So Te Pāti Māori opposes one-person one vote liberal democracy?

 What to make of this?

and

The MP of Waiariki, thinks that to implement the Treaty of Waitangi, Parliament should have 50% representation from Tangata Whenua and 50% representation from Tangata Tiriti. Presumably his reason for doing this is because it "isn't fair" that a majority, in a liberal democracy, without constitutional limits on power, effectively mean the tyranny of numbers. This is a view that on the face of it, I sympathise with.  

Anyone who thinks a democracy can protect the rights of people under any jurisdiction, in itself, is a fool. So he has a point... perhaps if liberal democracy in New Zealand actually protected individual rights (which include the right of any group of individuals, such as Iwi, Hapū or Māori in general to organise on voluntary grounds), including property rights, then Waititi and his supporters could avoid fearing some sort of backlash, racist or otherwise, against living your life peacefully.

However my fear is that he doesn't really just want to be left alone, but actually wants to wield power much more widely, (although I am open to being proven otherwise, as he is far from being a conventional politician).

It's important to know what it means to want a 50/50 Parliament with half of the representation being Māori and the other half Tangata Tiriti, because according to his colleague, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, it isn't the population being split in two, it's the population being split in three.

Before you jump to the conclusion that this is simply a nationalist grab of power that has nothing to do with liberal democracy, you need to understand it isn't just about race, it's actually about political belief as well. You might assume Tangata Tiriti are the people who are entitled to live in Aotearoa because the Treaty of Waitangi established a framework to enable peaceful co-existence between Māori and settlers, but apparently not.

Writing in the NZ Herald, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer (list MP), claims the population of New Zealand is classified into not two (!), but three types of people:

• Tangata Whenua (people of the land. Māori);
• Tangata Tiriti (people of the treaty); and
• Everyone else.

Ngarewa-Packer wrote rather obliquely what she meant by all three groups in that same article.  It's worth quoting to get the gist of her meaning:

Tangata tiriti are people who don't argue the existence of Te Tiriti o Waitangi as our founding document. They promote the partnerships it intended, moving away from transactional engagements, preferring lifelong relationships.

They are secure in themselves and know we are equals, one as tangata of the whenua (people of the land) and one as tangata of the tiriti (people of the treaty). ...

Tangata tiriti understand te tiriti didn't create special rights for Māori - we already had Māori social structures and systems of lore in place....

They're comfortable loudly declaring they're recovering racists, and they teach anti-racism, extremely secure in knowing their place side by side with tangata whenua ushering in a new Aotearoa.

Tangata tiriti accept and appreciate the reason they live in Aotearoa is because te tiriti gives them citizenship and mana equal to tangata whenua. This doesn't denounce their own culture, it strengthens their stand on the whenua they've chosen to live on. 

So it's not just about not being Māori, you have to buy into a whole ideological set of beliefs and views to earn the status of Tangata Tiriti. This includes accepting the reason you get to live in NZ is because the Treaty gives you citizenship on the land you've "chosen" to live on. 

The fact you may have been born here (or indeed your parents were as well) and may be born of any mix of ethnic or migrant origin is irrelevant to her. Identify as Māori, and you have an automatic right to live in Aotearoa, but if not, you have "permission". It's not "blood and soil" nationalism, but it certainly isn't "equal".

It is akin to granting someone a residency visa,  you should be grateful "we" let you stay, but your entitlement to stay depends on you behaving.

Part of it is that you need to embrace the Māori nationalist version of "original sin". No matter your background or your thoughts or deeds, or being English, Pasifika, Chinese, Jewish, Indian in descent you are a "recovering racist". You must admit it, and preferably evangelise to others about your and their racism, and of course your "privilege". Although it's unclear if being distantly descended from settlers in the 19th century who occupied land taken from Māori is more privilege than having fled Vietnam on a boat in 1976.

So that's your path to being Tangata Tiriti, although it's far from clear how that could be policed.

Of course, like mild nationalists, the definition of the "other" group is more by inference. It's everyone who doesn't support this view of the New Zealand constitution or the rights of citizens or politics. If you don't think you are racist, don't think you have NZ citizenship as of right, rather than permission, and don't buy into Māori-only seats at local government, then you're the others. You're not Tangata Tiriti, you are racists and possibly white supremacists ("white" being quite a wide definition presumably). There isn't much tolerance in the Ngarewa-Packer world for debate and discussion about the role of the state and individuals.

The whole ideological foundation of this is not one that treats the smallest minority as the individual, and individuals each with indivisible rights and freedoms, but one that collectivises everyone into groups, each with different rights.

Now I have quite some support for Māori wanting control over their own affairs, including their property and to run their own institutions, as long as it shrinks the central government role (and taxation alongside it), it's all consistent with my philosophy. I really don't care if Waititi or Ngarewa-Packer and others want to live their lives in peace with businesses, schools, hospitals etc. I don't care about your race or background if you want to do that, I want a state that simply protects us from each other.

but I do care if the purpose of this is to create an ethno-nationalist defined autocracy, where some citizens are more equal than others. Even if the Tangata Tiriti category is magnanimously expanded to just mean everyone who isn't Tangata Whenua, it still destroys equality before the law and government. A government which gives more weight to your votes because of your ancestry is a racist government, it doesn't treat people as individuals, it treats them as members of collectives, and that's a path that leads to tyranny.

It's certainly not a view held by any other political party in Parliament, I should hope.

What to hope from a new National Leadership?

National almost certainly will lead the next change in Government, so it matters.  

So what could I hope for from Luxon, Willis and the others?

Here's some ideas...

1. A declaration of principles that form the basis for making decisions on policies.  I don't remotely expect it to be anything as radical as where I would go, but I'd expect some recognition that individual freedom matters alongside personal responsibility for your life, that a property-owning market-oriented liberal democracy is worth promoting and protecting, that people should be treated on their merits and their deeds, not their background, their family, race, sex or other irrelevant factors. I'd like to hope that there is a strong belief in robust debate and freedom of speech, that seeks not to frighten people into silence, but also a belief in playing the ball not the person.  
2. Differentiation from Labour based on principles.  This means defaulting not to spending more taxpayers' money but getting out of the way of individuals, businesses, community groups, Iwi and others in addressing social issues. That the answer to problems isn't necessarily more state, a new Ministry of X, a new law, a new tax or a new benefit or subsidy.  A belief that making a profit isn't a bad thing, but defrauding people is. A belief that there should be consequences for harming others, such as not being allowed to remain in a taxpayer owned house if you abuse, threaten or become a nuisance to your neighbours.  
3. Policy that is thoughtful not knee-jerk opposition. Take Three Waters. The status quo is a disgrace, and National implemented Watercare for Auckland some years ago, albeit it is far from perfect. So just make local government do the same for their water assets, give them the powers of SOEs to borrow and spend, and enforce rates being cut if people are to be billed for water.  It's easy to lazily object, it's much harder to present a solution that achieves change that is sustainable. Which leads right onto....
4. Don't leave reform to Labour. Labour ALWAYS reforms sectors when in power.  It's about to seriously unionise industrial relationships with Australian-style monopoly union agreements, it will merge RNZ and TVNZ, there is Three Waters, it is funding Kiwirail directly from the National Land Transport Fund, it is merging and abolishing DHBs. Stop being a party of next to no change, and present a vision of structural reform that fits with your principles, to serve the interests of taxpayers, of consumers and to enable competition and choice for the public.
5. Consider your vision of the Constitutional relationship between the Crown and Maori (if you have one).  You can do nothing and concede you believe in nothing and let Labour constantly define it, you can bluntly oppose the Labour vision of unilaterally redefining the relationship between Maori and the state, and accept the Critical Race Theory view that is so prevalent, or you can proclaim a different, optimistic vision, of Maori self-determination that doesn't follow the "Us, Allies and Racists" vision Te Pati Maori has of the people of this country. Don't get too tied up in the use of the word Aotearoa, it's important people can choose freely what language they use, but do note the importance of the growth of Maori power, influence and language use as being in a way that wont threaten the rights of others. You have to do it.
6. Reform education on a model of devolving power. It's free schools, but it is also devolving as much power as possible to schools, stringing them together with a light-handed view of common curriculum and testing standards. Allow new schools to be set up and for school funding to be transparent, regardless of school ownership. Devolve teacher pay and conditions to schools. Abolish zoning, give schools free reign to expand and contract. If you don't think or know why education reform matters then ACT deserves to beat you.
7. Climate change should be about moving with the world, not ideological sacrifice to virtue signal.  Abolish the Climate Change Commission, review use of the ETS and focus your policies on the ETS and consider the net impacts of policies on climate change.  Don't worry about Greenpeace and the other enviro-anti-capitalists, because they'll hate you anyway, and they are just adjuncts of the Green Party and claim what you do is causing wildfires and hurricanes, but don't put up with that. Make it clear what you are doing, and why, and if people want to walk, bike, put up solar panels and take steps to reduce their own emissions, then good for them, they'll pay less under the Emissions Trading Scheme (which most people don't understand). 
8. Reform the public service. It has grown exponentially under Labour, in part due to Covid, but it has tacked on so much that is unnecessary and a drag on taxpayers.  Consider that the Office of Classification (the censor) tweets film reviews, and the Human Rights Commission comments on housing policy. It's bloated, and the coming need to balance the budget must come from that not from tax rises which leads to...
9. No tax rises.  Given the state of public finances, you can't afford to promise any significant tax cuts, unless you look to completely reform Working for Families etc, which you aren't likely to do.  So be the party that promises to keep a lid on taxes, and you should legislate for inflation adjusted tax bands at the very least.  Once the budget is in surplus, you can then start lowering taxes.

AND 

10. Covid rules are truly temporary. Whatever system of rules are in place at the time of the next General Election, they need to be proportionate and fit for purpose. The easing of the pandemic should be clearly followed by moving not just to "Green" status, but to a future where MIQ has limited if any role, where vaccine mandates are unnecessary. It's not ignoring Covid and taking no steps, but recognising that a pandemic justifies a temporary response and when that is no longer needed, then the laws supporting it are no longer needed either.

 

and this is very mild indeed

Extinction Rebellion is a club of self-congratulating sociopaths

The passive aggressive militant wing of the Green Party - Extinction Rebellion (XR) - is looking to disrupt Wellington... yes Wellington... in the next few days, to make its latest "point" that nobody is taking climate change sufficiently seriously. 

However, it is literally impossible to appease this group of sociopaths, who follow on from the British equivalent that has been generating a lot of news, because of their passive aggressive blocking of major roads, stopping people going about their lawful business and generating MORE emissions due to the queues and idling of vehicles as a result of their aggression.

You see XR isn't a protest group intended to win public opinion, or change public policy, it exists to disrupt and it exists to generate mayhem.  IR isn't, of course, a terrorist group, because it doesn't intend to kill and destroy property, but it DOES act in ways that may consequentially result in people's death and it harms their property.  UK IR founder, Roger Hallam admitted several weeks ago that he would block an ambulance carrying a dying patient, without blinking.  This is full-scale sociopathic misanthropic behaviour.  But why?

In 2019, IR stopped Wellington, extensively disrupting its main bus corridor.  Buses...  XR demands at the time were reported as follows by the NZ Herald:

The Extinction Rebellion movement makes three demands to governments.

Activists want them to "tell the truth" by declaring a climate emergency, to act and halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to create and be led by decisions of a Citizens' Assembly on climate and ecological justice.

So the first has happened, the govt launched a bioversity strategy in 2020, it has a draft Emissions Reduction Plan (which is unnecessary, but still fits into XR's political persuasion) and the only thing that hasn't been done is to set up a "Citizens' Assembly on climate and ecological justice" (which XR, of course, would want to dominate).  New Zealand HAS a citizen's assembly, it's called Parliament, and it elected a majority Labour Government, supported by the Green Party, that buys into XR's philosophy and agenda.

So is XR satisfied? Of course not.  You see it isn't interested in public policy or even using the tools of a liberal democracy to convince people of the merits of their argument.  It's something else perhaps ...

 

 

It's a club, it's a social club for angry sociopathic misanthropes, whose hatred for other human beings, their choices and their priorities is absolutely palpable. They don't care what their impact is on others, they have just given up on the processes of a free society of using free speech and the processes of parliamentary democracy to convince the public and decision makers of whatever merits their positions hold. For they have no serious demands, after all when politicians essentially meet their demands, they create new ones, it's endless, because it's not about politics, public policy or even the public. It is about them.

The members join this organisation in part to support a cause, but what they find is a community of like minded people, who share disdain for the general public, for mainstream politics, and they are bound in their misanthropy and their thrill from planning ever more disruptive and extreme activities to bond themselves to each other.  This explains how the Insulate Britain (XR by another name) mob have taken to gluing themselves to the road, which is going from misanthopy to masochism.  It's not rational to do this in relationship to promoting a cause, except by the acclaim it generates within their social circle and associated organisations, like Greenpeace and the Green Party itself. Some members of the public may support their cause, but many will despise them, which they love - for it mirrors what they think of the public.

The media attention they get is gold, because it means they get recognised within their own club and associated like-minded more moderate clubs. That gains social status, for the reward of that is worth it for them. 

You see political and protest groups are social clubs which give members esteem for being more and more staunch and attention seeking. It's what binds radical political organisations that are outside mainstream thought, like communists, fascists, nationalists, religious zealots and the like - and XR IS a group of this-worldly-religious new age misanthropic zealots. Take this from the XR Wellington website:

we condemn racism, and advocate for the impoverished and the non-violation of Papatūānuku. We are people who belong to the Great Pacific Ocean.

Treating the planet as a God, to not be violated and believing they are owned by an ocean is just loopy new age bullshit.  Then ...

We are agitating that there is a return to the etiquette and lore established by the forebears pertaining to our obligations bestowed on us by a greater power. We encourage unified community, folk, and national undertakings.

Only comfortably off, elite, middle-class new age purveyors of mysticism could swallow this quasi-religious nonsense, with a suffix of collectivist hippy talk.

it continues...

Loving kindness to all life and life systems is paramount, it is just that we devote time to mourn the loss of our siblings, of nations, of all life. From utter grief proper action will emerge to truly remedy our condition.

Loving kindness except to human beings peacefully going about their lives, making a living, engaging with family, friends and others. Do they mourn all life? Including the thousands of microbes and tiny insects they kill daily with their bodies? Is this grief just an exercise in reinforced group onanism?

But then the truth comes out...

Disregard and omit accusing and belittling one another, because the real blemish on Papatūānuku’s bountiful countenance is humanity and his exploitation and corruption. We are on a course of discovering and exercising how to ameliorate this affliction, whilst we rectify and perfect the canon of human regulation.

Don't be rude, because we hate humanity using the planet to survive, which is an "affliction". Never fear, they are going to "perfect human regulation".  Where have we heard that before?  Methinks they want a Year Zero. 

These are sociopaths, they deserve to be ridiculed, laughed at and scorned for their sociopathy. It is a club of well off misanthropes who get pleasure from distressing others, harming them and getting publicity for their extremism. 

So if you see any, just laugh at them, but if they get in your way, recognise it isn't peaceful, it is passive aggression - it is a form of violence to block people's freedom of movement. 

This is what they deserve.... just move them out of the way and get on with life...

oh and don't vote Green, because the entire philosophy of XR is just the Green Party philosophy writ large.  

Emissions Reduction Plan on transport isn't really about cutting emissions

With the NZ Government releasing its draft Emissions Reduction Plan that it intends to present at the COP26 conference in Glasgow, it's worth reviewing what the Government wants to do to us so it can proclaim bountiful levels of virtue signalling, although New Zealand's significance at this is vastly exaggerated by its politicians. This is all about the USA, China, India, the EU, Russia and Brazil after all

I'll leave aside for now whether the target of "net zero" will actually generate any net benefits or not, for now take it as given that the Government wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). I'll also just focus on the transport policy proposals.

There has been much wailing from radical environmentalists about how weak it is, which you might think means you should be relaxed about it. However, you should not, at least in terms of transport policy.

You see it was some years ago that the only economically rational intervention needed to reduce emissions in transport was introduced – the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The ETS effectively puts a cap on emissions across around 50% of NZ’s emissions, including all domestic transport emissions. 

If you fill your car with petrol or diesel, part of the price includes the cost for fuel distributors of buying emission units that you effectively use when you burn fossil fuels.  There is a fixed supply of these units, and Government policy is to reduce this supply over time (although there was a blip lately), so the price will go up. 

As the price goes up, businesses and consumers respond, which for transport means they might change the vehicle the own or use, drive less, drive differently, change modes of transport, or just pay up and save money elsewhere.  

These changes would mean the vehicle fleet would change, or there would be more use of public transport (putting fare revenue up), or more walking and cycling (increasingly the economic merits of improving those facilities), or there will less demand for more road capacity or carparks, or people will make savings elsewhere. As demand evolves, then so will how existing infrastructure and services evolve, as they always have.

However, nobody joins the Green Party trusting individuals and businesses to simply make the best choices and to be free. You join the Green Party because you believe it is ethical and necessary to use the power of the state to compel people to do what you think is best for them. Banning and taxing what is “bad”, subsidising and making compulsory what is “good”, the Greens are fundamentally illiberal, and this Labour Government has outsourced climate change policy to that ideology. After all, the Nnew Labour Party of Jim Anderton Jacinda Ardern is a party of the big mother state.

The proposals here represent the most radical shift in transport policy and regulation of the transport sector in over forty years, taking it away from the current model, which seeks to reflect user decisions and choice, to one that regulates, taxes and subsidises planners' choices.

So let me start by reminding you throughout all of this, NOTHING the CCC proposes here will reduce emissions without using the ETS to reduce the emissions units available (which would put up the price of petrol and diesel). ALL of these proposals below reflect an ideology of central command and control, all for ZERO net impact. 

You might think the Climate Change Commission (CCC) would be focused primarily on reducing emissions, but its strategy for transport is much more than that (p.54):

Decarbonising transport also offers opportunities to improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders. Air pollution, crashes and congestion from traffic impose a large cost on our health, environment and economy. For many people and communities, transport is not affordable or accessible. The transition could make transport more inclusive, safe, healthy and resilient, and better support economic activity. 

Now if reducing emissions was seen as generating other benefits that may be all well and good, but this rather glib statement is used to justify a level of intervention in transport policy that has been unheard of in New Zealand for over forty years.  

You might see the link between lower GHG and lower air pollution, but fewer crashes?  For example, reducing the number of road crashes by reducing the amount of driving is like reducing the number of workplace accidents by reducing the number of jobs. Less congestion could ONLY come if there were a significant drop in motorised road traffic, which starts to give you a hint about what this is really all about.

The claim that for “many people and communities” transport is not affordable or accessible is equally glib and nonsensical.  Where's the evidence? Are there chronic problems in people accessing work, school or other facilities? If so you'd think they'd be mass unemployment and businesses struggling to access labour. New Zealand per capita car ownership is amongst the highest in the world.  However, I doubt the CCC thinks owning, let alone using a car is “inclusive” or “safe” or “healthy”.

The CCC's plan focuses on three main strategies to reduce emissions:

1. Reducing reliance on cars and supporting people to walk, cycle and use public transport. 

2. Rapidly adopting low-emission vehicles and fuels. 

3. Beginning work now to decarbonise heavy transport and freight. 

SO let's start...

Mandatory vaccines?

First let me be clear, I'm in favour of Covid 19 vaccines.  Sure, a tiny minority have severe side effects and a small number of people can't take the Pfizer vaccine (and that's important, because government should not act in ways that are harmful to such individuals), but by and large it is highly beneficial for there to be widespread vaccines to reduce deaths, hospitalisation and illness from Covid 19.

The bigger philosophical and political question is whether they should be compulsory or whether the state and private businesses and citizens have the right to require vaccination status to be demonstrated to access their services or property.  This is where individual rights collide, and the role of the state SHOULD be to ensure the proper delineation between those rights.

For any owners of private property it should be very simple, it should be up to the owner as to whether or not to require vaccination status to enter that property, whether as a customer or not. It is your property after all.  The basis for your decision should be up to you and the public will decide whether or not to go there. Assuming New Zealand achieves vaccination rates in at least the high 80s%, then many will decide that it isn't safe to enter some premises that are laissez-faire about vaccinations, other may be relaxed about doing so. So be it.  It is private property.

What about employment? Any private employer that wants to only hire people who are vaccinated, should feel free to do so, as long as it is explicit in the employment contract that vaccination is required or that the employer may, from time to time, require employees to take preventive steps to protect other employees or the public. This should be clear for any new hires or any existing hires with such a term in their contracts. For existing hires with no such terms, it is problematic to require vaccination, but it is not problematic to take other health and safety measures voluntarily if there is concern about a non-vaccinated employee, or indeed if there is a risk to the business because customers do not want service from a non-vaccinated employee.  Ultimately, a business should not be able to force an existing employee to get vaccinated, but that employee also cannot force the business to act in ways that undermine it.

So what about the state sector?  If it is treated like the private sector, then the same rules should apply to employment. New employees can be required to be vaccinated and existing ones cannot, unless there is provision in their contract to enable it. However, given the state imposes lockdowns on the entire population and businesses because it treats Covid 19 as a national emergency, it seems only reasonable that those that work on the frontline, for the state, in enforcing this, are required to take steps to minimise transmission of Covid 19.

Those working at the border, Police and other emergency services, managed isolation and quarantine all should be vaccinated, as they are at the frontline of the state's strategy to contain Covid.  Beyond that, it is rational for all working in the public health system to also be required to be vaccinated (although it should be possible for private medical professionals to operate, without taxpayer funding, without vaccinations if they so choose).  Taxpayer funded private facilities should be little different, except that a private facility should be able to opt out of receiving taxpayer funds if it wants to operate sans-Covid vaccines.  That's private property rights.

What about everything else? Teachers and school staff should be a matter for the owner of the schools. The state can mandate vaccines for state schools and require those who want to continue receiving taxpayer funding to have such a mandate, but it should not mandate it for fully independent schools (or anyone providing private tuition).

Why does this matter? Because private property rights, contract law and personal sovereignty matter. You should absolutely be able to prohibit anyone from accessing your property, including business, without being vaccinated (or if you so wish, if they are vaccinated), but you reap the consequences if nobody wants to go there.  You should absolutely be able to choose only to hire people who are vaccinated or who are not, but existing employees should not be forced to be vaccinated, unless there is provision in their employment contracts enabling this.  Employers might change the duties of the unvaccinated, and take steps to protect other staff or customers if need be, and if the business loses customers because it doesn't have a fully-vaccinated staff, it might also decide if it needs to make staff redundant as a result, but it shouldn't come to compulsion.  

Further to that, whilst it is entirely consistent with the defence of a country that entry into it can be made dependent on both Covid tests and proof of vaccination, it should not be necessary for citizens or permanent residents (but other options, such as managed isolation, can be used to protect the country from infection). It should also not be necessary to have a "vaccine passport" within the country's borders, except for businesses that choose to use it to enter their property (that includes airlines and bus companies).

So no, there should be no mandatory vaccines for private citizens not employed by the state, nor mandatory vaccine passports to travel internally, but property owners and individuals have every right to impose their own rules on who they allow onto their property, who they hire, trade with and interact with.

You don't have a right to force someone to get vaccinated, but you also don't have the right to force someone to employ or trade with you if you choose not to.

So what's an alternative to the Three Waters Reform?

I’ve already written critically of the Three Waters reforms in a polemical way.  It's rather curious that Nanaia Mahuta is so committed to these reforms given she has no record in her political career of ever having passionate views about structural reforms of any sectors of the economy.  You wouldn't know what she thinks about energy, transport or communications sectors, so why water? Surely it can't be because of the transfer of some power to Iwi under the new mega-water "entities"? 

Regardless of her motivations, I think the problem definition is largely correct.  The status quo has failed appallingly, and that status quo is combination of leftwing ideology about the "power of general competence" of local government (and it being committed to "economic, social, environmental and cultural wellbeing") and rightwing ideology about supporting localisation of power (although that power still lies with politicians, apparently local politicians that fewer people vote for are more accountable than MPs).  

Yet it is abundantly clear that the options assessed (at least from the public documents) were remarkably narrow minded, apparently only considering:

• Sector-led reform: This would be returning to the philosophy of the “power of general competence” that local government is capable of reforming itself to address the problems listed. This seems unlikely and is in effect a “status quo” option.

• National Three Waters Fund:  This option is frankly bizarre. It is touted as being similar to the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF), yet there are so few useful parallels. The NLTF is funded mostly from user fees on motorised road users, through fuel tax and road user charges.  There are NO centrally collected user fees on water users, and many local authorities don’t even impose user fees at all. Furthermore, the NLTF fully funds the State Highway Network, which is central-government owned and operated, there is no equivalent in water.  This looks like a brain fart from some politician.

• Regulatory reform only: This has its merits, if only because there is poor oversight of what territorial authorities do with water already, but existing governance structures range widely from being promising (Watercare Services) to being very poor. This is unlikely to be enough.  

It might be too much for me to expect a Labour Government to have assessed privatisation, even if it dismissed it on grounds of being contrary to the policies and principles of the Labour Party, but it should have been included to see what the benefits and risks would be.

So assuming privatisation per se would fall on deaf ears, here’s my quick and dirty alternative. Quite simply it is to commercialise and transfer control of water assets to ratepayer or consumer owned companies, those entities would carry the local authority debt associated with those assets. My proposal is:

1. A water sector regulator would be set up, which in association with the Commerce Commission, would oversee the water entities, particularly the transition of the reform, but also ensure that these monopolies don’t abuse their position, and are accountable for the effects of failure on consumers and property owners.  Yes yes, I would MUCH prefer some consumer association that would test water quality and seek transparency in these entities, but that's too much to hope for.  A regulator is likely to be necessary at least for the first five years, particularly to enforce some basic standards of drinking water.

2. All territorial authorities would be required to transfer fresh, waste and stormwater assets into water companies.  This would also include debt associated with those assets (which would have to be agreed with the Commerce Commission, to stop local authorities transferring unreasonable levels of debt to the new entities). These companies would be at arms-length control from territorial authorities, with independent boards prohibited from taking direction from councillors as to specific capital spending decisions. The companies would be required to make a return on capital and pay taxes. This would help avoid both over and underspending on infrastructure and remove politics from decisions around water infrastructure. The companies would be required to provide services to end users and to make a profit. They would be allowed to merge and consolidate as they see fit, and if the efficiencies claimed are real (and some no doubt are), this will become abundantly clear as being the right choice. Those that lag and perform 

3. The water companies would have all shares initially owned by the territorial authorities, but within twelve months shares would be transferred either to ratepayers with property serviced by their networks (with some proportionality by those served to different degrees by the three networks) or to consumers (which in some cases is ratepayers at least for stormwater). These shares would be tradeable, although there could be limits on foreign ownership if desired. However, the companies would essentially by owned directly by the public, rather than by local authorities. It would leave accountability at the lowest possible level, those who have paid for it and who own it. It’s actual people power.  I am ambivalent about whether ratepayers or consumers gain shares, and tend to prefer consumers (i.e. those who will be responsible for water bills) take fresh/waste water shares and ratepayers stormwater shares.

4. Water companies would be required to move towards full user pays and rates would be regulated downward. This will include but may not require water metering. Metering is appropriate for fresh and wastewater, but not stormwater, so the water companies would levy consumers for fresh and wastewater (not necessarily property owners), but property owners for stormwater. The charges would be subject to oversight from the Commerce Commission initially to ensure water companies weren’t seeking to gouge consumers. However, EQUALLY important is that territorial authority rates that have been used to pay for any of the three waters are regulated down. That regulation should not be for a one-off reduction, but the Commerce Commission should be required to authorise any territorial authority rates increases above inflation to ensure that territorial authorities are not using the reduction in rates as an opportunity to increase rates to grow other functions.  The net burden on property owners and consumers in each district (adding rates and water charges) will be taken into account.  

5.    Water companies should borrow to fund upgraded infrastructure and recover this from user fees.  Ultimately consumers should pay and as with electricity lines companies, and airports, the Commerce Commission should have oversight over the financial performance 

Opposition to the Three Waters is well justified, but taking power away from local authorities is a good thing. Yet proposed opaque governance structure, which inexplicably adds the Iwi element, is not a recipe for significant efficiencies going beyond some economies of scale and bargaining power in procurement. The forced amalgamation is unlikely to be the best outcome, because neither the Minister nor DIA officials are likely to know what's best.

So Three Waters reforms should stop, but the need for reform remains.  However, even ACT has taken a very pathetic, limp approach to this issue. 

Labour's greatest asset is its past success, its second greatest asset is a divided National Party

We all know the story, New Zealand achieved enormous success in isolating itself from Covid 19 in 2020. With a very low death, hospitalisation and infection rate, the Ardern Government was able to feel vindicated in having a hard lockdown, putting up walls around New Zealand and subsequently being able to open up the economy and life to relative normality after a few months. Sure, part of it was because the geography of New Zealand made it much easier to block foreign travel than say Ireland or Switzerland, but it was also a series of policy decisions, albeit blunt as they were.  There can be little doubt this saved both lives and illness from Covid 19.

Furthermore, it was that handling that predominantly drove Ardern and Labour to a historic victory in the 2020 general election. For the first time since 1951 a party obtained over 50% of the vote (party), this remarkable mandate is built on that record, and don't they know it.

Following opening up to Level 1 conditions, New Zealand got complacent. The assumption being that putting all overseas visitors into managed isolation would stop it entering the country. Indeed, as Australia looked like it reached similar (although inferior) levels of success, the "Trans Tasman Bubble" opened up the countries to one another, giving a vision of what the future might look like. 

Meanwhile, as New Zealand basked in people overseas wondering at how sports matches, concerts and other events could be undertaken unhindered, New Zealanders watched at hospitalisations and death elsewhere. In the USA, UK, and elsewhere, the outside world looked unsafe, especially as some faced lockdowns of months long, albeit leakier with foreign travel. However, in parallel some other countries engaged with vaccinations, and ordered vaccines quickly and started vaccinating as their pathway towards less death and more freedom.  Israel and the UK were great success stories.

New Zealand, despite the claims of the Government was never at the "front of the queue" for vaccines, but few cared. It seemed through early to mid 2021 that NZ was free of Covid, and vaccines could be rolled out slowly, focusing on those working at the border, health workers and the vulnerable. To be fair, Australia was moderately better.  Then came Delta.

Then Delta leaked from MIQ (it seems) and now New Zealand is in full-scale lockdown, as cases grow.

The Government and its supporters continue to focus on well the country has done up to now, with so few deaths.  This is all fair enough, but that time is over.  What is clear though is that in the time after the first lockdowns, little government attention has been paid on how to cope with a second lockdown and moreover how to move beyond the Little Aotearoa Hermit Kingdom model of how to live in a world that is learning to live with Covid.

There are big questions that deserve answers. 

However, this is a Government, that whilst wielding unheard of powers of command and control over people and their property, wants everyone to trust it.  It doesn't want to be questioned too much about how it exercises those powers and why it hasn't learned much from the past lockdown and moreover its basis for making decisions at all.  

You see it prefers to present Jacinda Ardern, the Mother of the Nation, at press conferences that spend a good 15 minutes providing background to the announcement 90% want to hear about - which is what level of heavy-handed control will the country be living under and from when.  The strategy is elimination "indefinitely" with lockdowns "indefinitely".

What are those questions?

Here are a few...

1. Is the real reason NZ has been slow in obtaining vaccines because it "didn't want to compete" with others that needed it more, or was it just bureaucratic or political inertia?  After all, Australian PM Scott Morrison apologised for not ordering enough vaccines, why is NZ different? Is it because Pharmac didn't order them?
2. Isn't the real reason contact tracing is a nightmare the complacency encouraged by having "kept Kiwis safe" with less than 10% QR code scanning and having planned not at all for a ramp up of contact tracing for a future lockdown? i.e. didn't most people treat Level 1 as Level 0?
3. Why wasn't their planning for ramping up testing if there was another outbreak and why did vaccinations have to halt because there had been no planning to take into account vaccination in an outbreak?
4. What is the basis upon which Cabinet decides to change Covid lockdown levels? Is it infection rate, is it case numbers, is it contacts? If there isn't some objective basis to start from, how is this decision made?
5. Why were frontline emergency workers not regarded as a priority for vaccination?
6. Why does NZ continue to only use the highly invasive version of PCR tests instead of less invasive (not back the nose) versions seen in Australia or use saliva testing for those being frequently testing, as recommended in the Simpson-Roche report?
7. If high vaccination rates are reached, and vaccines remain effective in preventing death, hospitalisation and serious illness from Delta (and any other variants), why should NZ not end nationwide lockdowns in response to outbreaks?
8. Why does there remain a MIQ booking system that is blatantly unfair and not even linked to booking air tickets? 
9. Why are lockdown rules not shifting to an outcome based approach (meeting performance standards for minimising infection) rather than ad-hoc rules based?
10. What are the conditions for NZ opening up home-quarantine for fully vaccinated travellers from overseas?
11. On what basis does Cabinet decide to allow people to get access to MIQ bypassing the system for everyone else? Is it just a case of who has the greatest political pull?

Or is it just that keeping New Zealanders safe from Covid 19 has ended up being greatest asset the Ardern Government has ever had, and if New Zealand moves on from it, and gets back to normal, and there are never any lockdowns, and foreign travel and tourism returns, that it no longer looks that special anymore? Then more attention will be turned to the other elements of the health system, to the housing shortage, to poor educational outcomes, to the dramatic economic and social impacts of policies designed to look like it is combating climate change, to the pursuit of highly illiberal policies around speech, centralisation of water management and taking outrageous Critical Race Theory approaches to treating vulnerable Maori children. 

You see Ardern and the Government have a strong preference for intervention in the economy and in people's lives. It is the most leftwing government since the Kirk era, and it has hired an expansive public sector to implement it.  Consider the micro-management of Covid regulations, that ban private imports of Covid tests (despite them being available in pharmacies and supermarkets in Europe), that ban butchers and greengrocers opening. This Government believes its interventions can fundamentally change the country for the good, by ignoring how markets work, by ignoring personal preferences and choices and by not relying on competition and choice for consumers and taxpayers, but rather central direction and control.  They've swallowed structuralist leftwing identitarianism wholesale, and it is hard to believe that this thinking, which does not gain widespread support in other liberal democracies, is the mainstream of New Zealand thinking. Finally, it has embraced not just meeting the Paris Agreement commitments on climate change, but taking a rigid central planning role to reducing emission through the Climate Change Commission.   The effects of these policies will be to increase energy prices, to increase taxes and have zero discernible impact on climate.

So pardon me if I don't think the Ardern Government believes people's freedoms are that important. It has proposed making political and ethical beliefs protected from so-called "hate speech".  It has a vision of a "kind" state "providing" for people's needs, and caring for the environment, and fixing unfairness. Although it is notable that in recent months the pursuit of this agenda has seen the massive political lead of the Labour Party get halved, it remains ahead.

So keeping everyone safe is part of that, and Ardern can easily argue that, for the past year or so, she has kept people safe, and being seen to be doing that is an asset to Labour.  

Peter Cresswell has a worthwhile list of what wasn't done with the time available after the last success to suppress Covid in NZ. Government supporters may want the debate to be some banal "oh you want thousands to die like in Britain" retrospective, when no one is arguing that.  What IS being argued is that a Government that is philosophically committed to a highly activist state, that spends, regulates and micro-manages more than any in the past 38 years, has been lazy and incompetent in improving its performance.  

However, the Government and its army of supporters can keep looking backwards at the success of last year, paint those challenging it as "destabilising" the current efforts to eliminate the Delta variant or "wanting thousands dead", and still get some traction. The past success is their slowly eroding asset.

But their second greatest asset is a divided and distracted National Party. They have a fairly obvious choice - have a clear, consistent strategy of messaging around what can and should be done to reduce and eliminate the need for lockdowns, and a positive vision looking forward, based on better outcomes for the whole country. An open, outward looking vision of a largely vaccinated, prosperous country, that confronts failings in housing, healthcare, education and water, that encourages diverse responses to those challenges (yes, that includes Maori-based delivery for those who want it).  A government that is fleet of foot, innovative and doesn't tolerate poor performance, and doesn't default to having to command and control to address problems.  Can Judith Collins deliver that? I don't know, but the National caucus needs to develop a strategy and decide who is best to front it and lead it politically. Chris Bishop has been doing a decent job of taking the Government to task over issues like vaccines and saliva testing.  How hard can it be for the Opposition to focus on demanding better from a Government that has had nearly a year to prepare for the risk of a second outbreak?

Transport policy with a vacuum of critical analysis

Politicians love transport policy.  I used to think it was some throwback for the men who engaged in it, who as boys may have played with model planes, trains, cars or whatever, and perhaps didn't get a chance in adulthood to get to play with full sized equivalents, because they chose a different career path.  Yet women in politics are quite keen on it too, although in most cases it tends to reflect one side of politics - the desire for control.

Transport is a sector which almost everyone has an opinion about, because almost everyone travels on a regular basis whether it be short trips in town, commuting or long distance travel.  However, as in most sectors, a little knowledge isn't really enough to make informed decisions about what should actually happen (except for your own choices).  The problem with transport is that almost all politicians have just that - a little knowledge.

That's exactly what you can see today in New Zealand, and if you think I'm just picking on the Labour Government you're wrong.  The previous National led government was far from perfect, nor was the previous Labour led government. All of them have been unwinding what was around 20 years of reforms in transport policy that progressively reduced or removed political roles in the supply and prices of transport infrastructure and services.  It started under the Clark Government, which renationalised the railways and Air New Zealand, for quite different reasons (both of which were a result of its own failure to continue previous reforms), and undertook a series of reforms that increased political control over central government funding of roads and public transport.  It renewed Wellington commuter rail system, and poured hundreds of millions to revive Auckland's system.  The Key Government took that new politicised framework, and reprioritised it to large motorway projects (Roads of National Significance), but it also funded the electrification of Auckland's commuter rail system and the City Rail Link (underground rail loop) in Auckland.  

Now, of course, the Ardern Government is moving away from motorways and focusing on trams.  

It announced its "Government Policy Statement" which is effectively a way of declaring its priorities for spending the money collected from road user through fuel duty (which it wants to increase), road user charges (which it also wants to increase) and motor vehicle registrations and licensing fees.   Phil Twyford might have announced it, but Julie Anne Genter, former junior transport planner, has also been influential. 

To understand what it means you need to also understand that in transport policy there isn't an agreed single point of view as to what works best or the impact of different policy instruments.   

The market-oriented approach

On the one hand is a belief that allowing market mechanisms such as user pays, competition, private enterprise and choice for users will enable better outcomes overall.  Indeed, you can see the results of this in many parts of the transport sector.  In shipping, aviation, freight and even intercity passenger transport in New Zealand, there is a light handed approach to the role of government.  Advocates of a more market approach seek to move away from politically based funding of transport infrastructure and services, encouraging transport users to pay for the costs of the services they use, which also includes a move to forms of road pricing.  Advocates of a market based approach tend to consider that there is little reason for government entities to own or operate transport service providers and that there are merits in moving towards more private ownership of private infrastructure as well.  They regard the negative externalities of transport (congestion, accidents, pollution) as being able to be managed through more market mechanisms and technology, rather than by controlling user behaviour.  Market oriented advocates are neutral across transport modes or user decisions, as long as users pay for what they use.

New Zealand transport has a lot of the free market

Ports are all run as businesses, some with private ownership, and all shipping (except the Interislander - which is profitable in its own right anyway) is operated competitively by the private sector.  Prices are set by the operators depending on competition and demand.

Airports are largely all run as businesses, some are partially privatised, and the airline industry is completely open to competition.  Air NZ may be (just) majority state owned, but it receives no subsidies, and New Zealand has one of the world's most open aviation markets.  The main restrictions are bilateral ones, many have "Open Skies" agreements with NZ, others have limits on the number/capacity of flights.  Airlines set their own fares, which was not at all the case until the late 1980s.  Airways Corporation is still an SOE, but is not subject to any political interference.  Unlike some countries, such as the USA, the NZ aviation sector funds itself, with airlines paying airports and the Airways Corporation for their services.

It's on the land that the role of politicians is most intrusive.  Yet in many areas they have little role.  For freight transport (on road), there are no significant barriers to entry and operators set their own prices depending on competition and demand.  Goods move around the country and in cities with relatively few restrictions, except some limits on road use due to noise and limits to the network.  For passenger transport between cities, besides aviation, most people drive, but for those who don't, coach services operate as an open market, with competition and prices set by the market.   Even though Kiwirail is state-owned (and has received well over $1 billion in new capital from the past two governments), it operates non-commuter passenger services as a business and is the same with freight.  It just happens to not be able to charge some of its freight customers enough to pay for the renewal of its infrastructure - which is where your taxes come in.  The taxi sector too is reasonably open, which is why Uber has been able to set up successfully too.

Now you're going to say - hang on, the roads are all government.  That's true, but it's also important to separate the roads into what are two networks. Firstly, the state highways (this includes all motorways). These are fully funded by road users from fuel taxes and road user charges.  All revenue from those charges goes into the National Land Transport Fund, and road user charges are set to recover the higher costs heavier vehicles impose on the road network, through greater wear and tear.  Secondly, the local roads. On average about half of the money spent on council roads comes from the National Land Transport Fund, the remainder from local rates.  Some argue that this means local roads are "subsidised", but there is an argument for ratepayer funding of local roads, because the presence and standard of local roads influences property values.  They could be seen as a proxy for an access charge to the road network for property owners.  However, it's not as if local roads typically "compete" with other transport modes like railways.  It is state highways that do that.

So all public roads are dependent on funding from the National Land Transport Fund allocated by the NZ Transport Agency, which also happens to manage the state highways.  Local roads are also dependent on ratepayer funding. This is far removed from the United States which funds a reasonable proportion of road spending from general taxes, or on the other hand from the UK, where road funding is around a quarter of the revenue raised from motoring taxes.  For NZ the emergence of taxpayer funding of roads has been a recent policy initiative, and not a welcome one.

The central-planners' approach

Unlike the advocates of a market oriented approach, central planners believe strongly in politically directed funding, regulation and provision of transport infrastructure and services.  They tend to be  advocates of central or local government owned and operated transport providers, and unquestionably support government ownership of transport infrastructure.  They seek control of service standards, frequencies, routes, fares and charges.  The primary focus of central planners is on urban transport, although they drift into intercity transport of people and goods as well.  They largely show limited interest in the shipping and aviation sectors.

The central planners are now heavily focused on environmental objectives, with strong enthusiasm for scheduled fixed-route public transport.  That's because they are particularly focused on inputs, on what infrastructure and services are provided.  This is interesting because the current generation of transport central planners like to think of themselves as showing "new thinking", because they reject the previous generation of central planners selection of inputs.  Both generations embrace the "predict and provide" methodology of deciding what transport infrastructure to build.  The difference is they disagree on the inputs.

The previous generation were strong advocates of building more roads, large urban motorways and car park buildings to accommodate the predicted unfettered growth in car traffic.  They weren't interested in road users really paying for those motorways (or at least not just the ones riding them, with the exception of tolls on some crossing), but saw the future as one where private car use could be accommodated in cities.  On the scale some planners predicted that was clearly neither going to be affordable, nor desirable, but when such roads were built they did encourage development at the locations they served, and by lowering the cost of driving (in terms of time and fuel), they helped generate demand (that's where the widely misused "if you build roads they just fill up with traffic" cliche comes from).  The "motorway planners" regarded public transport as antiquated and increasingly just existing for those who do not own cars, or in high density cities, accepted as commercial metro systems.

The current generation of planners are strong advocates of building more urban railways, building tram lines (now called "light rail") and uses buses to connect to these, as well as supporting cycling infrastructure.  However, most notably they also support measures to reduce the speed of other road traffic, by reallocating road space to trams, buses, bicycles and pedestrians, and to provide priority to the preferred modes (rail, bus, cycling, pedestrians), over cars, trucks and vans (freight isn't that important to the central planners - either it should go on rail or be moved at off peak times, or it is ignored altogether). The "public transport" planners regard private motoring as not just antiquated, but almost malignant. Some of the language used to describe motorists is either hostile or treats them as is need of help.  The term "car dependent" or "addicted to their cars", is language you'd expect of those who abuse narcotics, not people who choose a mode of transport.  It's designed to support a narrative that "if only" more money was spent on public transport, people could be "weaned away" (as they are children) from their cars.  For the central planners, the only choice worth making is away from driving.

It's all about emissions

Now the policy is singularly focused on climate change, despite existence of the Emissions Trading Scheme which means every time you refuel your car, or ride a bus or fly domestically, you are paying for your CO2 emissions. The Ardern Government thinks it is responsible for helping save the world by making it more expensive to own (the wrong) cars and use them, and to take money from you for driving and put it into their preferred modes of transport. Similarly the Vision Zero strategy around eliminating road fatalities is as much about making driving less convenient and less fast - enforcement of bad driving behaviour comes second to reducing speed limits and instituting speed bumps, because slower traffic is safer (it's also more competitive with modes that are demonstrably slower). 

That's why even if road transport emissions dropped dramatically because of takeup of electric vehicles and the like, that isn't good enough.  You see the policy is not so much about reducing emission, but reducing emissions the right way.  It doesn't matter that it makes no difference.

The moral imperative of the Ardern Government's transport policy is not one based on trusting people to make their own decisions, but rather to direct them and to spend money to provide choices that are approved and recommended (like the Te Huia train) having taken it from those that are not approved or recommended (car drivers and truck operators).  There is policy obscurity in that having concepts like "user-pays" or "economic efficiency" are not desired, because they don't deliver a tramline, nor do they deliver a bicycle bridge over Auckland harbour.

Is it because the Ardern generation are too young and too narrowed minded in their understanding of history (and too full of conceit about the capabilities of their power and the ability of the state to figure out what's best for everyone)?  Have they swallowed the hyperbolic nonsense of the Greens that the whole system is set up to "favour" driving, even though motorists buy their own vehicles and pay a much higher proportion of the costs of their transport choice than public transport users?  Do they really think the common people would be happier and better off if they only just walked and biked a lot?  Do they really think that many people don't use vehicles for their "legitimate purposes"?

That last point is instructive, because it shows the philosophical starting point of Ardern and Wood.  They think the ordinary folk make endlessly foolish decisions, and they need correcting.  So they will take their money and give them "correct" choices, like the slow train from Hamilton to.... Papakura (soon Puhinui... wow).  Like the slow tram down Dominion Road (maybe), which isn't really about relieving congestion, but about a vision around urban form (it doesn't matter that most jobs wont be accessible with the tram).  Now most recently the Let's Get Wellington Moving project which was once a collaboration between central and local government to plan a major uplift in road and public transport infrastructure, now relegated to proposing a pedestrian crossing on a part of SH1 near the airport of which one side is over a kilometre from anyone's home.

It's not quite the 1970s, it isn't illegal to send freight by road if there is a parallel rail line, and petrol prices aren't regulated, nor is Kiwirail a department yet - but any sense that users should drive spending and users should, by and large, pay for what infrastructure they use is evaporating.  This is a government that thinks it knows best.

Are the hate speech proposals anything more than ineptitude?

Jacinda Ardern has demonstrated since the last election that she isn’t a “do nothing” Prime Minister, she wants to be transformative. She has been elevated by the predominantly left-leaning media domestically and internationally as a political superstar, quite something for someone who led a party that came a fairly distant second in 2017 and only gained powered with the support of two other parties (and until the Christchurch terror attack was looking lacklustre in the polls).  She has capacity for emotional empathy, rather than hard-nosed policy, and it is the former that drives her to reform laws on hate speech.  It’s clear she despises, like any right-thinking people, the ideology that drove the shooter to commit mass murder on the basis of religious belief. The idea that there are people who speak, shout, type, write or otherwise express hatred to others is a mystery to her, and her philosophy of the purportedly kind, caring, maternalistic state runs through so much of what she does and says.

So, she thinks, it is entirely consistent with her vision of the big mother state that people be prohibited from being mean to others.  The original issue around the Human Rights Act is that the two key provisions, S.61 and S.131, only apply to “colour, race, ethnic and national origins”, but of course an attack on Muslims isn’t readily defined by this, as Muslims can be from any racial or ethnic background, with majority Muslim countries ranging from Bosnia-Hercegovina through to Indonesia geographically.  However, it’s not so simple to simply amend the law to add “religious belief” because the law as it stands is absurdly worded.

The current provisions prohibit expressions that are “threatening, abusive, or insulting” (S.61) or “with intent to excite hostility or ill-will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule” (S.131).  Few would argue with the term threatening, but insulting is awfully close to prohibiting calling people names. Whereas bringing into contempt or ridicule looks exactly like a ban on criticism or certain forms of humour.  Allowing a law change to prohibit intentionally ridiculing people because of their religion is almost a law against blasphemy.  Sure it’s not nice to ridicule people’s religion, but the right to ridicule religion came from the Enlightenment.

So Ardern’s proposals (one can’t assume that the empty headed Kris Faafoi had much agency over these proposals) are to replace “threatening, abusive or insulting” and “with intent to excite hostility or ill-will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule” with a much more simple provision: 

intentionally incite/stir up, maintain or normalise hatred… of protected groups… through threatening, abusive or insulting communications, including inciting violence

Working backwards I know no one who disagrees with laws against inciting violence, so clarifying this alone would be welcome, but why restrict it to protected groups?  Inciting violence against ANY group of people (with a defence of self defence to cover situations when a group might attack someone or their property) should be a crime.  Why would it not be? However the rest deserves very close scrutiny indeed.

The proposal seeks to prohibit certain actions being “threatening, abusive or insulting communications”, with certain intent “to incite/stir up, maintain or normalise hatred” of the listed protected groups.  The key word here is “hatred”.  What is hatred?

For hatred to be “incited” or “stirred up” it must already exist somewhat, and certainly “maintain” and “normalise” are for emotions that already exist, “normalise” implies that there is hatred that exists that the “bad person” wants to say is valid.

Ardern doesn’t think hatred should exist, at least not towards the protected groups.

Going back to the actions that are sought to be prohibited, few would argue against threats, but what about abuse or insults? The most confusing element of these proposals is exactly what the terms mean, how a judge or the Police will interpret them in practice, and to help inform that it is useful to understand exactly what Ardern and her acolytes (including the Greens) think is action that is insulting and abusive, or even threatening, and how they interpret hatred.  You see it is the jurisprudence of today and the intentions of Parliament and how that percolates into the Police and the judiciary that matters.

And we all know what that culture is.  It’s the culture that is seen in trans-activism, that deems feminists who are concerned about self-identified trans-women with penises convicted of sexual assault entering womens’ prisons, as TERFS and spreading hatred.  There’s no nuance, the feminists are directly accused of inciting hatred, rather than engaging in a debate about a sensitive issue.  

It’s the culture seen in race-activism, that declares an organisation or system “racist” if the outcomes are not proportionate to inputs by race, always according to the race or races the race-activists are concerned about (they blank out other minorities performing much better).  It’s racist to be focused on the correct answer in mathematics according to some race activists in the United States, so would insisting that students not pass unless they get problems solved correctly “stirring up hatred”? Is ridiculing such people seen as threatening? 

It’s the culture of sex-activism. The lack of equal proportions of women on company boards or the so-called “gender wage gap” if challenged is seen as sexist, because equality of opportunity is not the goal.  Unless outcomes are equal, the system is one with entrenched misogyny, although the lack of men in primary school teaching is not seen otherwise. Is questioning the gender wage gap “normalising hatred”? Is this seen as insulting communications?

It’s the culture promoting permanent welfare dependency. Some on the left promote a guaranteed minimum income or perpetual increases in welfare benefits for those who don’t find work that they want. Is claiming that someone who has been on welfare for years is lazy or that the welfare state is parasitical inciting hatred against people on welfare?  Why is receiving taxpayer money seen as being deserving of protection, but having money taken from you by the government not?  

Finally, it’s the culture of blasphemy.  Charlie Hebdo has produced many magazine covers grotesquely insulting of religious figures.  There is little doubt that many adherents of those religions regard them to be insulting or even abusive and would argue that they are intended to incite hatred.  Could the law even be turned on itself by arguing that the likes of Charlie Hebdo are inciting hatred from Muslims against them as a provocation?  The same can be said of the Life of Brian, which some Christians may interpret as inciting hatred against them, through ridicule and insults to their religion.  It’s not hard to tell which of these is more likely to be seen as falling foul of the law.

One of Charlie Hebdo's highly offensive covers

And that’s just some of the protected categories.  Most of them are ridiculous.  What should be by far the biggest concern is that the very idea of including these protected categories got not only past officials, but past Ministers and the Prime Minister.

What mindset thinks it is ok to make hatred of groups according to political or ethical opinion illegal?  

There can be only two possible conclusions, mind-numbing stupidity or a sinister and disturbing set of beliefs about the limits of a free society.  With this government both are entirely plausible.  There is no shortage of very poor quality policy initiatives, whether it be the Climate Change Commission, housing, He Puapua, Fair Pay Agreements or the mess around large scale managed isolation vacancies whilst foreigners, and much much more.  

So it is quite likely that the Ministry of Justice lacks institutional capability to actually remove political and ethical beliefs from this discussion paper, but it must have gone through senior managers.  By what logical contortion can anyone defend criminalising hatred against Nazis?  This is what professional civil servants are meant to do, protect Ministers from doing anything stupid.

Because it’s abundantly clear neither Kris Faafoi nor his own Chief of Staff and advisors are capable of it.  He’s most certainly well out of his depth as Minister of Justice, it being utterly laughable that he is expected to lead a major legal reform.  Which then comes to the Prime Minister.  How could DPMC let this go through, how could Ardern and her advisors think it was right to criminalise hatred against people who think (for example), that sex between adults and children should be encouraged (e.g, groups like NAMBLA), or that human beings should progressively wipe themselves out (the voluntary human extinction movement), or the Khmer Rouge (a political group)?  Are they inept letting this get through, or just a bunch of woke morons who discuss and debate issues like some sort of mutually reinforcing circle of intellectual onanism?  Is it new age stupidity that thinks hatred is always wrong?

I’d like to think it isn’t sinister.  If Ardern et al genuinely think it might be a good idea to ban hatred by political group, they want to sanitise all political and ethical discussion to abolish “hatred” of ANY opinion.  It’s classic moral relativism, that all ideas are equally valid and ok, and nobody should “hate” people for having opinions that offend them.  This seems unlikely, not least because the dominant philosophical thread of this government and indeed the political mainstream is to not think all ideas are equally valid and ok, but rather a culture of wanting to suppress opinions that cause offence. I suspect Ardern doesn’t want to criminalise hatred against feminists against trans-gender radicalism (it’s not radicalism, it’s mainstream), but she does want to criminalise feminists hating trans-gender radicalism.  I suspect she doesn’t want to criminalise hating Nazis, but she does want to criminalise hating the Labour Party.  

The proposals should be scrapped, and much more simple reforms be instituted.  It should be abundantly clear that threatening behaviour whether communications or actions should be illegal, and that threatening behaviour should be towards individuals or ANY group of individuals defined by the person threatening.  They should not be defined by category.  Threatening Muslims, Green Party members, real estate agents, golfers, buskers or redheads should all be illegal, enough with the identitarian slicing and splicing people by categories.  Threats should include abuse that is threatening.

Creating a new law against hatred should be abandoned.  Ardern should sack Faafoi and appoint someone competent to be Minister of Justice, and that Minister should send shivers through the Ministry of justice that it dared propose such authoritarian rubbish that is seen in this discussion document.

You have under four weeks to make a submission - you should do it here.  

Damien O'Connor - Beijing's new handmaiden

Last week was meant to be a point of triumph for Damien O'Connor as Trade Minister. As a member of the more conservative "right" faction of this Labour Government, he was happy to crow as to the success of the "updated" free trade agreement between New Zealand and the People's Republic of China (PRC).  

Stuff, RNZ  and TVNZ all largely reported the press release from his office about the "upgraded" agreement and for sure, for New Zealand trade access to the PRC it is largely good news, with 98% of NZ exports to be tariff free (by 2024 for dairy, notwithstanding the government's apparent tolerance for suggestions that the dairy sector be partly wound down to meet Paris Agreement commitments).  There will be reductions in compliance costs and overall on the face of it, it seemed positive from the point of view of a believer in free trade.  

However I was curious as to what the PRC gained from this, because none of the NZ news outlets seemed to ask any questions about that side, but repeated O'Connor's assurances that (RNZ):

"Protections in the existing agreement that are important to New Zealanders, such as our rules on overseas investment and the Treaty of Waitangi exception, remain in place"

Stuff report: "Rules for Chinese investors in New Zealand would not change in light of the agreement"

The flavour of it all is that the PRC is just like any other country, except of course we all know that it is not.  It is an authoritarian one-party state that brutally suppresses dissent, is one of the world's biggest cyberwarfare actors, is engaging in military expansionism in the South China Sea, is regularly threatening liberal democratic Taiwan and most recently has effectively destroyed the liberal rule of law in Hong Kong.  Most recently it has engaged in aggressive trade retaliation measures against Australia, NZ's closest ally, for it simply seeking an international investigation into its handling of Covid 19 - a pandemic that originated in China and was almost certainly mismanaged by the PRC. It isn't just another trading partner, but a regime that is antithetical to the values espoused by the NZ government, you would think.

So why not query further, given the context of relations between the Western allies and the PRC has gone downhill markedly under the rule of Xi Jinping?

Yet it takes little curiosity to find out what was being reported by the PRC's series of state news outlets about the free trade agreement:

China Daily published the following image:

It shows that NZ has effectively removed tariffs on ALL imports from the PRC, putting it on a parallel with Australia.  Now I'm no opponent of eliminating tariff barriers, but you'd think that there would be at least some querying of this. PRC businesses can now export to NZ on the same basis as those from Australia, and with no further barriers NZ has little more to "give away" to Beijing in future negotiations. 

The PRC gets new market access in legal services, project and management consultancy services in NZ, which may not seem like a big deal, but do NZ companies have equivalent access in the PRC?  Well it's a bit complicated as it depends on the sector, but NZ is much more open than the PRC on this.  For example, for project management, it HAS to be a joint venture in the PRC, but not in NZ. In construction NZ is already open to PRC firms, but the PRC wont let NZ firms enter unless it is a project fully foreign financed (i.e. you pay for it, you can work on it). One wonders why it was seen to be so important to let PRC firms enter markets in NZ that they are unlikely to add much value on, other than perhaps obtain experience and IP that they can use elsewhere.  

Yet there is something far more alarming in the agreement, which is the provision on foreign investment.  

Global Times, which might be described as the "aggressive" arm of the PRC state news propaganda apparatus said that:

"Under the new protocol, New Zealand will not investigate Chinese government investors with investments of no more than NZ$100 million ($71.82 million) or non-government investors with investments of no more than NZ$200 million, China News Service reported."

Now sure, that does mean that PRC investment is on a parallel with the CPTPP threshold, but let's pause a moment.  All PRC owned businesses invest in NZ with the explicit or implicit authority of the PRC and the Communist Party of China.  Experience elsewhere indicates that this intent may be anything but benign. PRC companies are known to engage in industrial scale Intellectual Property theft both domestically with foreign partners and internationally. This is hardly a surprise, as it is the core of Marxist-Leninist belief to use the systems of capitalist countries against them, with IP theft used both to advance its own industries and for military purposes.  For example, Siemen's entered into a JV in China to produce high speed trains, only to find that its majority PRC JV partners now re-exporting its technology to compete with it in Germany.  By law, all PRC citizens and businesses are required to comply with directions from the State security services wherever they may be, which is seen to be one reason why Australia's supplies of PPE were raided by PRC companies and citizens to be exported to China at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic (which resulted in Australian law being changed to stop this). 

PRC government entities can spend NZ$100m buying any property or business in NZ without any scrutiny or oversight, and non-government but government endorsed entities can invest NZ$200m.  Sure there are many laws in NZ to deal with intellectual property theft, after the fact, but the trade practices of the PRC internationally show that it has little interest in rule of law, given how quickly it has embarked on dubious sanctions against Australia, because Australia simply wanted some questions asked. That's how sensitive the tyrants in Beijing are.

So there are some serious questions to be asked as to the upgraded NZ-PRC free trade agreement that haven't been asked by the media.

Yet O'Connor went much much further.  On CNBC he played a tune that is familiar to China-watchers, which is to get the ally of an adversary to take on the adversary in foreign relations. Besides saying "nationalism is not the way forward" (being absolutely blind to the PRC's hyper-nationalism in recent years), he decided to give Australia some "advice":

“I can’t speak for Australia and the way it runs its diplomatic relationships but clearly if they were to follow us and … speak …(with) a little more diplomacy from time to time, and be cautious with wording… hopefully (they) can be in a similar situation"

"Speak with a little more diplomacy" presumably means ignoring the PRC's grotesque mismanagement of Covid19 that resulted in it being spread globally, not signing up with allies on a statement on the breaching of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, not complaining if PRC businesses and citizens buy up the PPE and medical equipment in your country to export it to China during a pandemic and then finger-pointing at your closest ally on command.  O'Connor supported mediating between the PRC and Australia because:

"We have a mature … relationship with China, and we’ve always been able to raise issues of concern"

Of course in part he is echoing Nanaia Mahuta who in December said that NZ could mediate between the PRC and Australia - which is exactly a tactic that Beijing wants.  This call is utterly disgraceful, and essentially represents the tyranny in Beijing peeling the NZ government away from its most important trading and defence partner, to effectively imply that the differences between Australia and the PRC are as much Australia's fault as the PRC.  It is Beijing asserting that there is moral equivalence between Australia and the PRC.  

"Raising matters of concern" is how the PRC likes things to be, for there to be diplomatic back-channel talk, whilst not publicly changing the relationship at all.  It means the PRC can break international treaties, threaten its neighbours and engage in aggressive actions internationally whilst the front window looks like a new free trade agreement and all is well. 

Beijing already used the NZ government as a pawn to attack Australia in this report by saying:

"The current difficulties facing bilateral relations are of Australia's own making. Only a real change in Canberra's hostile attitude towards China can ease the tensions, and reset bilateral trade ties between the two sides."

furthermore:

"Australia's provoking and smearing will only damage its reputation among Chinese enterprises and people, and hurt trade relations, Chen said, noting that "Canberra should consider Wellington as model and restore its relations with China by taking concrete action."

In short, Beijing claims that Australia's concerns, over Covid 19, Hong Kong, investment, South China Sea and Taiwan are not issues New Zealand shares similar concerns about.  "Wellington is a model" of obsequiousness.

The extension of this is that New Zealand is also not aligned with the United States, which looks like seeing little change in policy with Biden compared to Trump over China. 

NZ is, after all, almost irrelevant to the PRC, because NZ has virtually no military capacity to project and its trade potential is minimal, but NZ does have a great deal of intellectual property around agriculture and capacity to provide education for its elite. Australia is more important because its mineral reserves are vast and arguably the easiest to access of any major mining country given its legal/political structure, proximity and infrastructure, but also because it is strategically important militarily.

Beijing thinks it has turned NZ into a "neutral" party between itself and NZ's two biggest allies, and the fact that it has so easily played Damien O'Connor, and to a lesser extent Nanaia Mahuta should cause concern in the government and to New Zealanders more generally.

So what Beijing got out of the updated FTA with NZ was much more than unhindered trade access to a small economy, and almost unhindered investment access, it got a new friend that has broken away from Australia - that's worth much more strategically than access to a market the size of part of Shanghai.

So the next time Jacinda Ardern chooses to berate Australia over either its treatment of New Zealand citizens resident in Australia, or climate change, or indeed any other foreign policy issue, she might just wonder why the great ANZAC ally might just tell her to go ask the government's new mates in Beijing to help out, then she can wait and see if O'Connor might have enough time to spare once he has washed himself up after being ever so gratifying to the Communist Party of China.