It starts with the moans about how the filing fee for Environment Court appeal applications is being increased from NZ$55 to NZ$500, hardly a big deal for anyone with a serious concern about an Environment Court decision, but clearly a deal for the interfering busybodies who want to dictate to others what to do with their land. The Greens are outraged according to the NZ Herald.
The claim is "The fee increase will particularly hurt the small environment groups, residents' associations and voluntary community project groups who work on behalf of the public." says Russel Norman. Sorry Russel, the groups you describe work for themselves NOT on behalf of the public. The "public" does not belong to them, they are lobbyists with special interests. None of such groups ever speak for me - unless I explicitly authorise them to do so.
Hopefully the fund that Labour set up to subsidise environmental group appeals to the Environment Court has also been abolished.
Anti-nuke hysteria
Dr Kennedy Graham, (one of the new intake) says New Zealand should be "anti-nuclear all of the time". He is upset NZ did not support a UN resolution for a treaty banning nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons kept the peace in Europe from 1949 to 1989, Dr Graham would prefer to keep his head in the sand about this saying "NATO countries rely on nuclear weapons. New Zealand does not. NATO believes that their retention of nuclear weapons keeps the peace. New Zealand does not. It is time that New Zealand acted consistently with its stated policy of rejecting nuclear deterrence and supported the UN call to ban the use of nuclear weapons".
Actually Dr Graham nuclear weapons DO keep the peace. They have kept Israel from full scale attack since 1974, they have kept North Korea at bay since 1953, they have kept India and Pakistan from fighting over Kashmir since the 1970s. "Banning nuclear weapons" is childishly naive. Russia and China, both authoritarian states with designs on their neighbours, wont abandon nuclear weapons, so why should the US/France and the UK?
Despite the naive wishes of the "anti-nuclear movement", the world has states which are militaristic and threaten their neighbours, some of these are nuclear powers. While there remain such countries with nuclear weapons it would be counterproductive to remove any Western deterrence of them (and Israel would be mad to surrender the nuclear option whilst Iran talks of wiping it off the map).
Foreign investment North Korean style
Green MP Kevin Hague is xenophobic about foreign (ew) investors because "dividends from a locally-owned business are considerably more likely to be reinvested locally" (fine but why restrict foreigners from investing too? or should New Zealanders not be allowed to invest overseas?), Local owners of a business are more likely than foreign owners to have some sense of identity and common purpose with local people and environment (you can say that about truly local owners, like Auckland for Aucklanders, or should it be Parnell for Parnellians?
Then the pièce de résistance "Economic power translates in part to political power. Greater foreign ownership of businesses in New Zealand thus generally weakens national sovereignty." Nonsense. If the role of the state simply was to protect individual rights, you wouldn't care.
An investor from Australia in Auckland is no different from an investor from Auckland in Dunedin, or an investor from Takapuna in Penrose. They are all "foreign", it's just the Greens think national boundaries matter because of a peculiar geographic phobia of auslanders.
Self sufficiency is the basis for the North Korean philosophy of juche which is:
1. The people must have independence in thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense.
2. Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in revolution and construction.
3. Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the situation of the country.
4. The most important work of revolution and construction is molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to constructive action.
I'm sure the Greens would reject the fourth point, but the rest?
1 comment:
On the subject of foreign investment in NZ, oponents focus on the dividend that is sent back to the overseas investor, they disregard, are probably unaware of, the money that is spent in NZ. For every dollar that goes through the till of an typical business as little as five cents will be profit, the rest would be spent in NZ operating the business.
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