Point of Order: Budget unleashes laments from groups that were overlooked or short-changed (including hopes of Human Rights empire-building)

And how did the people react to the boost in spending announced in this year’s Budget to promote our wellbeing?

In some cases by pleading for more; in other cases, by grouching they got nothing.

But Budget spending is never enough.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 15.5.22

Saturday May 21, 2022 

News:
New South Auckland Station Names Announced
KiwiRail and Auckland Transport have announced details of the proposed names for the three new stations to be constructed between Papakura and Pukekohe.

The names are Maketuu (Drury Central), Ngaakooroa (Drury West), and Paeraataa (Paerata).

Roger Partridge: Blowing the budget

Yesterday’s budget was not the only budget in town. It followed hot on the heels of Climate Change Minister James Shaw’s announcement on Monday of the Government’s $2.9 billion Emissions Reduction Plan. The plan sets out the steps the Government will take to meet the first of three national emissions budgets.

Like yesterday’s budget from the Minister of Finance, Shaw’s announcement showed an alarming air of unreality.

The Finance Minister’s error was failing to respond to the change in the country’s economic predicament. Shaw’s error was failing to realise the Government has already implemented a policy to achieve the very objectives proposed for his costly Emissions Reduction Plan – at least for non-agricultural emissions.

Bryce Edwards: A Conservative Budget for volatile times

Finance Minister Grant Robertson has delivered a Budget that will many asking “Is that all there is?” There is a myriad of initiatives and there is increased spending, but strangely it doesn’t really add up to much at all for those hoping for a more traditional Labour-style Budget.

The headline $350 “Cost of Living Payment” for some lower-income New Zealanders will be well received as at least doing something to ameliorate the impact of inflation. But it won’t go very far, and a Labour Government might be expected to do more for those at the bottom during a crisis.

The lack of other bolder initiatives will also have progressives scratching their heads about what the Government is up to and why they aren’t doing more.

Mike Hosking: We're writing a recipe for economic ruin

There was some sobering economic reality at my place yesterday.

My street had a truck vacuum in it, sucking all the crap out of the drains, so there was the obligatory 800 metres of cones and two stop go people.

Stop/go people have had a 28 percent wage rise on average this past year. I know this because I told you yesterday - the Seek job ad numbers tell us the 28 percent has taken them to about $46,000 a year.

Do you know that journalists - varies I assume from organisation to organisation - start in the low $40,000s, so flipping a stop/go sign is more valuable than journalism.

Weird, eh?

Guy Hatchard: Why the Rest of the World Should Be Very Concerned About New Zealand

The New Zealand government relies upon a science body known as Te Punaha Matatini (Centre for Science in Society) whose work is funded directly by the office of the Prime Minister and cabinet.

Today, Te Punaha Matatini published a 21 page document entitled “The Murmuration of Information Disorders” (see attached release from the Science Media Centre) designating those opposed to the government’s pandemic policies as violent right wing insurrectionists planning the weaponised storming of parliament and the execution of public servants, academics, journalists, politicians, and healthcare workers.

An utterly false characterisation worthy of the worst excesses of historical propaganda.

Richard Prebble: The Emissions Trading Scheme is now a slush fund

They have corrupted a crusade to save the planet into sleazy pork barrel politics. Labour and the Greens new climate change policies are just vote buying.

The climate change policies announced this week will not bring New Zealand one day closer to net zero emissions but will fund, to name one policy, changes to school curriculum and NCEA so we “embed an understanding of the collective nature of our wellbeing.” Our schools will be teaching socialist dogma.

It just proves we cannot trust politicians with our money; they will spend it on buying votes.

Labour with the Greens has taken the $3 billion in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to pay for:

Graham Adams: Is the jig up for Three Waters?

In Parliament last week, David Seymour was so cock-a-hoop about what he reckoned was the beginning of the end for Three Waters he could barely hide his glee.

He claimed the Labour Party:

"...has been all aflutter in their caucus this week talking about Three Waters, saying to each other, ‘Do we really want to do this? Is it really worth it, botching this thing, so that we lose our seats?"

Act’s leader reckoned the backdown had already begun and the Labour caucus would soon vote to kill the contentious programme that will strip councils compulsorily of their water assets and hand them to four vast regional entities governed by equal numbers of unelected iwi members and council representatives.

The rumour that a majority of Labour’s caucus is beginning to stand up to the powerful Māori faction over the co-governance aspect of Three Waters was circulating before Seymour got to his feet in the House to declare that Three Waters is “a Treaty settlement disguised as an infrastructure project” — and one that is making Labour MPs very anxious.

Seymour predicted:

Henry Armstrong: The UNDRIP Declaration Plan

The Ardern government is currently working on a plan, in conjunction with The Ministry of Maori Development (Te Puni Kokiri), the Iwi Chairs Forum, and the (discredited, politicised, and biased) Human Rights Commission, to give effect to the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – UNDRIP- in New Zealand. 

The general New Zealand public will not be allowed to know about the content of this Declaration Plan until it has been finalised by, and only for, Maori, who claim to be indigenous to New Zealand, having migrated here, periodically, and variously, from Eastern Polynesia, around 1300 AD. 

In a pre-Anzac weekend document release, Maori Development Minister Jackson provided a very brief statement on how the Declaration Plan is to be worked through - but only with Maori and the discredited Human Rights Commission - with absolutely no general public input whatsoever. 

Ardern has promised “consultation” sometime after the Plan is released in June.

Mike Hosking: What is the point of the Greens?

Obviously there has been a fair bit of feedback to yesterday's James Shaw Special on this show, in which he appeared to not know a lot about what had been announced in his specialist area.

The overall reaction sums it up, a plan to make a lot of plans

Someone else said it might be significant, but then it might be nothing.

Hard core campaigners fumed at the fact farming seemed to get off paying for stuff.

The conservatives fumed that business gets subsides when they really should be doing a lot of the heavy lifting themselves

All in all, for something that was billed as significant, or as a moment in history, it all added up to yet more waffle that may or may not come to pass.

Roger Childs: The Impact of the Treaty of Waitangi and Colonisation

…. The two decades following the Treaty of Waitangi were characterized nationally more by co-operation between Maori and Pakeha than by conflict. Historian Michael King

Salvation for Maori

In 1837 Chief Wiremu Hau wrote to the English King asking: Sir …. Will you give us law? Three years later the Treaty of Waitangi brought in the rule of law for all the people of New Zealand. It mean that there was freedom for slaves – mainly women – and the end of cannibalism, inter-tribal war, female infanticide, trading in smoked heads and the killing of prisoners. Disputes between tribes would now have to be settled in the courts and all New Zealanders would be subject to British laws.

The end of the Inter-Tribal Wars saved the Maori people from possible extinction. Over 40,000 men, women and children had been killed in more than 500 battles between 1800 and 1840, and the loss of so many women and girls meant that there were not enough potential mothers for the Maori population to recover quickly.

Point of Order: Greenpeace gripes at govt’s greenhouse gas agenda but agriculture leaders welcome it (and push genetic technologies)

Despite pouring $2.9 billion of taxpayer funds into the battle against climate change, the Ardern government won few plaudits from climate change lobbies – and copped a severe caning from Greenpeace for refusing to cut dairy herds.

As Radio NZ reported,

“Climate activists say the government’s landmark plan to curb emissions is light on detail, full of fluff, and lets the worst polluters off the hook”.

Government ministers were nevertheless ebullient about their package, believing they had delivered a master stroke in earmarking $569 million to help low-income families get cleaner cars while winning over farmers with a new agricultural emissions centre.

Roger Childs: Getting the History Right: Confiscated Land: The media’s need to tell the truth about our past

Written and spoken history has two key elements — facts and opinions.

Historians do not dispute that the fact that Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) was signed in 1840, however, opinions differ over the significance of the Treaty and how it should be recognized today. It is accepted that mainstream media will publish opinions about our past, but it is incumbent upon them to tell the truth on the indisputable realities of what happened.

Karl du Fresne: Kiwi crime capers

It looked like a scene from a Hollywood heist movie. Three expensive, late-model cars (stolen, of course) race through a deserted shopping mall in the early hours of the morning. CCTV footage shows the cars followed close behind by a swarm of teenagers on foot, their faces concealed by hooded jackets – the clothing of choice for New Zealand street gangs.

Their objective is an electronics store, where one of the cars smashes through the front doors. The robbers load their bags with cellphones, tablets and laptops and within minutes have fled with their booty, leaving behind a shaken cleaning lady who had to leap out of the cars’ path.

The raid was planned and executed so slickly as to be almost worthy of admiration. It happened last month at Ormiston, in the south-eastern suburbs of Auckland, in a stylish mall that has been hit by four ram raids in the year since it opened.

Since then there have been others, sometimes several in a single night. The businesses targetted range from high-end fashion shops to liquor outlets and humble convenience stores (‘dairies’, in New Zealand parlance) in the suburbs. In one raid, police apprehended an 11-year-old driver.

NZCPR Newsletter: Time for Change

In politics, things are often not what they seem. That’s why an opinion piece published in the Herald last week by the Minister for the Public Service Chris Hipkins, defending the expansion of the public service, raises some interesting questions.

Since it is unusual for Cabinet Ministers to publish newspaper articles at this stage in an election cycle, one has to wonder whether Labour’s internal polling shows opposition criticism is too damaging to be left unanswered - or whether this is the start of a positioning campaign ahead of a leadership pitch?

Is Chris Hipkins anticipating that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is planning to step down – and perhaps move onto higher office at the United Nations? If so, is he now signalling he’s a serious challenger for the top job?

Point of Order: Caucus neophytes may be keeping the govt from knowing what Kiwis in their electorates are wanting

Labour backbenchers, conscious that recent polling shows their political futures could be cut short, will be looking to this week’s budget to replenish their party’s popularity with handouts to swing votes.

They could be disappointed, if the Budget’s programme does not tackle voters’ concerns.

BNZ economists last week warned that the chances of a recession are “increasing by the day”. Economist Cameron Bagrie says controlling government spending to tamp down the factors causing high inflation should be a priority for the government, but a big-spending budget is already locked in.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: I'm not sure what James Shaw has been doing but it wasn't nailing down a climate plan

 

I’m not entirely sure what James Shaw has been doing with his time. 

But whatever it is, it certainly wasn’t spent nailing down a climate plan. 

What he’s released today is very short on detail. Very short. 

This is supposed to be a big day for the Government by the way. 

The PM’s called climate change the nuclear-free moment of our generation. 

Sean Plunkett: Political puff pieces funded by your tax dollar

Imagine being a support party for an incumbent government with a general election eighteen months away, the polls show the tide is going out for you and your big party mate and the pundits are picking a close-run thing come polling day.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get a 90 minute documentary made about one of your most high profile MPs and have it aired on a major TV channel, shared on social media, and replayed on demand across the internet. That sort of publicity and exposure might just be enough to tip the scales of the election in your favour, to get you, and the big party you support, back into power.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get someone else to pay for the whole thing, if you didn’t have to raise money through donations or declare the funding through the electoral commission.

Mike Hosking: Govt's Covid spin won't fool us anymore

Ashley Bloomfield was back Friday to spook you again, just like the good old days. The trouble for the Government's fear campaign is it's over. It’s a bust.

It's the evolution, or the anatomy, of a campaign that for a while was highly successful. A lot of us believed the fear and the predictions. A lot of us hung on every word of the epidemiologists as they became household names and seemed to have some idea of how the future worked.

After a while reality dawned on an increasing number of us when we started asking how come little, if any, of what they said came to pass. The accuracy was astonishingly non-existent.

Ian Powell: I’m sorry I haven’t a clue; parody in action

I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue is a famous BBC radio and television show, billed as the antidote to panel games and launched in 1972. A parody of panel shows, it features two teams of two comedians each being given “silly things to do” by a compere.

The show is still going strong, and is now being replicated in the restructure of primary and community care in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This restructure is part of the Government’s wider restructuring of the health system including the abolition of district health boards (DHBs) which are the statutory points of connection between central government and the local design, configuration and delivery of health services.