The Breaking Views blog is administered by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research at NZCPR.com. The views expressed are those of the author alone.
AN OPEN LETTER TO NEW
ZEALAND UNIVERSITIES
As a triple graduate, Professor, lecturer, researcher, PhD examiner and programme director with over 37 years of university service, involving five of our eight universities and their relationships with government, media, public and private organisations, I believe I am in a position to comment on certain current issues and the future direction of our tertiary education sector.
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta confirmed her determination – and the Government’s – to over-ride widespread public disquiet and local authority objections. She will press ahead in establishing four publicly owned water entities to take over and look after our drinking, waste and storm water infrastructure.
This was in spite of promises made to allow adequate
consultation and the option to opt out of any moves to steal locally owned
infrastucture assets worth billions that are essential components of local
economies. Tragically, the opposite has happened.
It is a story of betrayal and arrogance rarely seen in a
country that prides itself in being one of the few remaining true democracies
where governments are elected but the power remains with the people.
Apparently, not any more.
In this newsletter:
1) Public ‘want a referendum on Boris Johnson’s Net Zero plans’ by next general election
The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2021
2) 58% of Brits polled, who expressed a preference, want a Net Zero referendum, according to a YouGov/CAR26.Org survey
CAR26.org, 26 October 2021
Kudos to Murray Bolton and Russell Coutts this week for making their mark, their contribution, to what I have no doubt is a growing resistance to the absurdity that is the running of this country.
The danger and dishonesty of the Government and the realisation that the regime of fear and chaos has got to come to an end.
Coutts of course, is no different to the myriad of other people who have spoken out now for months on end.
In this newsletter:
1) Glasgow in chaos ahead of COP26 with strikes and room shortages
Guido Fawkes, 26 October 2021
2) Biden's climate ambitions die in the Senate
The Wall Street Journal, 25 October 2021
Nanaia Mahuta's just pushed the nuclear button on the Three Waters reform and potentially picked herself a big fight.
The Minister for Local Government has done exactly as predicted and announced she’s confiscating the water assets of every single council and territorial authority up and down this country.
She’s had to confiscate the assets, because after asking nicely, the vast majority of local bodies told her no, they wouldn’t willingly hand them over.
The irony is; it was not Labour who opened the floodgates
which have seen a tsunami of claims. It was National.
Labour now faces increasing hostility and blame for “Maorification” (1) of the country. Whereas twelve months ago, a few were lone voices, today things have changed.
You'll be pleased to know the Prime Minister doesn’t have to be in Auckland to understand the lockdown
Kudos to Barry Soper for being one of the last remaining press gallery operators who actually knows how to ask a proper question and insist on following it up. If you saw it yesterday, the Prime Minister has lost the ability to handle it.
She's so used to the soft soap acquiescence of the rest of the gallery who are either asleep, spineless or apparatchiks. She was well and truly taken aback when old father-to-be Soper rocks up with a few nerve inducing questions around why she hadn't been to her hometown in months. And why she hadn't visited the very electorate that sent her to Parliament to represent them.
In this newsletter:
1) Tempers fray as Tories fail to unite for COP26 climate talks
The Sunday Times, 24 October 2021
2) Net Zero Britain: A third of UK companies may force staff to work at home to cut their energy bills
Daily Mail, 25 October 2021
It's not the Prime Minister's fault that she hasn't visited her Mt Albert constituency, or indeed the wider locked-up mega city of Auckland, nothing ever is.
It's the fault of the Inspector General of Parliament Trevor Mallard, who clearly needs to feel powerful - he requires any MP, or for that matter anyone working in the place, to have a double negative Covid test if they're coming from Auckland to self-isolate for five days.
Other essential workers returning to the capital don't have to go through that sort of rigmarole but Jacinda Ardern says as an essential worker it's her job "to run the country" and not spend time at home twiddling her thumbs, unlikely of course, with a toddler in tow.
In this newsletter:
It’s hard not to feel disillusioned this week - struggling to understand this new traffic light system. It feels like we’re being asked to reach an unrealistic goal by an ambitious PM who wants to score some points.
And in achieving that goal, what do we get for it? A red light.
As we’ve been told many times by this government, Delta didn’t come with a roadmap.
That’s actually not true in our case. The roadmap was rolling out in front of us.
Compared with the existing legislation, moreover, it significantly expands on the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in health legislation.
There is plenty to digest in the Bill – the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill – and your Point of Order team has not thoroughly examined it. But we were fascinated by some of the accountability provisions for the new Māori Health Authority.
The
last two of these theories are supported almost entirely by models that plot
the potential damage caused by these modern threats to human survival.
The evidence gleaned from these models are then used by governments in desperate need of answers to justify the introduction of draconian measures to control a restless population. They manipulate the populace, craftily playing on a fear of the unknown.
Prime Minister Ardern said we are being “fleeced”. More like we are being “skinned”, wool and all. It seems to slip her mind that half the “fleecing” is being done by her government. They are grabbing $1.45 of that $2.65. Having ratcheted up spending the government now needs all the revenue they can get their hands on. Having captured a moment’s limelight for making the claim she has moved on, yet again to another publicity podium, unable to deliver any outcome of substance.
Our electricity prices are also escalating.
This essay has been initiated regarding the concerns of a group of New Zealand academics, teachers, historians and commentators, many of whom have held prestigious positions in relaying our history to generations of young New Zealanders, over many years. They are concerned that the history of our nation is presented to our young people in a comprehensive, truthful, unbiased and informative manner. Their aim is that a truthful presentation of New Zealand history is delivered in our schools from 2022, the date whereby a revised School Histories Curriculum prepared by the Ministry of Education, is to be taught.
The Ministry proposed a revised curriculum in early 2021, calling for submissions by 31 May. The result of over 5000 submissions on the draft reveals virtually no changes from the initial proposals. It is clear that a politically-focused curriculum is to be delivered in which untruths, distorted descriptions of recorded events and biased interpretations of the past will now be included.
1) Emerging economies slam COP26 Net Zero push as ‘anti-equity’
Climate Change News, 20 October 2021
2) Fear of a Cop Flop grows as COP26 chief Alok Sharma 'is raging' at Boris Johnson for talking up climate summit
Daily Mail, 21 October 2021
In this newsletter:
1) Nations to accelerate oil, coal and gas production over the next decade, UN discovers
The Times, 20 October 2021
2) Why COP26 will flop: Coal continues to dominate global energy mix and will do so for decades to come
Bloomberg, 20 October 2021
Yet another reason to thank Boris Johnson and be grateful that there remain a few visionaries about the place that want us to prosper and succeed.
By all accounts, our free trade deal with the UK is a winner. It's open and truly free, the hurdles remain few and far between. The gains we stand to make are enormous.
It's a tangible example of what we envisaged when we entered into the world of free trading all those years ago under the previous Labour govt of David Lange and Sir Roger Douglas. We are the free trade pioneers and we deserve this level of success.
On that occasion, New Zealand First’s Shane Jones featured in scuttling a bill which would have entitled Ngai Tahu to appoint two representatives to sit with elected councillors after the local elections later that year.
It seemed that was the end of a bad Bill – but hey: a few weeks ago the regional council announced it was again promoting a Bill that will provide “for mana whenua representation around the Council table”, by empowering Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu to appoint up to two members of the Council. This will be in addition to the elected members.
Ownership, even by councils is now far from essential if a government can legislate to subjugate ownership of land and water use rights to political control for political advantage. By applying this understanding, the once murky three waters rationale becomes crystal clear.
The current government three waters reform is more about locking in the Government’s Maori caucus, the Maori Party, and the Green Party as we move towards co -governance of New Zealand. Readers will also be aware of claims to fresh water filed with the courts by Maori interests. The back door is now wide open for the stalking horse of re-distribution to co-governance. (see Maori Health Authority /demise of DHBs/ separate tax system/ renaming of New Zealand)
Judith Collins now emerges as a prime candidate to lead a
new party which advocates equality, not of ethnicity (for maori are now being
accorded special rights which Collins does not appear to dispute), but predicated
on tangible assets.
Until now, tangible assets have invariably been a reflection of how hard an individual has applied themselves to study, work and prudent behaviour. The accumulation of asset wealth has been the, “reaped reward”.
In this newsletter:
1) To strike a climate deal, poor nations demand $trillions from rich ones
The Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2021
2) China's COP26 strategy: Western countries 'shoulder responsibility for climate change and need to pay up'
ITV News, 19 October 2021
Prime Minister, I must take strong issue with
Government’s well publicised agenda and action to make the teaching and
learning of Maori language mandatory in our schools and the learning/speaking
of Maori a precondition to working for the Government Service (arguably to
facilitate “stacking” the Public Service with activists keen to reinforce and
support Government’s Maorification agendas).
Latin has recently been deleted from school syllabuses because it no longer has utility as a language and would therefore be wasting some 15/20percent of time available to students for educational options much more relevant, useful and beneficial to their future lives.
Surely in these dark and troubled times, a level of cooperation from unlikely foes has to be welcomed.
The deal done between the Government and National over housing at last addresses, at least in part, one of the biggest obstacles to supply. The councils.
We have, for years, argued around all the other issues that prevent supply growth in housing. That includes labour, materials, and interest rates. But above and beyond it all, is the councils and their determination to hang onto to land come hell or high water, or at least make the process so difficult people simply give up.
In this newsletter:
You knew when the PM started selling the idea that we should be so grateful not to be going into level 4, that the mind games were on, and she was going to make Level 3 sound like a picnic.
And picnics as it turns out, is all we got. Two more weeks of them.
I could not have called this more wrong. Yesterday, I optimistically said they’d definitely free up some restrictions. I thought a zoo or a museum or the odd library may get thrown a bone.
How wrong I was. Two more weeks at Level 3 for Auckland, and the announcement that a slew of announcements will be dripfed over the coming week. If we thought we were living week by week on dripfed news by the Government, it just got worse. It’s now day by day. We are being dictated our terms, and our lives, in 24-hour cycles.
The 2011 welfare working group set up under National (not to be confused with the Labour's WEAG headed by Cindy Kiro, about to be sworn in as new GG) considered whether benefits could be used to compel parents to immunise their children. The idea was never implemented. A condition of receiving the Young Parent Payment for 16-19 year-olds stopped at, "you must also enrol your child (or children) at a medical centre or with a doctor."
Australia financially penalises parents who fail to immunse their child through reducing family benefit. That began under the Howard government. So there is a sort of precedent for linking vaccination to benefit receipt.
This distortion clearly reflects the
lack of balance in your caucus in favour of its Maori activist members.
It seems clear that this strongly out of balance bias reflects a deliberate structuring to pursue an ideological obsession favouring your Maori activist caucus members and their personal ambitions for self-enrichment, power and control - observably all strongly endorsed and supported by you.
In this newsletter:
1) Chinese president to snub UN climate summit
The Times, 15 October 2021
The last item we recorded after monitoring the Beehive website yesterday was headed E whakarite ana Te Kāwanatanga i ngā tūāpapa mō tewhakamaumahara ki Te Petihana Reo Māori ka tū ā tērā tau. The accompanying news dealt with a government decision to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the presentation of the Māori language petition and Māori Language Day as a major anniversary next year:
Since the introduction of the Sole Parent Support (SPS) benefit, which sole parents only qualify for until their youngest child turns 14, it's been harder to track how many sole parents are actually reliant on welfare. Far more are now receiving Jobseeker support.
Usefully MSD released some research in September, "What's happening to the number of sole parents on a benefit?" Numbers have been increasing - in part due to the economic effect of lock downs - and they wanted to predict whether the growth trend will continue. More on that later.
I am writing on behalf of, what I believe to be, many, many
thousands of concerned New Zealanders.
New Zealanders who now feel disenchanted, disenfranchised and apprehensive about where your government is leading New Zealand.
In New Zealand we are so fortunate to live in a country where
we can enjoy not only quality of life but also equality of life.
Sadly, we now consider that quality of life and, most definitely, equality of life is under serious threat.
It comes from a recent Australian Sky News Public affairs
programme that was celebrating the “breath of fresh air” that is the arrival of
the new NSW Premier, Dominic Perrottet.
The discussion included the public yearning, as in this country, for a return to governments who acted in the best interests of the majority while being sensitive to the genuine grievances and needs of the minority.
