Alistair Boyce: NZ Political Economy - the greens agenda vs reality

As we enter the election campaign we are once again enduring unsubstantiated rhetoric and narrative, especially from the greens. Te pati Maori offer little more than divisive tribal economic naivety. Labour feeds us the sugary diet and ongoing delusion of smoke and mirror economic and social policy that can only extend NZ’s inflationary and cost of living predicament and further divide society. Polling makes it clear that the NZ electorate wants change, necessarily to the center-right.

Lets be clear the greens require socialist state control to achieve their goals. Their constant and divisive analysis of class warfare, as espoused by Julie Ann Genter, is self-fulfilling. The entrepreneurial class will get cancelled and the state becomes an inefficient bourgeoisie. Genter provides only a one-dimensional school of thought. The excesses of the ‘rich’ post colonialists are to blame for climate change and the socio-economic inequities of capitalist society. Market driven capitalists should be consigned to unforgiving repentance. The wealthy should fund the state that unfortunately still relies on its taxes until the silent revolution can acquire the historically ill-gotten assets. This narrative relies on stable economic growth (GDP) but its fundamental flaw is that economic growth, by the Greens own analysis and admission, is in their view destroying the planet. Yet a greens government needs the derivative wealth from a market led economic multiplier for their social and climate justice agenda. Meanwhile the breakdown of law and order further undermines society and economy. The greens fail to point out any actual international successes of these economically destructive policies and models.

There is no nuance, no understanding of markets, no acknowledgement of ‘equitable’ wealth generation and distribution or how to achieve it. Liberal social democracy is superseded to a narrow interpretation of the greater good. The reality is the greens policy requires totalitarianism and is championed on the back of imminent and catastrophic climate change. It is nothing short of a Marxist revolution in a green guise. The State will increasingly direct suitable economic activity. There will be capital flight. There will be a massive fiscal hole, just like in Wellington city-the radical greens stronghold. This is one step away from a national (universal) basic income and a quazi communist state that will be necessarily unproductive (especially in relation to food and energy) and inefficient in its brave new ‘carbon zero’ world. The socio-economic pain continually justified by the absolutism of climate change alarmism. The very nature of the greens policies will undermine effective positive economic action to curb emissions enduring state directed contraction of economic growth. 

Genter champions this narrative, but the ideological fragility needs to be exposed. She appears to be the architect of Lets Get Wellington Moving which is acting as a series of scythes through the Wellington CBD micro-economy. LGWM is impacting all the incumbent chains of equity that drive the local economy and indeed make up links nationally and internationally to the webs of investment. LGWM is by accident and design an instrument of economic destruction, the practical policy implementation of making cities carbon zero green. LGWM unfairly impacts and dislocates smaller business and allows bigger capital to take stage, leaving a ghetto of socio-economic problems.

James Shaw ignores the impossibility of the utopic vision knowingly championing vacuous policy from a position of privilege. Marama Davidson provides no economic intelligence and more incoherent ideology. Chloe Swarbrick seems to be now mired in class rhetoric and social justice issues. None of them show any capability or realisation for their inevitable and ultimately necessary coalition of the state with corporations that they will have to turn to as social control dissipates with economic contraction.

The Greens now represent the implosion of our society as we know it. Genter labels David Seymour as a radical capitalist. I would label Seymour as a rational capitalist. Seymour understands and effectively debates the demarcation and relationship between the state, capital and markets. Mainstream media actively avoid engagement with Seymour or talk past him. The greens are dangerously blinded by alarmist ideology and economic naivety. Even Chris Hipkins refers to LGWM in the past tense, wanting to avoid a clear and present demonstration of a ‘coalition of chaos’.

The irrational, incoherent and radical Greens (unless you believe in the success of a slow burning totalitarian revolution) allows the Nicola Willis, Chris Luxon centrist strategy to reap dividends. Hipkins and Grant Robertson are surely no longer credible with a dearth of talent, policy division and fiscal holes everywhere. Labour can only form a coalition with the greens and te pati Maori making stable and effective government impossible. Luxon should deflate the inevitable, and for him unhelpful, presidential contest to one of Hipkins making isolated ‘captains calls’ versus the united, safe and secure National team. Seymour takes the political heat in a position of cemented and consummate electoral strength. Seymour keeps demonstrating supreme articulation and rational vision. National provides electorally inclusive socially democratic pragmatism and avoids reference to a ‘scary’ lurch to the right. Winston will pick up the disaffected freedom vote, working class and social democrats who can’t bear to move across to the ‘Nats’.

With the greens as damaged goods, incoherent and in disarray it could be that the real contest and work is after the election. As long as National and ACT get a safe majority economic rationality, stability and confidence should return albeit at a huge price as the legacy of the incompetent and divisive 6th Labour government bites economically and socially for the foreseeable future.

Alistair Boyce is the owner of the iconic Wellington pub the Backbencher.