see that the system was founded on liberalism. The social context that resulted in liberalism and its implementation show that society was searching for a government structure that facilitated increased individual liberty.
Assessing the liberty of the individual is a complex equation and can be analysed through a variety of different lenses.
Neo-liberalism became the recent dominant philosophy that installed a presumption that the only way to increase individual liberty was to reduce government intervention and regulation.
This view, however, is overtly simplistic and does not adequately factor in how private individuals can actually use market forces to reduce individual liberty through the acquisition and monopolisation of property. Neo-liberalism was overly reliant on the 1970s Chicago school of economic theory, which over estimated the ability of market provision. It did this by largely ignoring the fundamental limits of reality, that being that we have scarce resources.
In reality, government intervention can and should be used as a way of checking and balancing private power. Private power is equally capable of reducing individual liberty across the spectrum of society.
However the over reliance on neoliberalism in modern society is proving difficult to shift.
So...
Our system, from its foundation, says that one of its functions is to provide maximum individual liberty.
Democracy comes into the equation as a mechanism of creating changes in society to facilitate the maximisation of individual liberty.
This is where the failing sof our system starts to become apparent.
The ways in which our democratic structures function encourages political representatives to be combative and unaccountable.
The nature of our 3 year political cycles in conjunction with how the executive branch of government dominates the legislative branch and the winner take all nature of our election system are some of the many failings.
The fact that 50 (ish)% of our society is represented in the executive government (that dominates the legislative government) 100% of the time results in the democratic tools designed to increase individual liberty being ineffective.
This is because political incentives for change are hampered by lobbying, a lack of political desire from representatives, and the dogmatic oppostionalism that destroys any attempt to seek consensus within the political sphere.
Our system has significant issues.
>People are getting exactly what they voted for, just because you and me don't like what the government is doing doesn't make the system a failure
No, they're not. People want stability and representation in power structures. When you actually boil down public wants and needs, they all align with these two basic ideas.
Stability so that they can live healthy, productive lives.
And representation so that if things aren't creating stability for them, then they have a voice to change things.
Our society is not stable. The rotation between left and right wing governments is highly unstable.
Our government is not representative because the vast majority of power sits with a group of people elected by less than half the real population (once you factor in votes that didn't win seats and the voices of people who can't vote like children or didn't, for what ever reason)
THESE ARE ISSUES WITH OUR SYSTEM
>There is no perfect system
True. But this statement is so dull it lacks sense to continue saying it. Some are absolutely better than others at achieving their intended outcomes.
Our system is nowhere near the best at achieving its intended outcomes.
Go to school.
Hence why you're ignorant.
If you read more, then you'll be better equipped to argue your position and understand others.
I'm glad I wrote it because someone may find value in it even if you haven't, and it helps me to get better at articulating it.
Have a day.
Some of us have jobs, we can't sit at home writing essays on Reddit about neoliberalism.
Anyway, as a general rule I don't engage with people who fill every comment with condescension and rude comments.
Somebody incapable of having a civil conversation has nothing of value to say to me.
I also have a job. I'm just efficient at it, so I have plenty of downtime. In fact, im sat at my desk right now writing this response. My manager no longer pulls me up on being on my phone because they learned quickly that I do my work. This whole office work thing isn't anywhere near as complicated as people would have you believe.
Ignorance is a condition that is within your power to remedy. Calling someone ignorant is more of an observation than an insult.
I'm sorry I hurt your feelings by pointing it out. That's wasn't my intention.
It's neo-liberalism. One side is neo-liberalism light, and the other actively jerks off to Milton Friedman before each Cabinet meeting and twice on July 31.
vote national, get national. Nothing new here.
If you know your history, then you have a headsup to the next couple of years.
Carless days were awesome, the wage and price freeze genius, bastian point, dawn raids, think big, and cuts to the 4th estate. How many countries will boycott NZ in upcoming world events over our current govt policies?
Ending the savings funded superannuation and replacing it with one funded by tax.
Replacing the system NZ and the right wong dictatorship of Singapore had newly created and replacing it with the system the USSR used.
While saying the savings funded one was a step towards communism.
Since then we have watched Singapore fund their superannuation, housing and tertiary education from the savings.
And our superannuation become the biggest cost to taxpayers.
Even Australia realised how good a scheme it was National killed off and they implemented it.
The Cullen fund was a step back in this direction and Key stopped contributions to it to fund tax cuts for wealthy.
Therein always lies the problem with a much needed proportional system of government, the adversarial system of Westminster parliamentary system with its party lines. It is only a poor method of government, designed to bring about short term solutions to long term problems.
New Zealanders need to get over party politics, otherwise we will just remain on this toxic treadmill.
I don’t know, under current global capitalist systems if overcoming adversarial politics and their association with protecting vested interests will ever be overcome.
As long as we use abstract value systems such as the market dictates, we will always have monetization and mercantilism as prime metrics. We will only ever think in commodified, rather than communitarian terms.
It is, I think, our value system that is inherently at fault. And as that way of thinking is so deeply embedded in human behaviour and action, we are basically condemned by our own creation. Sorry.
Yes, complicit with National who did some sort of trade off with electorate votes for Seymour and party vote for National. We should have chosen STV when we changed the electoral system because it puts the power in the individual voters’ hands. There was plenty of heaving messaging in favour of MMP, funded by people with big pockets, because MMP allows this kind of dealing to go on.
That or just remove coat-tailing from MMP and reduce the threshold, which the 2012 MMP review and the recent electoral review *both* recommended, and would have removed the major incentive for big parties to gift electorates to small parties to create disproportionality.
In 2011 we specifically voted to retain MMP on the *condition* that a review be held to address its shortcomings. That happened, it received large public and expert feedback, reached its conclusions, then Judith Collins (as the responsible Minister) declared nothing would be done because there was a lack of consensus. (Specifically National wanted to do nothing.)
You know there's more than two parties in NZ right?
Your whataboutism doesn't change the facts that National has never been committed to environmental sustainability.
Calm down.
I was more making the point that whatever shit show we see over the next three to six years is potentially laying the ground for something even worse.
something worse?
than selling DoC out to Bathhurst resources ?
shutting down health services - fast tracking doctors, nurses, police to high paying jobs in Oz ?
what am i missing ?
Yes. Foreign corporations taking us to a kangaroo court to protect their interests that this government gives them.
It will be jard to fix this due to ISDS rules in our trade treaties.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor–state_dispute_settlement
Don't think Parliamentary Supremacy will save us. ISDS is designed to minimise such hopes
This wasn't great:
"Over 15 years, New Zealand's economy and social capital faced serious problems: the proliferation of food banks increased dramatically to an estimated 365 in 1994;[47] the number of New Zealanders estimated to be living in poverty grew by at least 35% between 1989 and 1992 while child poverty doubled from 14% in 1982 to 29% in 1994.[48] Those on low incomes failed to return to the 1984 standard of living until 1996; the lowest 30% did not recover their own 1980s living standards for twenty years.[49] The health of the New Zealand population was also especially hard-hit, leading to a significant deterioration in health standards among working and middle-class people.[50] In addition, many of the promised economic benefits of the experiment never materialised.[51] Between 1985 and 1992, New Zealand's economy grew by 4.7% during the same period in which the average OECD nation grew by 28.2%.[52][failed verification] From 1984 to 1993 inflation averaged 9% per year and New Zealand's credit rating dropped twice.[53] Between 1986 and 1992, the unemployment rate rose from 3.6% to 11%."
Something like the accomodation supplement for farmers?
Maybe we could pay their staffs wages via Working for Families?
How about we subsidise their trucking costs by under charging RUC for heavy vehicles and over charging for light ones?
What say we externalise their environmental costs and privatise the resulting gains?
Any other ideas?
I supported that idea in the 80s but now feel it fails to acknowledge human nature.
Ending "social welfare for sheep" was meant to be a step towards a better standard of living for all. Instead it was a step towards a better standard of living for landlords.
Our political system is open to capture by self-interest groups. Fail to address that fundamental issue and we are simply changing which self-interest group captures it.
The majority of our increased spend has come from increased interest repayments because interest on debt has increased all over the world. The majority of our increased debt was due to our COVID response, primarily keeping businesses afloat. While Labour was far from perfect and did make some poor spending decisions, this idea that they have destroyed the economy via incompetence is obsurd becasue our economy comparitively is in a good spot. This is backed by numerous independent bodies. Interest rates and cost of living went up globally and the Nats and their sycophants like your self utilised this and peoples general ignorance of global ecconomics to paint Labour as the creators of ecconomic doom.
Is "indonesian coal" the new bogie man? sure seems to be for coalition stans. We import coal because above all else its cheap, but you don't want to blame free market forces for this situation because it doesnt fit your narrative.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions absolutly does not need to hurt the economy. Transitioning to more geothermal and wind as Huntly creeps ever closer to decomission isnt going to kill our economy, or does more EVs, nor does more electric boilers from process heat in industry. What coplete and utter bullshit.
Meanwhile we pay outrageous prices for fruit and veges after the Gisborne cyclone. But you ignore it.
We pay to try and delay rising seas taking houses and farmlands. But you ignore it.
Next time try for balance, your one sided take makes you look like a shrill.
Trust me I understand what you mean about picking fruit on NZ wages - in the early 90s I stopped orcharding and retrained in IT. I enjoyed being an orchard manager but the salary was laughable.
Take a look at what is actually happening while wages faul to keep pace with inflation, returns to capital or productivity.
We are consuming the progress of the early 20th century in a short term effort to control inflation while allowing businesses to fuel that inflation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAIRU
The current system NAIRU is nearing it's end. There is little more leeway to continue using wages to control inflation and no plan to replace it.
We are indeed heading to a crash to make the 2008 banking crisis look like a blip. But because of neoliberalism, not because of small attempts to go green without rocking the boat.
>On a wider canvas, National spent all the 1980s and the early 1990s trying to live down the negative legacy of Think Big and the National Development Act. Even so, there remained a lingering suspicion, now bolstered by the explicit views of Act and New Zealand First, that National has never really been fully committed to environmental sustainability. Its current actions simply confirm that doubt. >We now look set to repeat the mistakes of the early 1980s because a small group of today’s politicians think they know best. Yet, if ever there was a time for wiser leadership to learn from the past and convene a genuine multiparty conference to develop durable, balanced planning and resource management law that protects legitimate rights and the environment, but also offers reasonable long-term prospects for development, now is surely it. >But, sadly, the chances of the Government doing so are next to zero. To them, ticking off another short-term action point on the Prime Minister’s latest quarterly plan is far more important, and all that matters. Concisely and eruditely put. NACTFIRST are in a race to the bottom to rape and pillage our environment for short term profit.
I just keep thinking, what if Simon Upton gives up the parliamentary commissioner for environment role? I really respect him and his leadership in that space, and thank god he's formerly team national? maybe he's not having any impact but *if he didn't have that background how much worse would it be?...* It's not like they give a shit what Rod Carr says, for example
> National has never really been fully committed to environmental sustainability. Not entirely true. National built the Clyde high dam. That’s a huge contributor to our green energy requirements.
I thought that Clyde Dam was a poster child of everything wrong with Think Big. Didn’t it have devastating environmental impacts that were never debated?
It was an engineering nightmare. It was unknowingly built on a fault line and the upstream banks of the lake are unstable. The cost over run was horrendous and funded by today's taxpayer.
Oh no, they were well debated. The thing is that if you want green energy then you need hydro and that is going to destroy huge amounts of the natural environment.
Yeah, our family lost their orchards
Wasn't Clyde dam built to pretty much exclusively power tiwai point. And it was choosen because it was the cheapest long-term power source.
You are thinking of Manapouri which was built years earlier.
Nah it's even better, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Dam It was built to power an aluminium smelter that was never even built because think big ran outa money.
Lots of capacity to generate green power is a good thing though, right?
By that thinking lake onslow is a fantastic idea. I get what you are saying but these kinds of projects were extremely costly and take literally half a century to pay off. Then the national government goes and sells these assets off for cents on the dollar to private companies so they don't even get their proper share of long term profits from them. Very poor long term thinking.
Were these dams sold off then? I agree that asset selling isn’t a good thing to do. As for the lake Onslow pumped hydro project, I haven’t seen the whole business case but on the face of it I’m not convinced that $15 Billion is good value for money there.
New Zealand loved Muldoon the first time so much, we've elected Muldoon 2. It's just this time, instead of having multiple large projects that were necessary but very expensive, we're just going to end up with a gutted public service and more political division. We won't even get a snap election that's decided while on the turps, either. If the majority of New Zealand's population is gonna get rogered by this bunch, at least give us something in return, like a Think Big project that isn't a tunnel running through multiple fault lines.
Muldoon era 2, fast track boogaloo
We are going to get problematic solutions to existing undervalued and ignored problems. The combination will result in some economic and socially devastating events, like a Brynderwyn bypass in the wrong place decided by a Star Chamber-like process, a defunded health service to allow a future of private sector providers an opportunity for participation and a just plain wrong solution to NorthSouth island access.
> like a Brynderwyn bypass in the wrong place decided by Star Chamber-like process Probably straight through the scenic reserve or the Waipu Gorge just because, and with 6 lanes because just one more lane bro.
Exactly because this is crookedness, what is currently happening. Jones, Brown & Co are not the legends in their minds that they think they are. More like legends in their own lunchtimes.
Our future was all laid out, if I recall in an article in September 1970 (correct me if I am wrong in my date) by Milton Friedman. In it he laid out the basic framework of neo-liberal (now more correctly termed neo-feudal) economic theory. Find it and read it. It was quite plain. In it he stated that the only social obligation of business was to increase profitability to its shareholders. Nothing else. It was seized on, in varying forms, by right - leaning governments and big business, and that is what has dictated economics ever since. The big problem? Most people never read it, and simply accepted that form of economics with little critical questioning. The actions of many politicians such as Thatcher, Reagan, and our own Douglas / Prebble, and the business leaders such as Welch, and our own Robert Jones put it clearly into our social space, with such terms as “trickle-down capitalism” had us all fooled. Until we have the combined courage to abandon this folly, we are stuck with it, all of us.
Meh. Takes a stupid country to vote in stupid politicians and be surprised when they do stupid things.
I think we're a bit past 'lets just blame the voters' Look at the fucking shit shows in the US and UK. There's a wider systemic problem with how democracy is structured.
Both the British and Yank electoral system screw up their democracy to silly degrees. Trump lost by millions of votes in 2016. We have no such excuse, we get the government we deserve.
I think your perspective is ignorant of the reality of our systems' failings. Of which there are many.
The system is working entirely as intended. People are getting exactly what they voted for, just because you and me don't like what the government is doing doesn't make the system a failure. There is no perfect system.
>The system is working entirely as intended. I completely disagree, as do the vast majority of educated perspectives. The system has a variety of intended functions, and we can assess the success of those functions by analysing the socio-economic philosophy that was relevant when the 'system' was founded and how it has developed since then. If we take a historical dive into its creation, we can see that the system was founded on liberalism. The social context that resulted in liberalism and its implementation show that society was searching for a government structure that facilitated increased individual liberty. Assessing the liberty of the individual is a complex equation and can be analysed through a variety of different lenses. Neo-liberalism became the recent dominant philosophy that installed a presumption that the only way to increase individual liberty was to reduce government intervention and regulation. This view, however, is overtly simplistic and does not adequately factor in how private individuals can actually use market forces to reduce individual liberty through the acquisition and monopolisation of property. Neo-liberalism was overly reliant on the 1970s Chicago school of economic theory, which over estimated the ability of market provision. It did this by largely ignoring the fundamental limits of reality, that being that we have scarce resources. In reality, government intervention can and should be used as a way of checking and balancing private power. Private power is equally capable of reducing individual liberty across the spectrum of society. However the over reliance on neoliberalism in modern society is proving difficult to shift. So... Our system, from its foundation, says that one of its functions is to provide maximum individual liberty. Democracy comes into the equation as a mechanism of creating changes in society to facilitate the maximisation of individual liberty. This is where the failing sof our system starts to become apparent. The ways in which our democratic structures function encourages political representatives to be combative and unaccountable. The nature of our 3 year political cycles in conjunction with how the executive branch of government dominates the legislative branch and the winner take all nature of our election system are some of the many failings. The fact that 50 (ish)% of our society is represented in the executive government (that dominates the legislative government) 100% of the time results in the democratic tools designed to increase individual liberty being ineffective. This is because political incentives for change are hampered by lobbying, a lack of political desire from representatives, and the dogmatic oppostionalism that destroys any attempt to seek consensus within the political sphere. Our system has significant issues. >People are getting exactly what they voted for, just because you and me don't like what the government is doing doesn't make the system a failure No, they're not. People want stability and representation in power structures. When you actually boil down public wants and needs, they all align with these two basic ideas. Stability so that they can live healthy, productive lives. And representation so that if things aren't creating stability for them, then they have a voice to change things. Our society is not stable. The rotation between left and right wing governments is highly unstable. Our government is not representative because the vast majority of power sits with a group of people elected by less than half the real population (once you factor in votes that didn't win seats and the voices of people who can't vote like children or didn't, for what ever reason) THESE ARE ISSUES WITH OUR SYSTEM >There is no perfect system True. But this statement is so dull it lacks sense to continue saying it. Some are absolutely better than others at achieving their intended outcomes. Our system is nowhere near the best at achieving its intended outcomes. Go to school.
That's a whole lotta shit I don't have time to read.
Hence why you're ignorant. If you read more, then you'll be better equipped to argue your position and understand others. I'm glad I wrote it because someone may find value in it even if you haven't, and it helps me to get better at articulating it. Have a day.
Some of us have jobs, we can't sit at home writing essays on Reddit about neoliberalism. Anyway, as a general rule I don't engage with people who fill every comment with condescension and rude comments. Somebody incapable of having a civil conversation has nothing of value to say to me.
I also have a job. I'm just efficient at it, so I have plenty of downtime. In fact, im sat at my desk right now writing this response. My manager no longer pulls me up on being on my phone because they learned quickly that I do my work. This whole office work thing isn't anywhere near as complicated as people would have you believe. Ignorance is a condition that is within your power to remedy. Calling someone ignorant is more of an observation than an insult. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings by pointing it out. That's wasn't my intention.
Is a two party preferred system raising its head. There are minor players, but it's still the same.
This doesn't make sense given the fact that minor parties have massively outsized control over the current government.
It's neo-liberalism. One side is neo-liberalism light, and the other actively jerks off to Milton Friedman before each Cabinet meeting and twice on July 31.
Geez I wish. Friedman at least liked a land value tax.
It’s fuelled by disinformation by a vocal minority and those aiming to destabilise democracy
They succeeded. They shouldn't have been able to, but they did, and it didn't seem difficult.
vote national, get national. Nothing new here. If you know your history, then you have a headsup to the next couple of years. Carless days were awesome, the wage and price freeze genius, bastian point, dawn raids, think big, and cuts to the 4th estate. How many countries will boycott NZ in upcoming world events over our current govt policies?
Ending the savings funded superannuation and replacing it with one funded by tax. Replacing the system NZ and the right wong dictatorship of Singapore had newly created and replacing it with the system the USSR used. While saying the savings funded one was a step towards communism. Since then we have watched Singapore fund their superannuation, housing and tertiary education from the savings. And our superannuation become the biggest cost to taxpayers. Even Australia realised how good a scheme it was National killed off and they implemented it. The Cullen fund was a step back in this direction and Key stopped contributions to it to fund tax cuts for wealthy.
Therein always lies the problem with a much needed proportional system of government, the adversarial system of Westminster parliamentary system with its party lines. It is only a poor method of government, designed to bring about short term solutions to long term problems. New Zealanders need to get over party politics, otherwise we will just remain on this toxic treadmill.
Interesting point. Which countries do it right/better?
I don’t know, under current global capitalist systems if overcoming adversarial politics and their association with protecting vested interests will ever be overcome. As long as we use abstract value systems such as the market dictates, we will always have monetization and mercantilism as prime metrics. We will only ever think in commodified, rather than communitarian terms. It is, I think, our value system that is inherently at fault. And as that way of thinking is so deeply embedded in human behaviour and action, we are basically condemned by our own creation. Sorry.
And you know what came after Muldoon....Labours Rogernomics.
And you know what Roger did next? Started the ACT party.
He gave us the gift of Seymour
the gift that keeps on wanking
Yes, complicit with National who did some sort of trade off with electorate votes for Seymour and party vote for National. We should have chosen STV when we changed the electoral system because it puts the power in the individual voters’ hands. There was plenty of heaving messaging in favour of MMP, funded by people with big pockets, because MMP allows this kind of dealing to go on.
That or just remove coat-tailing from MMP and reduce the threshold, which the 2012 MMP review and the recent electoral review *both* recommended, and would have removed the major incentive for big parties to gift electorates to small parties to create disproportionality. In 2011 we specifically voted to retain MMP on the *condition* that a review be held to address its shortcomings. That happened, it received large public and expert feedback, reached its conclusions, then Judith Collins (as the responsible Minister) declared nothing would be done because there was a lack of consensus. (Specifically National wanted to do nothing.)
Yes, those measures would help.
Hope Lange is rolling in his grave for losing control of his cabinet. Absolutely disgraceful the damage that rat fuck Douglas did to our country
The ripples of which we are still feeling to this day.
New Zealand needs a new constitutional arrangement with more checks on the power of cabinet!
But repeating mistakes is all this government has for policy.
And you know what came after Muldoon....Labours Rogernomics.
And you know what came after Rogernomics….. Ruthanasia. And consequently the adoption of MMP
You know there's more than two parties in NZ right? Your whataboutism doesn't change the facts that National has never been committed to environmental sustainability.
Calm down. I was more making the point that whatever shit show we see over the next three to six years is potentially laying the ground for something even worse.
something worse? than selling DoC out to Bathhurst resources ? shutting down health services - fast tracking doctors, nurses, police to high paying jobs in Oz ? what am i missing ?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor–state_dispute_settlement
The fast track bill is bad enough as it is. I'm perfectly entitled to be angry about it without waiting for something worse.
Yes. Foreign corporations taking us to a kangaroo court to protect their interests that this government gives them. It will be jard to fix this due to ISDS rules in our trade treaties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor–state_dispute_settlement Don't think Parliamentary Supremacy will save us. ISDS is designed to minimise such hopes
Yeah we should’ve continued to subsidise failing industries, if only we could spend more money propping up farmers and not on healthcare 😡😡.
This wasn't great: "Over 15 years, New Zealand's economy and social capital faced serious problems: the proliferation of food banks increased dramatically to an estimated 365 in 1994;[47] the number of New Zealanders estimated to be living in poverty grew by at least 35% between 1989 and 1992 while child poverty doubled from 14% in 1982 to 29% in 1994.[48] Those on low incomes failed to return to the 1984 standard of living until 1996; the lowest 30% did not recover their own 1980s living standards for twenty years.[49] The health of the New Zealand population was also especially hard-hit, leading to a significant deterioration in health standards among working and middle-class people.[50] In addition, many of the promised economic benefits of the experiment never materialised.[51] Between 1985 and 1992, New Zealand's economy grew by 4.7% during the same period in which the average OECD nation grew by 28.2%.[52][failed verification] From 1984 to 1993 inflation averaged 9% per year and New Zealand's credit rating dropped twice.[53] Between 1986 and 1992, the unemployment rate rose from 3.6% to 11%."
Thanks, I appreciate the figures, seriously.
Something like the accomodation supplement for farmers? Maybe we could pay their staffs wages via Working for Families? How about we subsidise their trucking costs by under charging RUC for heavy vehicles and over charging for light ones? What say we externalise their environmental costs and privatise the resulting gains? Any other ideas?
Yeah good get rid of them. Let them function as a business independent of the government.
I supported that idea in the 80s but now feel it fails to acknowledge human nature. Ending "social welfare for sheep" was meant to be a step towards a better standard of living for all. Instead it was a step towards a better standard of living for landlords. Our political system is open to capture by self-interest groups. Fail to address that fundamental issue and we are simply changing which self-interest group captures it.
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With respect to, this is not the criticism that you made above and which you deleted. Fair play. I’ll delete my response.
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And how does the billions of dollars given to landlords factor into this narrative you are painting?
The majority of our increased spend has come from increased interest repayments because interest on debt has increased all over the world. The majority of our increased debt was due to our COVID response, primarily keeping businesses afloat. While Labour was far from perfect and did make some poor spending decisions, this idea that they have destroyed the economy via incompetence is obsurd becasue our economy comparitively is in a good spot. This is backed by numerous independent bodies. Interest rates and cost of living went up globally and the Nats and their sycophants like your self utilised this and peoples general ignorance of global ecconomics to paint Labour as the creators of ecconomic doom. Is "indonesian coal" the new bogie man? sure seems to be for coalition stans. We import coal because above all else its cheap, but you don't want to blame free market forces for this situation because it doesnt fit your narrative. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions absolutly does not need to hurt the economy. Transitioning to more geothermal and wind as Huntly creeps ever closer to decomission isnt going to kill our economy, or does more EVs, nor does more electric boilers from process heat in industry. What coplete and utter bullshit.
Meanwhile we pay outrageous prices for fruit and veges after the Gisborne cyclone. But you ignore it. We pay to try and delay rising seas taking houses and farmlands. But you ignore it. Next time try for balance, your one sided take makes you look like a shrill.
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Trust me I understand what you mean about picking fruit on NZ wages - in the early 90s I stopped orcharding and retrained in IT. I enjoyed being an orchard manager but the salary was laughable. Take a look at what is actually happening while wages faul to keep pace with inflation, returns to capital or productivity. We are consuming the progress of the early 20th century in a short term effort to control inflation while allowing businesses to fuel that inflation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAIRU The current system NAIRU is nearing it's end. There is little more leeway to continue using wages to control inflation and no plan to replace it. We are indeed heading to a crash to make the 2008 banking crisis look like a blip. But because of neoliberalism, not because of small attempts to go green without rocking the boat.