Peter Winsley: Russian economic history, including a folk song lens

The new coalition government in New Zealand gives some hope that democracy, universalism, and Enlightenment values can win out over identity politics and tribalism. This frees up time to explore other issues, such as why some inherently wealthy countries underperform compared to their potential.

Peter Winsley: Te Tiriti o Waitangi cedes sovereignty to the Crown, and can be unifying rather than divisive

Repeated claims are made that Māori never ceded sovereignty to the Crown. These claims come from sources such as the Waitangi Tribunal, activists, academics, and from Te Pāti Māori. 

A display in Te Papa on an English language version of the Treaty of Waitangi has been vandalized, presumably because it stated that the Crown assumed full sovereignty over New Zealand.  Activists argue that the Māori language Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the only legitimate Treaty text, since most Māori assenting to a Treaty signed this version.  I agree with these assertions.  However, I disagree that in signing Te Tiriti, Māori did not cede sovereignty to the Crown.

Peter Winsley: Te Tiriti o Waitangi cedes sovereignty to the Crown, and can be unifying rather than divisive

Repeated claims are made that Māori never ceded sovereignty to the Crown. These claims come from sources such as the Waitangi Tribunal, activists, academics, and from Te Pāti Māori.

A display in Te Papa on an English language version of the Treaty of Waitangi has been vandalized, presumably because it stated that the Crown assumed full sovereignty over New Zealand. Activists argue that the Māori language Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the only legitimate Treaty text, since most Māori assenting to a Treaty signed this version. I agree with these assertions. However, I disagree that in signing Te Tiriti, Māori did not cede sovereignty to the Crown.

Peter Winsley: The great soul of the Russian people will always outlive those who seek to destroy it

The Russian symbolist poet Osip Mandelstam once said that Russia is the only country that takes poetry seriously – it gets people killed. In Stalin’s time some Russian poets were victimised and silenced, some were protected. Stalin admired Pasternak’s translations of Georgian poetry into Russian. He wrote a curt note to the NKVD telling it to “leave this cloud dweller alone.”

Peter Winsley: How to defend New Zealand without killing anyone (if possible)

War is older than all human cultures. It pervades human history in all regions and epochs. When the first oral histories were composed war was among the most pervasive themes. Yet war is horrible. It is also extremely expensive both for the “winners” and “losers”. Sometimes it seems a fine hair trigger is tripped or mass psychosis arises from some flimsy pretext and otherwise rational people are sucked into it.

New Zealand is now under pressure to join new alliances and spend more on defence without being told who the enemy might be.

Peter Winsley: Will New Zealand’s liberal democracy survive?

New Zealand’s democracy based on equal voting rights is changing with different rights assigned at birth, based on whether you have Māori blood or not. New Māori-only rights exist or are being put in place in the environmental, resource management, education, health, science, local government, and other sectors. Resources are therefore allocated based on race rather than on need

Race-based rights are increasingly enabled in legislation, promoted by Labour Government politicians, academics, public servants in key positions, and supported by most mainstream media. Opposing voices are silenced through publication bans, disruption of meetings, threats to careers, and Orwellian racism accusations.

Peter Winsley: Resolving arguments about opening meetings with karakia - A modest proposal

Debate continues on whether meetings should open with a karakia, and if so what rules might apply. Some oppose their purported religious content (karakia can be secular). Some argue karakia must always be translated into English. Others value Te Reo Māori for its emotional power, its meanings ineffable in English, or simply because of how it sounds.

Peter Winsley: The Green Party’s plans for public and private lands

The Green Party wants to facilitate the transfer of more public (or “Crown”) and private land to iwi, hapū, and whānau. The intent is to address inequities arising from Māori land loss, especially in the 19th century.

The New Zealand Constitution Act 1986 marks the point that Parliament became sovereign and the British Crown’s role became limited to the procedural and symbolic. “The Crown” in practical terms means all New Zealanders, or at least their elected members of Parliament. Whatever costs “the Crown” incurs in Tiriti-related processes are paid for by New Zealanders, not by King Charles.

Peter Winsley: The legality of New Zealand’s government, and what should we do about the Doctrine of Discovery?

Claire Charters makes some remarkable assertions in her 14 July Opinion piece Matariki is a mark of how far we have come and how far we have to travel.

Charters is a law professor at Auckland University. She chaired the He Puapua working group and is the indigenous rights governance partner at the Human Rights Commission. She has ancestral links to Ngāti Whakaue, Tūwharetoa, Ngā Puhi and Tainui. She also has extensive European ancestry.

In her 14 July Opinion piece Professor Charters argues that “before we can claim to be a nation founded on the rule of law, we must address the fundamental illegality of the state.” To add to the sins of the illegal New Zealand state, Charters also opines that “Aotearoa still refuses to repudiate the doctrine of discovery – the racist rule that permitted European powers to take land from “natives” because they didn’t qualify as human.”

Peter Winsley: Education as Master, not Servant of Artificial Intelligence

Knowledge accumulated over Generations

When past social or technological advances are discussed young people sometimes disclaim all knowledge and remark “I wasn’t alive then”, as if nothing can be known without having been lived through. This is not Hayek’s “pretense of knowledge” so much as the misguided view that nothing is real except what you have seen, touched and can vouch for in person. In fact, learning accumulates and is passed on through the generations. For example, a first-year university Mathematics student stands on the shoulders of generations of mathematicians from many cultures. The known evidence suggests that mathematics originated in Mesopotamia in around 3000BC and advanced greatly within the Islamic world of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, “but I cannot say for sure because I wasn’t alive then”.

Peter Winsley: While people focus on the election radical change is happening without voter awareness

It is election year. Political parties are building candidate visibility – they are testing each other in the House before they clash on the hustings – they are refining existing policy and announcing new manifesto commitments.

Democracy requires free, fair and regular elections based on one person, one vote, and all votes are of equal value. It requires freedom of speech, open Government, a critical media, and the rule of law. It assumes human universality and therefore equal citizenship rights. It requires a secular Parliament and other Government institutions.

That is the way democracy is supposed to work in New Zealand. However, the reality is that radical change is now occurring with little scrutiny, and much electioneering is just a side show.

Peter Winsley: How do we prevent an “accident” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant?

In our 20 May post we argued there was a low risk of nuclear weapon use in Ukraine, however we noted that “what is more likely than a Russian nuclear strike is engineering an “accident” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.”

On 6 June 2023, the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine was breached, causing extensive flooding. Located on the Dnieper in Kherson Oblast, the Russian military controlled the dam, having seized it in the early days of the invasion of Ukraine.

Most of the media coverage focuses on the flooding of part of Kherson Oblast (including some low-lying suburbs of Kherson City itself), however there are far bigger implications. Specifically, the cooling systems at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant could fail, leading to a Fukushima-type event, though potentially bigger. That means an exclusion zone because of contamination around the plant (perhaps in a 30km radius) and radionuclide fallout hundreds of km downwind, the region dependent on wind direction and local rainfall conditions. The water of the Dnieper would be heavily contaminated; the radioactive load would be transported downstream and into the Black Sea. It is possible that the city of Kherson would become uninhabitable.

Peter Winsley: How sustainable is New Zealand Superannuation and what are the alternative policy options?

Debate on superannuation focuses on the eligibility age and long-term fiscal sustainability. Only rarely is the connection made between superannuation and retirement savings policies, and economic performance.

Since around 1950 New Zealand has been in relative economic decline, and its productivity has been stagnating for many years. Key to this has been low domestic saving rates, which translate into thin capital markets, investment short-termism and to a low ratio of capital to labour, constraining labour productivity. Low domestic savings rates mean high real interest rates and a real exchange rate that weakens our tradeable sector.

Peter Winsley: Russia has two ways out of the Ukraine war that avoids economic ruination....

.....Neither or them involve nuclear weapons

Vladimir Putin’s Russia cannot afford to lose its war with Ukraine because of the economic loss and political upheaval this would cause. Nor can it afford to win this war because repairing the damage and dealing with the aftermath would cripple its own economy. Putin still has some options, however nuclear weapons are not one of them.

Peter Winsley: The Human Rights Commission needs to do its job and stay out of politics

The Human Rights Commission (HRC) is charged with upholding all New Zealanders’ human rights. Fundamental rights include free speech, non-discrimination, and equality before the law.

However, the HRC has declined to take action against racist acts hostile to non-Māori. It did not defend effectively Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s free speech rights in New Zealand. Rather than focusing on its core legal obligations the HRC has now set as a strategic priority the elimination of racism from New Zealand. It believes this will require race-based constitutional change.

Peter Winsley: He Puapua is being implemented, however all is not lost

The Prime Minister is committed to “bread and butter” issues and has dropped or put on hold some government work programmes. However, Tiriti-related work is still being pushed hard, and He Puapua, Three Waters, and the new curriculum are well underway.

He Puapua and other initiatives have been undertaken in secret, without significant consultation or public debate and without an electoral mandate. In relation to Three Waters, probably less than one percent of the non-Māori population are aware that the Te Mana o te Wai statements that iwi and hapu issue are powerful enough to give tribes effective control of New Zealand’s water resources.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi is now at the core of many New Zealand statutes, constitutional and policy documents. It is disquieting that neither the current nor former Prime Minister, when asked, were able to state all three Tiriti Articles.

Peter Winsley: Racialism, advocacy of violence in poetry and mātauranga Māori

It was a pleasure to read a recent opinion piece by Giselle Byrnes and Meihana Durie on research funding for Māori. It responded to a piece by former academic Dr Steve Stannard. While I largely agree with Dr Stannard, both pieces were written in a civil and respectful way. How depressing then that race brings out the worst in us, as shown by a “poem” from Tuisata Avia, and another flare up in the debate around mātauranga Māori, this time featuring Dr Tara McAllister.

Tuisata Avia’s poem is entitled “250th anniversary of James Cook’s arrival in New Zealand”. It reads:

Peter 'Winsley: Can we turn forest slash from waste and risk into a valuable resource?

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, as in revenge, have sucked up from the sea contagious fogs; which falling in the land have every pelting river made so proud that they have overborne their continents…
Shakespeare, A Midsummer-Night’s Dream

Cyclone Gabrielle has caused death and destruction, and amplified awareness of the need to manage forestry slash. Slash is the branches, small logs and other woody material left after plantation forests are harvested, typically from low value hill country. At best slash is waste. At worst it can do enormous damage when washed downstream, clogging up rivers, harming pastoral farming and horticulture, damaging transport and other infrastructure, cluttering beaches, and impacting on kai moana.

Key events that have triggered downstream problems with slash include cyclones Bola (1988), Gita (2018), Hale (January 2023) and Gabrielle (February 2023). Climate change is likely to make such storms more frequent and more damaging.

Peter Winsley: Defending New Zealand’s democracy, and why Shakespeare is Kryptonite to tribalists and ethno-nationalists

Economic history tells us that the best outcomes come from inclusive democracy, secular institutions based on science and reasoning, a market economy with macro-economic stability and micro-economic flexibility, and social risk management policies. New Zealand has such things in place, and yet its democracy and institutions are under attack by advocates for race and tribe-based policies and for constitutional change to transfer power to unelected iwi leaders. What is going on?

Peter Winsley: Submission on the Natural and Built Environment Bill

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission on the Natural and Built Environment Bill.

In my view the strongest part of the Bill is the central place it gives to te Oranga o te Taiao as a concept. This is defined in the legislation as: