Michael Coote: On the Money - Can perpetual bonds avert COVID-19 tax increases in New Zealand?

The 52^nd New Zealand Parliament, which opened on 7 November 2017, finds its terminal countdown months in 2020 blighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.  This Parliament is finally extinct as of Saturday 19 September 2020, the date nominated by the prime minister for a general election.  

The Ardern tripartite coalition government’s Great Lockdown emergency measures are causing huge and mounting national compensatory expenditure blowouts that will have to be funded somehow.  In the short run ramped up national debt and expedient money printing will fill the breach, but afterwards the resultant liabilities must be addressed. 

Michael Coote: Event to commemorate the death anniversary of Governor William Hobson

British naval captain William Hobson (1792 - 1842) was the first and final Lieutenant Governor (30 January 1840 - 2 May 1841) of New Zealand when it was part of the British Crown colony of New South Wales. 

Thereafter he served as the first Governor (3 May 1841 - 10 September 1842) of the newly separated British Crown colony of New Zealand. 

Due to the colonial governmental transition under Hobson, New Zealand avoided becoming a state or dependency of Australia. 

Michael Coote: On the Money - Phony War Looms in Parliament

The National Party has gone through revolution since the abrupt resignation of its former leader, ex-prime minister Bill English.  This greyest of grey men was not likely to have relished time as the humiliatingly outflanked opposition leader facing acting prime minister Winston Peters for six weeks whilst prime minister Jacinda Ardern took maternity leave from her job.

Political commentator Barry Soper recalls that Mr English seconded the motion to expel Mr Peters from National in the early 1990s.  The reversal of fortunes looming must have been relished by Mr Peters and dreaded by Mr English.  Far better for the latter to drop out of Parliament, grab hold of one of former National prime minister John Key's reinstated mates rates knighthoods, and, transmogrified as Sir William, sally forth boldly in search of fat corporate sinecures to cash out any residual value of his extinct political career.  That path was already well worn by Sir John in service of his own personal chivalric cause.

Michael Coote: Key leaves lingering racist legacy

Few other politicians have done more to create conditions ripe for the destruction of racial equality

Gone- by- Monday Prime Minister John Key shrewdly picked a retirement date amenable for collecting one of those New Year’s honour knighthoods he personally reinstated.

Michael Coote: Counterpunching Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)

Pugnacious former New Zealand prime minister Sir Robert Muldoon proudly defined himself as a “counterpuncher”.

In Sir Robert’s official biography, author Barry Gustafson expands on the term by writing, “He developed a deserved reputation as a counterpuncher who saw attack as the best means of defence, and who believed that he should always retaliate if anyone attacked him.”

Michael Coote: Unitary Plan deadline fast approaching

Just weeks remain before submissions on the proposed Auckland unitary plan close on Friday, February 28, 2014. After that, those who have failed to get their word in edgeways and asked for the right to speak at subsequent Resource Management Act (RMA) hearings will be shut out of direct input into the process.

The deadline is salient not least because Auckland Council under mayor Len Brown is attempting to use the unitary plan to foist a race-based constitution upon Auckland that will permanently elevate its part-Maori inhabitants to legal and public policy supremacy over all other residents and ratepayers.

Michael Coote: Heritage hides development favours

Auckland Council is the gift that keeps on giving, at least if you’re one of the local Maori tribes expecting to cash in on its Unitary Plan (UP). A memo to councillors and local board chairs dated July 31, 2013, from Dr Roger Blakeley, chief planning officer of Auckland Council, makes plain the privileged access Maori are being given within the decision-making process for finalising the UP.

“Throughout engagement on the draft Unitary Plan, mana whenua have repeatedly requested ‘face-to-face’ (kanohi ki te kanohi) engagement with decision-makers,” Dr Blakeley writes.

Michael Coote: Iwi plans push tribal supremacy

In its draft Unitary Plan (UP), Auckland Council slips in mention that it will, “Require [land] subdivision, use and development … to incorporate the outcomes articulated by mana whenua through consultation and within iwi planning documents.”

This statement would ordinarily be a recitation of basic legal obligations on Auckland Council under the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA), except that the UP is proposing an entirely political commitment to privilege and facilitate the interests of Auckland’s Maori tribes over the rest of the community.

Michael Coote: Submission on the Auckland Unitary Plan

May 2013

Draft Auckland Unitary Plan Feedback from an Auckland Ratepayer and Resident

To whom it may concern,

I write concerning the Draft Auckland Unitary Plan (“D-AUP”) as it relates to policy concerning Maori and Mana Whenua [The people of the land who have mana or customary authority – their historical, cultural and genealogical heritage are attached to the land and sea].

Michael Coote: Will tribal risks be fully disclosed in Mighty River Power sale?

The Mighty River Power (MRP) share float is being rushed through by a National minority government anxious to score a public relations victory. For prime minister John Key, the float is his chief hope of leaving behind a political legacy to be remembered after he has claimed his exiting knighthood. 

There will be tension between Mr Key, who would want to get the shares away come what may to help him win his gong, and finance minister Bill English, who should seek the highest possible price to pad out the government’s ailing books.

Michael Coote: National underestimates tribal ambitions for racial superiority

Potential investors have been rightly dismayed by the racial water rights fiasco that has engulfed and contaminated proposed partial sales of Mighty River Power, Genesis Energy and Meridian Energy. The supposedly slick, market-savvy National minority government of prime minister John Key has been left looking feckless, outflanked and amateurish in the process.

It will be remembered that the three publicly-owned electricity generators, along with ailing Solid Energy, were touted as partial equity selldowns by National without any serious thought given at the time to Treaty of Waitangi contingencies embedded in the State-owned Enterprises Act. It was the beginning of the end when National was subsequently cornered into putting a Treaty clause into the enabling legislation for the mixed ownership model (MOM) of SOE partial privatisation.

Michael Coote: Treaty of Waitangi cargo cult

Like his predecessor in office Helen Clark, prime minister John Key is hoist with his own petard by sweeping Maori tribal claims to Crown assets. Ms Clark, it will be remembered, tried to face down Maori tribal claims to ownership of the foreshore and seabed. Her Labour-led  government passed the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 in order to reassert Crown ownership of our territorial waters and all below out to the twelve nautical mile limit. Her government’s legislation was its response to a Court of Appeal ruling of June 2003.

This ruling held that the Maori Land Court had jurisdiction to decide on Maori customary land title to the foreshore and seabed of the Marlborough Sounds, extending to the limits of New Zealand's territorial sea, under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993.

Michael Coote: Liar, liar, pants on fire!

This sort of accusation summed up the initial general election debates between our leading political Pinocchios, prime minister John Key and opposition leader Phil Goff.

Mr Key had indeed been caught out in telling “porKeys” when earlier on he had tried to use the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of New Zealand’s long term sovereign debt to suggest in Parliament that the election of a Labour-led government would lead to further downgrades.

Michael Coote: Is NZ headed for the PIIGS sty?

Country debt burdens keep bubbling to the surface as serious concerns, even as a lengthening string of positive US economic data suggests some of the worst risks to markets have been skirted. Nuanced attitudes are emerging to the problems plaguing the PIIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain.

Hedge fund managers, who are often willing to rush in where fools fear to tread, have begun making positive noises about some PIIGS even as they write off the hopes of others. Greece is a basket case, widely expected to default, with the only argument left being how long it will take. Portugal doesn’t look much better. But Ireland is in favour as a bargain for debt securities because its underlying economy is holding up better than expected, and Spain is being viewed as a near miss for collapse and consequently a golden opportunity.

So what is the distinction between PIIGS that will flounder and those that will bob back up to the surface again? The magic words are “economic growth”.

Michael Coote: A mockery of democratic processes

First published in The National Business Review, February 25, 2011: The Maori Party is going to miss Hone Harawira, long an independent MP anyway. Mr Harawira’s virtue lies in making cunning, hardened Maori racists like Pita Sharples appear moderate and reasonable in their relentless campaign to undermine New Zealand’s liberal democracy and its core principle of legal equality between persons.

Without the Harawira figleaf, we will get the naked lunch – so to speak - from the Maori Party and it won’t make pretty eating.

Already with the ill-conceived Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill, the rump of the Maori Party will vote for enactment only in order to come back and renegotiate it later, with particular emphasis on diluting ever further the qualifying criteria for Maori tribes to gain customary title to vast swathes of the foreshore and seabed.

Michael Coote: A Phoney War over the Foreshore and Seabed

The phoney war between the National Government and the racist Maori Party over the foreshore and seabed hotted up recently. A bogus screaming match erupted over whether the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill (MCA) should state explicitly that Joe and Jane Public were entitled to free access to the foreshore and seabed.

This was a mere smokescreen calculated to distract New Zealanders from what really should be worrying them about MCA.

Michael Coote: Coastal Maori Tribes Big Winners Under New Bill

The National-led government is fortunate that the South Canterbury Finance payout and the Christchurch earthquake disaster happened when they did.

These events served to distract attention from the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill it introduced into Parliament on September 7.

The bill is intended to replace the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and will open up the marine environment to privatization by coastal Maori tribes.

Michael Coote: Whale vetoes point the way on foreshore and seabed legislation

While the public awaits the National-led government to release its foreshore and seabed bill on September 7, it is worth looking at some signs of things to come. Practices in place at present concerning unwonted coastal Maori tribal influence over the foreshore and seabed are likely to multiply exponentially under the impending legislation. This increase can only result in the further undermining and overruling of New Zealand’s open, secular, democratic Western society, and in particular its scientific culture.

Destruction of the supremacy of Western civilisation in New Zealand is of course a key objective in the Maorification agenda being pandered to by the government’s foreshore and seabed legislation proposals.