Mike Moore seems to have made some valid points in his DomPost article . I’ve tended to think of Moore as being, on the one hand a bit of a lightweight, but also someone who found his feet outside politics – a valuable Chairman who had a single minded focus, and a man who – when he was convinced of arguments- was prepared to back them up. His career hit its apex being head of the WTO, not leading Labour to two election defeats and getting stabbed in the back by the leftwing fascist Labour feminocracy shortly thereafter.
Moore talked about the divergence in relationship between Australia and NZ. Australia has little interest in the relationship with New Zealand. While it is useful to have access to another market- effectively no bigger than Melbourne – it is hardly critical and the Aussies have it already. The US and Asia are far more important, and the New Zealand relationship with the US, while being friends is no more than that. The tradeoff for some is to say Aussie is at risk of a terror attack far more than NZ – which may be true – and that pleases the Green anti-nuclear mob, for whom the US can never do any good.
The old story of the tradeoff between the nuclear ban and trade is true – it is a truth the Greens don’t care about, because they are against trade growth (see transporting things hurts the environment!) although they are never against using the money from it to pay for state of the art healthcare or trains or whatever their fetish is this week. Labour wont dare admit to the trade off because the nuclear ban is something the student peaceniks in them are not prepared to give up. They have some fatuous belief that banning nuclear weapons, particularly those held by countries that share our values, will result in more peace. National wont confront the largely brainless mass of New Zealanders raised on Greenpeace propaganda, fed through our schools that anything nuclear is bad and hurts whales – the same mass who happily use nuclear power on holidays to Europe and the US.
Moore more importantly lamblasts the political correctness of today - something he said Latham has "as a good bullshit detector" - while noting in New Zealand there are publicly funded books calling modern health methods of stopping smoking, eating healthier and exercise as “white man’s racist answers to Maori problems”. He quotes vaccinations being considered a form of "colonialism", and cervical screenings "contradict cultural norms". We still have the despicable anti-science bullshit that originally came out with Anna Penn and the late Irihapeti Ramsden and nursing cultural safety – something Ken Mair defended at the time. Something the National Party was silent about at the time, but what do you expect from Jim Bolger?
Why didn’t National find this before the election? This sort of vile nonsense is beyond words and I would love to have seen Helen Clark and Annette King defending state funding of this mumbo-jumbo. Nazi Germany produced the same level of science in its propaganda, and does the Maori Party defend it? Given Ken Mair is one of the Maori Party’s chief negotiators with Labour – I wouldn’t be surprised.
It is also interesting that Mark Latham understands something the Greens don't - why protectionism hurt the people Labour is supposed to care about is telling – the Greens are xenophobically opposed to foreign made goods unless they are really special! The Greens would rather protect local manufacturers than ensure the poor get cheaper shoes for their kids – but they see it as protecting jobs, keeping jobs from those poor Chinese people who without the (relatively) low wage job would otherwise (without a welfare state) have to live cultivating a subsistence existence on a farm, rather than earn money and be able to better themselves. It is such economic nonsense that it is barely worth arguing against - it is the economics of adolescents.
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