Abolish the Human RIghts Commission (but give everyone Tino Rangitiratanga)

It was 26 years ago that the Free Radical published an article calling for abolition of the Human Rights Commission (sometimes called the "Human Wrongs Commission" on Radio Liberty at the time).  The main reason for that was how egregiously the entity had been in dealing to what it claimed was unjust discrimination - such as a Wellington hairdresser that charged less for men's haircuts than women's, the Nelson strip club that charged women half price for admittance, the golf club that held a married couple's tournament (discriminating against unmarried couples!) and even weighing in on a political party's proposal to give welfare to a married couple if one spouse remained at home to look after their children.  This all seemed like pettiness pushed by a bureaucracy that was looking for issues that, fundamentally, were petty.

A lot has changed since then, the Human Rights Commission has gone from seeking to stop people being rude to one another, to being the taxpayer funded advocacy for a highly politicised, radical and controversial interpretation of human rights, and indeed of New Zealand society.  The Human Rights Commission is the public sector wing of advocates of a far-left vision of a post-liberal democratic, post-capitalist, post-modernist Tangata Whenua Republic of Aotearoa, where not just your ancestry, but your claimed identity determines who governs you, and the rights you hold.  Whether it be a state within which half of the power is held by Iwi who appoint representatives to the new people's assembly (the logical end-point of co-governance), or two nations in one, whereby Maori are governed by the laws set by their Iwi and everyone else is governed by a state that has limited power over Maori. At least, that's one way of interpreting the radical vision of the Human Rights Commission. It's inconceivable that when the Muldoon administration created this body in the 1970s that it would be seen as the taxpayer funded arm of Nga Tamatoa.

It's helpful to know exactly what the Human Rights Commission has been spending your money on

The Human Rights Commission has produced a 162 page report called "Maranga Mai!"  (don't forget the exclamation mark) which:

combines evidence-based literature and research with the first-person testimony of recognised experts in the field of anti-racism about the impact of colonisation, white supremacy and racism on tangata whenua and communities. This methodology centres and amplifies Māori voices, memories and experiences, the value of which lies in documenting lived inter-generational and cumulative insights of how Māori have experienced colonisation, racism and white supremacy

It is unsurprising that the authorship is collective:

The Tangata Whenua Caucus of the National Anti-Racism Taskforce (2021-2022) and Ahi Kaa, the Indigenous Rights Group within Te Kāhui Tika Tangata | the Human Rights Commission (the Commission), worked together on the development of Maranga Mai!

RNZ does give us a clue as to one of the key contributors, reporting that:

Co-chair of the anti-racism taskforce, Tina Ngata, said the country's constitutional arrangements such as the electoral and justice systems were based on centuries-old racist ideologies and were the root of racism here.

Now Ngata is a far-left activist who appears to see everyone and everything through the lens of structuralism - the "system" from her perspective, is designed to protect patriarchal colonial capitalism - apparently. She is also quite the romantic for life pre-colonisation.  I'm no fan of the view that colonisation was "good" overall (neither because British colonialism may have been better than others, nor the idea that Maori may not have modernised without colonisation), but I'm also no fan of fantasies of a fictional golden age of isolationist nationalism of pre-modernity. Medicine in ALL societies 200 years ago was primitive, and pretending it was "better" than today, for anyone, is deranged stuff.  Ethno-nationalism is often based on myths of a glorious past eroded by the "other".

It's a philosophy that sees malignant intent or neglect in political and legal systems that are deemed to have been designed for and to preserve identitarian privileges.  In other words, ANY system of governance cannot be based on objective principles of reason, rights and justice, systems exist only for those in power.  It is exactly the philosophy of Marxist-Leninists, that you need to destroy the system (and society, and culture, and art) of a capitalist society to liberate the oppressed proletariat. For structuralists, you need to destroy the system of the "racist, patriarchal, colonial settler" system to liberate the oppressed Tangata Whenua.

Taxpayers have paid a group of far-left radical to essentially assert that liberal democracy (one-person, one vote), albeit not constrained by any explicit constitutional limits on power is "at the root of racism", as is the common law based justice system, which has at its roots proof of fact and application (for crimes) a presumption of innocence.  It isn't about people being racist or laws being racist or government policies being racist...

Talking about a revolution...

Hence the recommendation of "Maranga Mai!" essentially for revolution as follows:

To eliminate racism throughout Aotearoa will require nothing less than constitutional transformation and we urge the government to commit to this much needed change. (emphasis added)

So a department of state wants a revolution.  It's a political manifesto. Not only that, it wants a constitutional transformation to be implemented by the government elected by a bare majority, it isn't calling on the general public, it isn't calling on Parliament (representing more than the majority government), but on the government. Pause for a moment to think where and when it is that radical constitutional transformation was implemented without broader public consent, but the Human Rights Commission is uninterested in a nation-state that is governed by the consent of the governed.

You need to understand...

Apparently "The first step in the process is for tangata whenua to tell the truth about the impact of racism on their whānau, hapū, iwi, ancestors, communities and lives".  Of course people can say as they wish, but there's no room for critical thinking here. What IS racism in this context? It isn't just individual behaviour, indeed that isn't the main issue. The narratives wanted are just that...

New Zealanders need to understand that colonisation, racism and white supremacy are intertwined phenomena that remain central to the ongoing displacement and erosion of tino rangatiratanga. The cumulative effects of this are evident in the intergenerational inequalities and inequities tangata whenua suffer across all aspects of their lives, These serious matters are the focus of this report.

Colonisation happened, but New Zealand is no longer a colony. The non-Maori citizens are not "colonisers" but people with as much right to live in the country they are born in, or admitted as immigrants in as anyone else. Inferring anything else is racist, even if it doesn't meet the definition of the post-modernists.  

Similarly, the idea that white supremacy is somehow endemic is ludicrous and deranged.  However, the New Zealand state DOES erode tino rangatiratanga, for EVERYONE, by increasing its power and diminishing the freedom of citizens and residents to live their own lives peacefully.

However, that's not what this report is about, unsurprisingly if you look at the Executive Summary....

Detailing histories of racism and white supremacy in Aotearoa is pivotal to developing an accurate awareness of the past that is sufficient to change the future.

It's not really about history though, in calling for anecdotes of the past, including recollections of what dead relatives said, it's about inculcating a culture that combines anger and hatred, with shame, guilt and repentance.  There's no room for critical thinking, and disentangling assertions, assumptions and narratives to look for objective facts.

The elimination of racism in Aotearoa requires true and authentic acknowledgement from the state that indigenous and tangata whenua rights exist.

Shut up if you disagree...

Actually it requires acknowledgement from the state that individual rights exist, but it isn't enough, because for racism to be eliminated requires individuals to think of people as individuals, not groups.  The Human Rights Commission doesn't do that, nor do the authors of this report.

You can see it in the threatening and racist tone of this language:

Also, that the continued dismissal and violation of these covenants, and Tiriti responsibilities, by the Crown and settler society must cease.

So if you are not Tangata Whenua (bearing in mind that this is a state of mind more than anything else, as all nationalisms are a psychological state), you are a member of "settler society", and you "must cease" dismissing indigenous rights and apparently Tiriti responsibilities that, in fact, do not apply to those who aren't parties to Te Tiriti (as the parties are only the Crown and Iwi signatories).

The Human Rights Commission wants you to cease arguing about the concept of indigenous rights and to cease breaching Te Tiriti.  Perhaps it needs to revisit freedom of speech, or is that a white supremacist concept too?

There is the red herring:

The reliance on the Doctrine of Discovery, to validate the New Zealand colonial state, must also cease alongside a transition to recognise Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the rightful source of kāwanatanga legitimacy in Aotearoa.

There is no colonial state anymore, and almost nobody relies on the Doctrine of Discovery. 

Give us your money...

Tangible actions will be required to atone and provide restitution to tangata whenua, while laying a foundation for healing and constitutional certainty.

Don't expect your bank account to be immune from that, it's a direct demand for taking your money (if not your land) to provide restitution to people who you have never harmed, who may even be better off than you are.  

Racism was invented by white people

There's so much in this report that is revealing, not only of the Human Rights Commission, but of the Labour Government that commissioned this report and has not dismissed it as a doorstop take this quote:

The social construct of race is based on the ideological notion of white supremacy, which is driven in society by racism (p.36)

This is nonsense, as the identification of different races was recorded by humanity thousands of years ago. The ideological notion of "white supremacy" emerged as Christian Europeans in the Middle Ages ventured forth to proselytise, albeit it was primarily religiously focused - but as were the motives of Muslim imperialists at the same time, but methinks that the authors of this report don't care much for breadth of history of many parts of the world.  Genghis Khan, one of the great imperialists and racists was no "white supremacist", but that gets in the way of a narrative of exuding guilt and shame against the vast majority of New Zealanders, and in particular parroting the US-inspired hierarchy of oppression. The anti-concept of "whiteness" is cited throughout the report, without being defined.  Of course if race is a "social construct" (it certainly is a psychological rather than a usefully objective one), then what happens if it gets ignored? Well this report isn't interested in THAT.

Racism is a primitive collectivist fear of the "other", inculcated especially by those with power either by state, religion or other form of collective governance.  Those with power don't want to share it with others, so demonising or diminishing the "other" is key, and it may not even be skin colour, it is fundamental identitarianism.  You see it in Northern Ireland and the Balkans, where people who are indistinguishable from each other physically, "other" different sides based on religious, ancestral and other claims to identity.  It's all in their heads, like all forms of ethno-nationalism.  

Europeans were (and some are) full of their own supremacy against each other, but the notion of "us" vs. "them", with little regard for universalism was commonplace throughout humanity until it started to be challenged by Enlightenment classical liberal thinking, which ultimately saw the rise of universal individual rights.

Unless your group was involved in creating an institution, it is biased against your group

Of course there is the claim that because Maori are not involved in creating institutions those institutions automatically become institutionally racist:

Institutional racism is not always obvious because the underlying prejudice hides behind complex rules, practices, policies and decision-making processes. These are framed, written and confirmed in the absence of Māori. (p.37)

So even if you can't find evidence of institutional racism, it's there. Structuralism teaches you that everyone in power sets up systems of bigotry to prejudice those in power, and because a system wasn't designed by the collective of "Maori", it is institutionally racist. You don't need evidence. Post-modernism regards evidence and empiricism to be eve

Māori in Aotearoa live under a constitutional and legal structure that is foreign to them and which derives from England (p.37)

What does this even mean? Almost nobody in a nation-state has much power to determine constitutional and legal structures, and most people in NZ are not from England. The system has evolved over many years, the electoral system has parallels to Germany, the legislation is passed by a legislature where every adult citizen has a similar say in who represents them.  It is, objectively, no more foreign to one person than another, and many would regard most of the systems and institutions of state to be alien to them. It is only by seeing everyone through a collectivist lens of "us" vs. "them" that perceives "us" finding a system foreign which mustn't be to "them".

Of course the report isn't clear on what should happen to those structures.  However, it appears it is about passing control to Iwi, so they control Maori, not the state.

You can spend a long time going through this document to find all sorts of gems, such as the need to abolish prisons:

Decolonisation, and constitutional transformation based on Te Tiriti and He Whakaputanga, necessarily involves abolishing prisons (p.92) why... because “incarceration does nothing to address the underlyingissues the person may be experiencing”

Because the man (it's mostly men) who raped you, or murdered one of your relatives or friends, should not, fundamentally, be somewhere to protect you. How dare you claim individual rights you white supremacist?  You need to think of the person who violated you or your family, because he is basically a victim.

You see...

Colonisation introduced an Anglo-Saxon centred notion of western justice based on the fundamental principle of individual responsibility. This approach minimises the personal and social circumstances of accused persons (p.89)

Individual responsibility, remarkably, predates both the Anglo and Saxon peoples, and remarkably remains central to justice systems across the world. The report blanks out that personal circumstances are relevant to some crimes, and are certainly relevant to most sentencing. However, of course, it doesn't fit the collectivist mindset, which (as in Maoist China) focuses more on the context of the person who commits the assault, rape or murder, than the act itself.

The Human Rights Commission presumably believes individual responsibility is foreign to Maori.

Of course the report wouldn't be complete if it didn't recommend expanding the powers of the Human Rights Commission. It wants legislation to...

Give full effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Te Reo Māori text) throughout the Human Rights Act 1993. This includes all institutional arrangements for the Commission

and (bearing in mind the Human Rights Commission has quasi-judicial powers)...

Include via preambulatory paragraphs definitions of racism, institutional racism, and white supremacy within the Act. (p.98)

The effect this would have on freedom of speech, and indeed on liberal democracy could be chilling indeed.

It's not all wrong though..

Now there is a LOT that can be done to liberate Maori, such as decentralising education, ending the next to peppercorn leases enforced on some Maori land, granting Iwi (and indeed all) property owners real property rights to use their property as they see fit.  There is plenty of content in the report that rightfully points out the acquisitive, oppressive nature of the state, such as the Public Works Act and the application of local body rates on Maori land, even if that land received no services or benefits from local government. There was legislation discriminatory against Maori, and legislation that generally undermined property rights and individual rights for all New Zealanders, and had egregious effects on Maori. That's what an overbearing state does.  

As a result the report effectively recommends to not levy rates on Maori land, which is fine of course, if you accept that local government should provide no services that support such land.  I doubt the Human Rights Commission wants very small local government though.

and there are seeds of freedom in constitutional reform...

Fundamental to the constitution reform the report wants is for Maori to determine their own lives and make decisions over their own resources.  This is libertarian, it is freedom and property rights.  There remain two questions though...

Is giving Maori this power actually power as individuals with the choice to act together, or purely collective entities? If it is the latter, it is just another form of government, I suspect it is the latter.

Why can this not apply to EVERYONE in New Zealand? Why shouldn't we all be able to determine our own lives and make decisions over our own resources?  The authors would be confused because they will think non-Maori have this, but they most definitely do not.  That's what liberal democracy in a mixed economy without constitutional constraints on government power generates.

Unfortunately, I doubt the vision of a series of far-left collectivist activists really is about liberating individual freedom and opportunity.

Don't be saying no...

The report concludes:

Several barriers stand in the way of fully realising constitutional transformation. The first of these is the inevitable safeguarding of the settler-colonial status quo and the economic privilege that has flowed from that for generations at the expense of Māori. The economic implications of constitutional transformation and addressing racism are significant, because “Many Pākehā won’t oppose racism if it means giving land back and supporting constitutional reform” p.102

The main barrier, surely, is not having the consent of those that would be governed. Especially if this means taking away people's own land, acquired legally and privately. It would be shades of Zimbabwe.

Note that the report effectively accepts that protest, legal or not, and indeed violence must be expected if its recommendations are not followed:

Direct action to respond to and challenge colonisation, racism, and white supremacy are important in the assertion of tino rangatiratanga, as Ihumātao and internationally, the Dakota Access Pipeline, have shown (see Smithsonian Institution, 2018; Meador, 2016). So long as the settler-colonial status quo remains, this will continue to be an effective method of resistance p.104

Direct action is a euphemism for any form of protest that can include trespass, vandalism and violence, the Human Rights Commission is almost endorsing a breaking of the rule of law.

What to do with it?

It's a political manifesto, which the Labour Government commissioned, and it should be debated. Political candidates should challenge and be challenged by the concepts and views expressed in it, and indeed there is nothing inherently wrong with reflecting on state-inflicted racism, both direct and indirect, on Maori, in New Zealand's history.  However, it seeks fundamental constitutional change which, on the face of it, would destroy liberal democracy in New Zealand and severely limit freedom of speech and private property rights. It is a call for ethno-nationalist separatism, which if it were to liberate Maori from the state, I would applaud, but it steers away from that.  For a report purportedly about liberation it calls for a lot of new state institutions and a lot of new taxpayer spending, it is a report wanting more statism, and to transfer state power to collectivist institutions that are meant to represent Maori.  Maori as individuals don't feature much here, except for anecdotes about experiences and feelings, as evidence of institutional racism (although evidence isn't needed apparently).

What it demonstrates is that the Human Rights Commission has been completely taken over by far-left ethno-nationalists who see it as a vehicle to achieve radical political change, rather than to implement government policy - unless of course, this reflects government philosophy, which it may well do.

It's easy to brush Maranga Mai! to one side as ridiculous, but it embodies a philosophy that is being inculcated across all levels of the education system and the wider state. It appears to be shared by the Labour Party, and certainly the Greens and Te Pati Maori.

The easy response would be to abolish the Human Rights Commission, which is what any libertarian would do, but it might be more clever to reform it, legislatively change its mandate to actually defend the rights of the individual to control over his or her body, property and life. Imagine if it produced reports that called for a restructure of the state so individual rights were paramount.

My expectations, however, are low. Hipkins will pretend it isn't important, but will continue to let the philosophy underlying it dominate discourse in education and the state and the state's media. National will barely touch the Human Rights Commission, as it did create it.

What is more important is to have debate and discussion challenging collectivist and post-modernist ideologies for what they are - philosophical positions - not factual renditions of events. 

Colonisation saw many atrocities committed, but it is over.  The non-Maori who live in New Zealand are not "settlers". Liberal democracy and rule of law are not invented to benefit Pakeha, and the only human rights are individual rights, for without the freedom of the individual, everyone is at risk of violence being initiated by the state, Iwi or any other collective that thinks it should govern you.

Set Maori free by setting us all free.

Bribing voters with their kids' money (and undermining your own policy objectives)

As a libertarian when a government cuts taxes I am pleased, even ones that are purportedly a user fee, because in fact so much of what is collected from those user fees is not directed to services consumed by the users - in this case fuel tax and road user charges.  It would, after all, be much better if the amount collected was what is needed to pay to maintain and upgrade the roads, rather than be directed to pet projects designed to "change behaviour" (subsidise transport modes you aren't willing to pay to use),.

However, it reeks of hypocrisy, as the Ardern/Hipkins Government proceeds to undermine a land transport funding system that once was seen as a shining example in a world where political pork barrelling is so often the order of the day (see Australia and the United States).  It's much more than that though.

Remember the "most transparent government ever"? Remember the commitment to (reducing) child poverty? Remember the belief that New Zealand taking action on climate change is meant to be a demonstrable commitment to values of environmental protection?

It's all bullshit of course.

Remember when Jacinda Ardern said tax cuts would STOP not cut, but stop investment (!) in health and education? This was when National proposed just to raise income tax thresholds, so inflation and wage rises wouldn't result in fiscal creep (when your increases in pay, to offset inflation) putting you into higher tax brackets.  

Remember when National proposed a cut in fuel excise, but Jacinda Ardern said it would mean the roads would fall apart?

"It maintains our roads and it builds our transport projects so if you were to remove excise, which every government has used, you basically remove your ability to maintain roads and build new roading projects," she told AM. 

It's all bullshit of course, because Labour did just that, it cut fuel excise and road user charges, and is paying for it by using "funds set aside for Covid" which are actually borrowings that are unspent.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is maintaining these cuts in tax through till the end of June 2023, not because fuel prices are high (they have been dropping for months), but because, he says, it relieves pressure on households.

Well it does, particularly higher income households. Infometrics research indicates that the highest income households save three times as much as lower income households.  That makes sense, as they pay the most fuel tax, because they drive the most and are likely to have the largest vehicles with the highest fuel consumption, but remember this is the Government that decried tax cuts "for the rich". 

Apparently it's ok to cut taxes for those that earn the most.... if Labour does it.

Transport Minister Michael Wood even said on Newstalk ZB that the tax cut was an "investment". Here's a clue, almost every single time a politician says something, that involves your money, is an "investment", it's a lie, because you'll never get anything back from it. In this case, Wood, known as a leftie in the Labour caucus, has helped us all out...

I agree with him, tax cuts are an investment - an investment in believing people know best how to spend their own money.  It was theirs in the first place. 

What's particularly hilarious is the contortion of the tax cut.  Ignore James Shaw bloviating that it is subsidising fossil fuels. 

It's bullshit.

For a start, it is cutting a tax, not subsidising the market price of fuel, secondly it is just one "fuel". Diesel doesn't carry excise tax, as diesel vehicles pay per kilometre to use the roads.  New Zealanders are still pay the market price for fuel, plus (for petrol) some fuel tax and GST.  However, you can rely on the Greens to exaggerate for hysterical effect.

After all fuel tax and road user charges do not raise money for general spending, but for the National Land Transport Fund, so that Waka Kotahi can spend money on roads, subsidising public transport and now Kiwirail and coastal shipping.  They are effectively user charges so there is some user pays, although it's worth noting what this government spends the money on, and how far it has undermined the system that was once deemed best practice by the World Bank.

(From the 2021-2024 National Land Transport Programme)

69% of spending is on roads, the remainder is mostly spent on subsidising public transport and Kiwirail (26%), 4% on upgrading footpaths and cycleways and the remainder on administration and subsidies for coastal shipping.

Setting aside the 20% which actually isn't spent by the government, but comes from local government rates (on average half of spending on local roads and a bit less of public transport is from local government), 56% comes from road use fees in the form of tax on petrol, and road user charges on diesel powered vehicles, plus motor vehicle registration/licensing fees. 24% already comes from general taxes (either current or future).

By cutting fuel tax and RUC, Labour is substantially raising the proportion of money derived from borrowing from future general taxpayers, to around the same as fuel tax and RUC.  

Labour is now subsidising roads more than any government for decades.  Of course it is subsidising public transport like no government ever before, to the point that public transport users are now paying, on average, only around a quarter of the cost of paying for the bus driver and the diesel and maintaining the bus (or train). 

This is the same government that has an explicit target of cutting on average, 30% fewer km every year (50% if you live in a city) because it isn't just about climate change, it wants to mould you into a green citizen, that walks and bikes for most short journeys, rides public transport whenever it is available and just drive less. It's a centrally planned and controlled vision that doesn't respect people making the "wrong" choices, it is also supported by cutting speed limits, because it isn't just about safety, it happens to make driving less attractive compared to slower modes of transport.

However, Labour is now subsidising road use, and that includes road freight (note rail and shipping operators don't get any cut in fuel tax or road user charges, because they don't pay any, but they get subsidised anyway by other means).

So you have a Labour Government that says tax cuts (proposed by National and ACT) will threaten health and education.... but then implements tax cuts, completely blanking out the fact that this either means less money for other spending or it means more borrowing - for tax cuts.  How "sustainable" is that?

It says tax cuts will benefit the rich the most, and then implements tax cuts that do just that.

It says cutting fuel tax will jeopardise spending on transport, and then implements tax cuts on fuel.

Finally, it claims climate change is the great crisis that especially needs New Zealand, the country that emits 0.09% of global CO2 emissions  must radically change how it lives, by constraining private motoring, but then subsidises road use like no government in recent history.

Votes are much more precious that policy objectives though, as is leaving a fiscal bomb for the other side if the election is lost, although if it were up to me, the next government could think long and hard about whether it subsidises public transport and rail from general taxes anyway (assuming it wants to do that), and leaving fuel tax and RUC for roads only.

Ardern's legacy isn't kindness

It's been over a week, and it's remarkable that Jacinda Ardern has simply disappeared from the politics of a country she exercised almost unprecedented levels of power over, for the previous few years. The (leftwing statist post-modernist identitarian) world has cried out "why", and far too many have come to the conclusion that it's no doubt sexism (in the country that gave her the greatest electoral mandate of any Prime Minister since 1951, and had previously had two female Prime Ministers).

However, Ardern's resignation appears on the face of it to reflect two things:

• Fatigue from someone who isn't intellectually or emotionally able to handle the time and the stress of the position
• Fear of an election campaign during which scrutiny will be its highest and the chance of defeat the strongest yet.

She is, after all, an almost accidental Prime Minister. She wasn't expected to become Prime Minister after the 2017 election, as National was so well ahead in the polls, it's just that National had "spent" its coalition/support partners over previous terms, and so angered Winston Peters that he chose to swing left.

Of course in this neo-identitarian political age (a variation on classic chauvinistic identitarianism), Ardern's age and sex were notable as an "achievement", enhanced by her clearly being someone who never seemed to covet the role (which is now born out by her fatigability), made her a darling of international media.  The Anglosphere in particular is dominated by mono-linguistic types who pay little attention to the likes of Sanna Marin, the Finnish (young female) Prime Minister who chose to ignore the wrath of Vladimir Putin and seek Finland's membership of NATO. A position of courage, and not remotely a position the likes of Ardern (or indeed Hipkins) would ever take in foreign affairs, as New Zealand's foreign policy since the Lange age has been to be largely weak against those that challenge Western countries (see, for example, how pathetic Ardern/Mahuta were in response to China's trade sanctions against Australia). 

Ardern was notable for embracing an explicitly sympathetic and emotional image to leadership, and for declaring how kindness in government is a virtue. This is extraordinary from a politician who has led a government that, by and large, has sought to take more of people's money, borrow more from future generations and to direct and centrally manage and control more intensely than any government since the Muldoon era. 

I suppose Ardern will regard the generosity of her government with welfare benefits to be "kindness", which of course is really kindness with other people's money.  That "kindness" certainly will have relieved some poverty, but also contributes towards a dependency on other people's money, and the labour shortage that has emerged since the end of Covid restrictions. Lindsay Mitchell has written eloquently on this noting that the number and proportion of people receiving a main benefit at the end of the last six December quarters is up 22% compared to when Ardern first became Prime Minister.  New Zealand has both a critical skills shortage, a restrictive approach to immigration and is generous to those who don't want to work, but Ardern can't connect the dots.  At no point has this government noted that being too "kind" with other people's money encourages people to be economically idle.

The reality of the "kindness" narrative is no joke to the victims of ramraid attacks, and the growth in crime, because the "kindness" is interpreted as there being an easy ride for perpetrators.  The fact so many of the victims are recent migrants who own businesses is a community that maybe sees less kindness in the rhetoric, particular the notion that the reason some young people drive cars to steal stuff is claimed to be poverty, rather than opportunistic nihilism.

Another group not feeling the kindness includes immigrants who invested time and money into New Zealand and have been told to fuck off back home leave.  The former owners of Tennyson Cafe in Napier, who migrated from France, poured $600,000 into the business, brought their children over and had to meet financial targets for the business to get permanent residency.  The pandemic, of course, got in the way, and they failed to meet the targets.

The family’s first year in Cafe Tennyson and Bistro did not go as well as hoped, but the year ended March 2020 was much better and boded well.  The Debords invested more than $600,000 in the business, and the kids Lisa, 10, and Thibaut, 12, had settled in and were thriving at a local primary school. For the past two years, while other cafes around them have closed and laid off staff, the Debords have battled on.

Immigration NZ said because the didn't meet their targets (regardless of reason) they could not be allowed to remain, local MP and Cabinet Minister Stuart Nash supported them, but of course these were the rules set by the government he is a part of and Ardern led. So imagine a family, relocated halfway across the world, setting up a successful business, contributing financially and personally to a community, being told by an unproductive minion of the burgeoning Ardern state to leave.  Claims that it was an administrative decision is ludicrous in the context of a government with a majority able to change the laws to address such discrepancies.  For someone who gained her mandate due to handling of the pandemic, it is a curious blind spot that Ardern literally couldn't care less about people from overseas who contribute demonstrably to New Zealand, being allowed to stay. It's something that foreign fans of Ardern wouldn't believe, because they think she's the antithesis of "Trump" and everything they hate, when in fact she's led a government highly sceptical of immigration, not least because of a strong streak of Maori caucus antipathy towards immigration (and trade union dislike of people who represent competition for their members - this is the left treating individuals as economic units - something that is often decried).

The legions of people who couldn't get home during the pandemic, whereas various minstrels, thespians, clowns, ball players, politicians and businesspeople were given special access to MIQ, was also the other side of the "kind" government, that granted special privileges to those who ticked the right boxes.  Ardern led a government of "pull" as Eric Crampton wrote about.  Ardern's Government was kind to the "right" kind of people, such as people working in horse racing, international film producers, America's Cup syndicate employees, minstrels performing and businesspeople with stands at the Dubai Expo.  Average New Zealanders don't have that sort of "pull".

Then there are the Afghans who helped New Zealand forces not getting automatic visas to move to NZ after the Taliban took over.  What could be less kind that for people who worked with foreign forces not being granted residency when their psychopathic totalitarian enemy takes over?  However, the Ardern Government's attitude to foreign policy was more about signalling virtue than substance.  Calling for a ban on nuclear weapons is the sort of naive student politics that demeaned Ardern, as was calling climate change her generation's "nuclear-free moment". Then again if she meant New Zealand taking action that would have no impact on a global issue or problem (which is what the nuclear ban achieved) then she might have been right.

A lot of money has been spent by the Ardern Government, yet the performance of public services continues to be woeful, not least because the incentives of prioritising the interests of vocal professional unions are not on consumers of those services.  The DHB model was poor, but centralised healthcare is unlikely to deliver innovation or pressure for efficiencies.  On education, the desire for more centralisation is clear, as diversity in education delivery is an anathema to a government full of sympathisers to teachers' unions.  The Ardern Government doesn't want parents directing schools when it has grown the educational bureaucracy in Wellington so much.

That's been the other effect, the massive growth in the Wellington bureaucracy more generally.  A 38% increase in policy analysts, a 43% increase in managers and 56% increase in information professionals reflects a bloating demand by the Ardern Government for regulatory and policy work, and little of it is about getting the state to do less, but rather to do more.  It's part of her belief system in an activist state, but this philosophy hits the reality that you can't make a lot of things "better" by just throwing more public servants at it to analyse what to do, especially since whole ranges of options are completely ruled out politically. It's telling that the Ardern Government wouldn't even look once at commercialising water, even though it has been somewhat of a success in Auckland (for fresh and waste water only), because it is only interested in options that centralise power.

Then there is whole issue of "co-governance" which means that Iwi are treated as equals in government to central and local government, and given power to choose their own people to sit alongside those chosen by election (who are ALSO chosen in part by those selecting Iwi representatives).  It also means abolishing one-person one-vote, as nearly happened in Rotorua.  The fact the Ardern Government is so willing to consider abolishing a core tenet of liberal democracy to placate Maori nationalists is far from kind. Finally Ardern's concern about freedom of speech being a weapon and wanting to suppress disinformation presents an overly confident view of the state benignly suppressing what is "bad", without suppressing what is good or even useful.  It is understandable that she is keen to see less rhetoric that supports the likes of the Christchurch shooter or those claiming conspiracies for all sorts of issues, but her inability to see the importance of freedom of speech created plenty of justifiable criticism.  Her philosophy feeds into the rhetoric of dictators from China to Russia to Nigeria to Venezuela, who simply call criticism "disinformation". 

The narrative now being conveniently trotted out about Ardern is the abuse she receives from critics, and certainly no one can justify threats of violence against her and her family.  Yet her main opponent in 2020 was Judith Collins, and abuse of her is largely brushed to one side, and of course many of those who decry abuse of Ardern are more than happy to tolerate abuse of male politicians as Graham Adams wrote in The Platform.  I'm old enough to remember the constant references to Robert Muldoon as "piggy", and the idea that somehow people shouldn't be able to throw pejoratives at women in power any less than men is rather chilling.  People have the right to call their leaders names and be rude about them, even if it is puerile and they don't like it, what they don't have the right to do is to threaten them. Ardern undoubtedly gets some nasty threats, and different ones from men because she is a woman, but it's intellectually lazy polemics to claim that the country that granted Ardern a remarkable mandate in 2020 is also dripping misogynistic hatred of women in power (despite having also granting a mandate for Helen Clark to govern for nine years), when hatred of men in power is just brushed over as part of the game.

It's good for Ardern to give up, nobody should be in the job if they find it too difficult, but just over a week on, and it is clear that Hipkins has just tweaked the dials, and done little other than give the impression he's a bit less woke-authoritarian, and he's more than willing to extend unfunded tax cuts (fuel tax/RUC discount) and say he's "reviewing" policies that Ardern and her whole government were dead keen on hanging their hats on.

What the polls suggest is that the politics of "kindness" were seen by enough of the public to be empty of substance, but it also suggests that Christopher Luxon has a fair way to convince people that his alternative is one of substance.

A key question will be whether a National-led government is actually going to embark on the sort of reforms needed to turn back the tide on the growing centralising state, and incentivise individual responsibility, entrepreneurship and freedom of choice,

In a postmodern generation that believes truth can be mine or yours, telling the truth and restating old wisdoms can be a revolutionary act.

"The prince across the water is now the world’s most famous truth bender, but he is far from alone. Last Friday, Trevor Noah, the South African comedian and US television presenter, defended the notorious skit in which he asserted there had been a “racist backlash” in Britain when Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister.

Rather than present proof of his claims, or apologise for his error, Noah argued that a joke can only be judged by its intended audience. “I wouldn’t tell a joke about South Africa the same way in South Africa as I would outside South Africa,” he explained. In other words, it mattered not that British people knew his joke to be untrue: he was making the joke for a liberal American audience, who believed it was true....

The intellectual origins of this nonsense go back to the postmodernism of thinkers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Discourse is oppressive. Language, custom and tradition exploit the weak and sustain the powerful in their privilege. Victims of the powerful participate in their own oppression through their assumed social roles.

These concepts have been taken further by thinkers and radicals in America, and the arising critical theories are not only commonplace there but increasingly a matter of consensus among academics and politicians here as well.

And so truth is reduced to a battle between discourses. Whatever the evidence, the truth might be said to be merely “your truth”: a story that exploits one group and perpetuates the power of another....

The crime is always exploitation, and the currency is always victimhood because that is what the theories say. The truth must be bent to fit the template, and, handily enough, the theory tells us the truth is malleable anyway."

by Nick Timothy, Theresa May's former Chief of Staff, with an insight he couldn't get his boss to do the foggiest thing about addressing.. in The destruction of truth is at the heart of Western cultural decline  (Daily Telegraph)

Identify for yourself where and how this is seen across academia, the media and in education across NZ... and in the utterances of so many politicians

All I care to say about the Royal nonsense

We should be pleased that the Harry/Meghan show has appeared over our Christmas/New Year period, as it leaves space for real news to be covered in due course.  The enthusiastic coverage of this absolutely zero news story tells you all you need to know about how much most of the media cares about important information and news, vs. entertainment.  

Personally, I couldn't care less what happens to Harry and Meghan, they mean absolutely nothing to my life, nor the life of 7 billion others.  Last year three people I knew passed away, two unexpectedly, so I don't see any sense in exercising more than a sliver of intellectual (!) or emotional energy on two people I don't know, who if it weren't for Harry's father, would be ignored for being two mediocre, dull and underachieving whingers.

Not PC posted a link to an excellent piece by Michael Hurd "Harry & Meghan: A Couple About Nothing"

Take this:

You’d have to be a morally hollow, mentally dense and frankly pretty depraved person to be fascinated by the cultural zeros we refer to as Harry & Meghan.

Yet here we are: living in a culture where we’re supposed to pretend that two parasites who DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING are the epitome of achievement.

Now I think this is slightly unfair, it is not depraved to be vaguely curious about a man who actually thinks he can reconcile with his family by throwing them under the bus, then denying that's what he did, and I doubt anyone thinks they are the epitome of achievement BUT the cultural and media response implies that these two people are important, when they are not. 

Yet there is one piece of supreme value in this whole show - it is a case study in the post-modernist philosophical sewer that infects academia, media and mainstream discourse.

Why?

The reality evasion of both of them is palpable. They are two of the most privileged, least-disadvantaged people on the planet, both could choose to live a quiet life, raise their children and travel and live in luxury but choose to tell the world how absolutely awfully they claim to have been treated by the family that GRANTS them this privilege, and then complain about how AWFUL the media are towards them by calling them out on the inconsistencies, contradictions and interpretation of their narratives, THEN they claim they just want a quiet life.  

They paint the story of a world and a media who threaten them, at the same time as they court and demand attention and want public validation, on their terms, to tell their story of pathetic, manufactured woe.

The reality evasion is added by the apparent complete falsehoods in Harry's ghost written book, from being given a gift that hadn't been invented yet to buying an airline ticket on Air NZ on a route it has never operated, for a class of travel it doesn't have.  

This is all easily explained by being "their" truth, an anti-concept if ever there was one, because it denies that there is an objective reality.  "Their" truth is just "their" feelings, not facts, but post-modernism today is all about feelings.

The two of them are so emotionally incontinent. Anecdotes and feelings substitute for evidence and facts, perceptions of oppression and privilege are much more important than actual facts.  Caring about people's feelings is a substitute for caring about actual outcomes and events.  

Finally, denying the inferences you actually make - in particular making claims of issues around the colour of Archie's skin, and now pretending that this wasn't a claim of racism at all.  It's 1+1 = whatever we say it is stuff, and don't you dare say anything else, or you're just one of the bad people"

So THERE is a merit in what they are doing - they are the poster-children of so much that is wrong today.

So if your children ask what you think of this story tell them that these are two people who have achieved next to nothing, who have untold levels of wealth and privilege, complaining about how unfair their lives are.  Tell them that they will learn nothing of value from them, and that the attention they get from media is the opposite of what they deserve.

Iran is on the brink of a revolution for freedom.. and the world's politicians should be loudly in support

The Islamic Republic of Iran is an abomination, it is a theocracy that demands absolute obeisance to a collective of men who claim to be channelling the will of God, applying a branch of Islamism that in practice is just a form of medieval barbarism.

Have no doubt, Iran is the centre of a courageous struggle, led by young women, against a system that is specifically designed to ensure they submit to an authority led by old men.

It is the most irrational and mindless of governments - for it is theocratic. Not only do the mullahs claim they are following the "will" of their Almighty - but they alone are the ones with the "inspiration" to pass laws and compel and prohibit peaceful individuals to do as they see fit.

Iran may have scrapped its utterly immoral "Morality Police", but it is still a regime characterised well as Taliban-lite.  It is a death cult, that worships and commemorates those who spill their own blood, and blood of others for their superstitions and they should be called out on it by all leaders of liberal democracies.

However you don't hear or see much. Notwithstanding Jacinda Ardern's logical efforts to ensure Christopher Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray (posh wealthy young folk who have that utterly inane occupation "social influencers" - that role whereby you produce videos in the hope countless other airheads are attracted by your clickbait) got out of Iran safely, it is telling that the great heroine of leftwing women has not said much about Iran at all.

Given Ardern's remaining star power internationally (notwithstanding how much it has waned domestically) this is disappointing.  She's big on getting an international stage for climate change, notwithstanding her government has had little influence on policy on it, whereas influencing regime change in Iran that would literally liberate women is something she chooses not to do.

No doubt MFAT has told Ardern and Mahuta (noting Mahuta is much more socially conservative than Ardern) that it isn't wise to say anything, because of trade.  

MFAT sees Iran as a "sleeping giant" noting on its website:

 It remains an untapped market with a lot of potential, although financial and banking sanctions, the difficulties of doing business in Iran, along with a stalled Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or nuclear agreement) and Iran’s blacklisting by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will continue to affect humanitarian sanctions-exempted trade for some time.

Exports with Iran have dropped dramatically in recent years, but no doubt there is ambition to have it grow again.  I know from experience that the default position of diplomats is always not to "disturb" relations in the hope that it will make future trade fruitful, but bearing in mind Ardern has claimed to never be afraid to "talk tough" it's odd there has been no pushback.

After all by far the main reason the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a big export market is BECAUSE it is the "Islamic Republic" led by a death cult of misogynistic terrorism sponsoring arms proliferators.  The regime in Tehran is, on the face of it, antithetical to the values of Ardern and the Labour Party, because it is antithetical to the values of any decent liberal democracy.

Yet Ardern is saying little, no doubt because diplomats think there are "opportunities" for trade.  Mahuta, having demonstrated next to no interest or history in international relations, is hardly likely to push back, since her interests are much more focused on Maori nationalism, and by and large as Foreign Minister she parrots the standard MFAT line on every topic (which is low risk, but also low reward).

Revolution in Iran would have profoundly positive effects not just for most Iranian people (not the thugs, rapists and murderers who are the hand maidens of the regime), but also the Middle East more generally.  For Iran to no longer sponsor Islamofascist attacks across the region, including backing Hezbollah.  

However it should be first and foremost about Iranians and Iranian women and girls in particular. Unlike the unhinged ravings of leftwing woke university professors, Iran is a literal patriarchy, it has a literal rape culture.  It is a culture that punishes women for "immodesty". As Hammed Shahidian wrote "Modesty in dress, especially women's hejab, secures society against chaos and individuals against self-incurred harmful thoughts and deeds".

In other words women better cover up because men are too weak to control what's in their trousers.

Religion in liberal democracies is about freedom to choose and worship as you see fit, and freedom to leave religion if you see fit, but in Iran you cannot leave Islam.  It is compulsory.  

So it should be that politicians across the free world should be supporting the women protesting and calling for freedom in Iran, because it is morally right, and because these women are human beings with the same rights to choose how they live their lives as anyone else.  

The fact that so many politicians choose to keep largely mute on this, whilst demanding private companies address an anti-concept called the "gender wage gap" shows the depths of their hypocritical privilege (which they finger-wag about constantly) and the turpitude of their cultural tunnel vision to not even recognise women who are oppressed on a grand scale and deserve to be supported.

Finally, I'll give a nod to Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, whom I disagree with 95% of the time, who has been consistent on this in the past year. 

Iran's revolution is one for humanity, and of course it is telling that the jackbooted blood spillers of Beijing and Moscow are backing the regime. 

The horrors of water privatisation are largely imaginary hysterics in the heads of leftwing politicians

What has been the biggest farce of the attempt to entrench an anti-privatisation clause in Three Waters legislation? 

The attempt by the Greens to entrench their policies in Parliament is not necessarily surprising for a party that regards private property, enterprise and individuals with scepticism, but state property, state enterprise and public servants with benign intent.  Eugenie Sage is hardly the sharpest knife in the kitchen from the Green caucus either.

Jacinda Ardern's claim to be ignorant of the proposal is also farcical. On the one hand is seems difficult to believe that one of the country's most centralising governments doesn't have a handle on the detail of policy of one of its most controversial proposals. On the other hand, if she doesn't then why not?

What virtually NO-one in the media has asked (certainly not RNZ), is why the fear of privatising water? 

You see it is precisely because of hysteria about water privatisation that New Zealand's fresh and waste water infrastructure was not substantively reformed (outside Auckland with Watercare Services) in the 1990s, and that hysteria was largely fuelled by the likes of the Greens in the form of the Alliance. The Alliance, along with the then "Water Pressure Group" (led by the completely loopy, and now late, Penny Bright) that painted a picture of doom and gloom from supplying water with user fees, in a commercial structure, that saw Auckland being the beginning and end of water reform.

It is thanks to muddled-headed Marxists like Eugenie Sage that water remained the most unreformed infrastructure sector, leaving it in the idealised world of "local democracy", "local empowerment" and of course largely staying far away from people paying for what they use, but rather taxing everyone so the biggest users of water (typically businesses) get subsidised by the smallest users (typically people living on their own). That's socialism for you.

Yet what does privatisation of water look like?  DIA's own report called "Transforming the system for delivering three waters services - The case for change and summary of proposals - June 2021" has a handy chart depicting the relative performance of ten English water companies, with government owned water companies in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and New Zealand council owned water providers. 

All of the private water companies outperform the others across a range of measures regarding customer service, and the conclusion of the report is:

• New Zealand has a long way to go, to catch up with the performance of more mature systems overseas

• We are at a starting position similar to Scottish Water, before the Scottish reforms. In the last two decades, Scottish Water has been able to close the performance gap and is now among the top-performing water services providers in the United Kingdom.

In other words, not only are private water companies in England performing better than the New Zealand council owned examples, but they have been outperforming Scottish Water - which has been the pin-up case study for the Ardern Government.

So let's be very clear.

Privatisation of water is not something to be scared of, in fact had it happened 30 years ago (not that it was even on the agenda) then there wouldn't be an infrastructure deficit in the billions for water.  Rates would be lower, yes you'd be paying a bill for water, but if it had followed the English model, there would be a water sector regulator capping the rate at which water prices could be increased, and ensuring that the natural monopoly water and sewerage companies had to meet key service standards.

Even the Government's own report acknowledges that it is PRIVATE water companies that perform well.

So what's actually wrong with private companies providing water infrastructure and services?

Why wont any Opposition MPs say there are benefits from letting the private sector take over?

Why do hysterical leftwing lightweights dominate this narrative and why do journalists never challenge it? (I mean it can't be because two of the major broadcasters are state owned can it?)

Voting age is about power

For all of the posing and posturing, most of the arguments to extend (or not extend) the size of the electorate to include 16 and 17yos come with a big tinge of self-interest around power.  It's been proclaimed that it is "discriminatory" that they don't get a chance to vote, but almost every argument extended to this can be applied to 15, 14 or even some 13 and 12yos.  Paying taxes doesn't give visitors or tourists a vote, and plenty who pay little to no taxes get to vote.

No, it's an exercise in emotionally laden performance from those in politics who get an advantage from having more fungible brains to convince to give them power. It's hardly a surprise that there is strong leftwing support for the idea, because it is widely perceived that most younger people (certainly the more politically active ones) are leftwing, because they are lured by the idea of more government, which can make good stuff compulsory, cheaper or free, and bad stuff banned or more expensive. This is, after all, the predominant philosophical bent pushed through state education and much of the media. 

Plenty on the right oppose it because they fear it threatens their ability to exercise power, because the ways they want to exercise power are not as marketable to young people when the prevalent culture scorns the values of conservatives and libertarians.

For me, it's rather simple. If there were to be an age when an individual is an adult, in terms of powers to contract, to be treated as an adult in the justice system, and to not have age based restrictions on what you can and can't do with your body, then that should be the age of adulthood.  At present it is a mix of 16 and 18, but few on the left think 16yos should face the same judicial treatment as 18yos, and almost none think they should be able to buy alcohol, be prostitutes and even buy tobacco. 

There is a curious cultural disjunction between those who want younger teenagers to vote, and demand they be given "a voice" for their often ill-informed, inconsistent views (and they have no monopoly on that), but also think they need "protection" from the consequences of their actions.  They aren't old enough to handle being intoxicated, to face adult court and prison if they initiate force against others,  and although it is often cited that they can "have sex", it's a serious criminal offence if anyone takes photos of them doing so or even possesses them, even with their consent.  So many who want to give them the vote also deem them vulnerable.  So which is it?

Consider that almost all of the same Parliamentarians who are supportive of letting 16yos vote, think they need protection from advertising of alcohol on TV (that so few of them watch), but also don't think they should be permitted to buy cigarettes (because they aren't deemed fit to make decisions about their own health).  They do think they should be able to apply for a firearms licence and drive though, so work out the philosophical basis for that (clue - there is none). 

So let's not pretend this is about young people having a "stake in their future" because the politicians eager for their votes don't think young people can make competent decisions on what they ingest or what photos are taken of them.  

If politicians want to argue that 16 should be the age of being an adult, then all well and good, let it be and let them accept the consequences for what this means, and they can vote.

Otherwise it's just a call for "more votes for my side, to help me do what I want to you all"

After all, if you don't trust young people to make decisions about themselves, or take the full legal consequences of their actions, why do you trust them to make incremental decisions on who should have power over others (politicians)?

Who cares about one-person one-vote, when you can have one vested interest, one-vote

The so-called "Review into the Future of Local Government"was quite a review.

It didn't review whether local government is needed, and if so, what it should and should not do.  No, you see the philosophy of the Labour Government is that local government is essential, and should be empowered to do whatever "The Community" (Councillors) think it should do.

The review sees the problems in local government not a lack of confidence that local government is competent in providing services (e.g., to not provide a basic service without making the public sick) so that government routinely takes it off them, nor that it has played a major hand in creating the housing crisis (by making it difficult and expensive to build new housing), nor that is has played a major hand in limiting competition in supermarkets (by consulting with incumbents about whether a new one should be built in an area, in competition with it), not even how often local government chases totemic projects that are unnecessary.

No, you see the Ardern Government is concerned about:

• Low levels of voter turnout (which largely reflects that the public thinks local government is boring and their votes make little difference)
• There is limited representation and undervaluing of Hapu/Iwi and Maori as a critical partner (heaven knows why unlimited representation would be a good idea, and how is the undervaluing calculated objectively? Is it just a feeling?

That literally is what the executive summary says is the "problem" (page 08) (PDF) as beyond that is a statement of the solution. 

There are nine (!) sections of recommendations, which is apt for a government keen on bureaucratic bloat.  They are separated into the following sections, which I'll summarise:

• Revitalising citizen-led democracy:  This is mostly about consulting more, with more community engagement.  However, it also includes "chief executives to be required to promote the incorporation of tikanga in organisational systems".  This is cultural reform of local government, it isn't just using tikanga as part of the consultative process, but it is including it in how local government runs. Quite what this is meant to achieve is unclear, but given the problem definition is so narrow, it appears to address the second problem.  What actually matters though is that the problem with local government is NOT consulting with the public, indeed nothing stops homes being built, supermarkets being built, transport infrastructure being built and anything been done in a city more than consultation.

• Tiriti-based partnership between Maori and local government:  This is a fundamental, quasi-constitutional view that sees local government as not simply representing local residents and responding to their needs, demands and issues, but introducing co-governance so Hapu/Iwi get equal say in what happens in local government, compared to mere voters/residents.  It goes beyond consultation and engagement, to include "genuine partnership in the exercise of kāwanatanga and rangatiratanga in a local context and explicitly recognises te ao Māori values and conceptions of wellbeing". Genuine partnership, after all, means sharing power and this in relationship to government and self-determination.  It seems unlikely that local government could go against Hapu/Iwi in any decisions in this context.  It also seems unlikely that this could see local government taking a perspective that values more individual freedom, choice, competition and property rights, rather than one that values the exercise of power of numbers over individuals and their property and businesses.

• Allocating roles and functions in a way that enhances wellbeing:  This is a serious level of waffle, largely because the term "wellbeing" is now the catch-all term from socialists to prioritise people's feelings over property (particularly other people's), freedom, economic efficiency and individual rights.  The main recommendation here is that central and local government review the functions of each level of government based on the concept of subsidiarity (a concept that would support individual freedom and choice if bureaucrats and politicians didn't think they knew best), local government capacity to "influence the conditions for wellbeing" and for te ao Maori values to underpin decision-making.  Frankly, given its record, the less allocated to local government the better.

• Local government as champion and activator of wellbeing:  This is basically a recommendation to grow local government to spend more of your taxes (of which there would have to be more), making you feel better. It is a thoroughly statist view that claims local government can be some sort of innovator and experimenter in enabling "social, economic and cultural and environmental wellbeing".  This is so completely ludicrous that is deserves to be laughed at. Local government ran electricity distribution for decades and hardly innovated at all.  Local government can't even contract bus services to pay by EFTPOS, unlike the entire retail sector has done so for over 20 years, nor can some of them even manage to penalise bus operators for cancelling services.  The greatest innovations have come from technology and processes introduced by the private sector, and the idea that the great fist of local government can slam down on a city and innovate across all aspects of people's lives is the fantasyland of hardened socialists in the local government sector.  The main innovation local government can engage in is to get out of providing much of what it does, and get out of the way of people and businesses to build homes, businesses and voluntary organisations, and grow their communities through their own initiatives.

• A stronger relationship between central and local government: This is code for "give us more money we are not accountable for raising from taxpayers", but the recommendations are basically a need to study more on "building on the current strengths and resources" and to "support genuine partnership" with "opportunities to trial and innovate". Well for over 30 years central government has been taxing motor vehicles using local authority roads and raising enough money to pay on average half the cost of maintaining and improving those roads.  That partnership exists because central government told local government it had to stop running its own works department monopolies and run professional asset management over its road network.  There is no need for a "stronger relationship", as local government doesn't need to do more!

• Replenishing and building on representative democracy:  The one recommendation that may make sense is to make the Electoral Commission run local elections, but the rest is a wishlist of activism around local elections. Introducing STV as a voting system for local government doesn't get me excited one way or the other, but let's note that with low voter turnout, a more complex electoral system doesn't actually deliver much.  Lowering the voting age to 16 is a standard leftwing policy primarily because they know they are more likely to benefit from persuading young minds of the sort of wellbeing nonsense seen in this report, although by no means are there recommendations to give 16yos the legal status of adults across the board (e.g., criminal law, alcohol consumption), and why not 14yos or 12yos? A four year electoral term in the absence of one for central government is simply bizarre.  Why does being able to change local government LESS frequently, BUILD on representative democracy?  No, it's about giving councillors more time to do stuff without being challenged.  

• Equitable funding and finance: As with all terms with an Orwellian element to them, you should always run a mile from the word "equitable", because it always means anything but.  There is some merit here, in that central government should taken into account with all of its decisions, its impact on local government (which should actually be ratepayers and residents). However the rest is just putting the hand out for more money.  It wants "co-investment" by central and local government to meet "community wellbeing priorities" (!).  It wants central government to tax people more to create a slush fund called the "intergenerational fund for climate change" which would no doubt be tapped to waste on pet projects for local government to virtue signal about (given that almost all sectors local government is involved in are already covered by the Emissions Trading System).  The perennial desire for local government to get new means to tax, while retaining rates are there.  This is a manifesto to take more money from you, and isn't remotely "equitable", but reflects desires from local government to do more without being able to convince ratepayers to let them force them to pay more. 

• System design: Central and local government are apparently meant to work together to create a Tiriti-consistent structural design for local government (whatever that means) to give effect to a bunch of design principles.  It wants more "shared services" and a "digital transformation roadmap" for local government, again none of this is based on achieving actual outcomes based on performance.

• System stewardship and support:  The recommendation here is that government decide on the best form of stewardship, being the way by which local government is responsible for what it does and does the best that it can do. However, why is this a problem? Is it because local democracy is a very poor incentive on local politicians to make wise decisions when it is about spending other people's money (especially money borrowed from people who can't vote yet) and about other people's property? Could it be that the best way to manage this is to keep local government to a minimum of "public good" elements that cannot be efficiently or effectively provided by other entities? Isn't this just an admission that local government is bad at making important decisions on long-term issues?

Of course the key issue of this report is that it recommends that mana whenua sit on local councils, with full voting rights.  These representatives would have the same power as elected councillors, except of course, residents/ratepayers would have no power to remove them (except for those few that may be involved in mana whenua processes to select their councillors).

I don't think much of liberal democracy, as it is not very effective at protecting individual rights, but it does have one useful function, in that it provides an effective process to remove politicians if enough people are fed up with them.  This proposal destroys this for mana whenua representative.  It institutes the principle that you can be taxed, regulated and governed by people you have NO say in being selected or being removed.

Sure you probably think you have little say in who is in local government, but you certainly do have a say, even if those you voted for did not get elected.  You will not do so in Ardern's "new democracy" as described by Willie Jackson.

And if this is good enough for local government why is it not good enough for central government? After all, the nationalist MP for Waiariki Rawiri Waititi has already commented on his opposition to liberal democracy.  Now this is a sentiment I have some sympathy for, because majority rule does NOT protect individual rights.  If Waititi and indeed the Labour Party simply wanted to set Maori free to live their lives as they see fit, and largely govern themselves (within a framework of rule of law that protected individual rights including property rights), I would be in favour of that.

However there is no possible way that the New Zealand Labour Party wants to let people live their own lives as they see fit in such a way.  The review of local government is about growing local government, it is the idea that wellbeing comes not from what individuals, families, colleagues, friends, communities, businesses and societies do, but from what government does - and the main tools of government are ones of coercion by taxation (and dishing out financial favours to preferred individuals and groups) and regulation.

The Government should, of course, throw this report in the bin, and hopefully if there is a change in government that is exactly what will happen.

There is a desperate need for a review of local government that will decide what roles and responsibilities it should have and what ones should be taken away from it, and that would do much more to enhance wellbeing, by enabling more housing to be built, more businesses to be developed, more competition in retail and the economy, the environment and society to grow with local government being barely visible.  It may manage some parks, have a fast, efficient planning permitting function, deal with neighbourhood noise and pollution complaints, and ensure rubbish is collected.

In the meantime though, the idea that elected politicians should be replaced by mana whenua representatives with MORE power to increase rates, establish new taxes and pass bylaws (and ban property development) is just a form of petty nationalist authoritarianism eating away at an already flawed system.

Christopher Snowdon: Liz Truss didn't break the economy, it was like that when she found it.

Christopher Snowdon writes how the market response to the Truss/Kwarteng emergency budget showed that the emperor has no clothes, and it is a sign that the era of big borrowing is at an end.

Some choice quotes:

Long before the pandemic began, I was troubled by emergency economic policies - ultra-low interest rates and money printing - being in place for a decade without any emergency to justify them. This led to a great deal of inflation, but since the inflation had mainly affected the housing market and stock exchange and had made the rich richer, it didn’t seem to count. Then, in 2020, we had an actual emergency which seemed likely to push us over the edge.

The so-called "libertarian" budget included massive subsidies to cap the price of energy.  The cut in income tax and reversal of a rise in national insurance were hardly enormous measures, and freezing corporation tax (rather than implementing a rise that was indicated under Boris Johnson) is also hardly libertarian, but the word has stuck. 

Of course there should have been measures to liberalise the economy, and none eventuating except a removal of the ban on fracking - a measure that wouldn't achieve much for some time. 

Some saw the mini-budget as an invitation to the Bank of England to raise interest rates. If so, it was an invitation that was declined. Some thought the mini-budget implied that there would be spending cuts, but Liz Truss insisted that there would be none. Instead, Kwasi Kwarteng took to the airwaves to announce that he intended to make more unfunded tax cuts.

Previous governments had at least paid lip service to balancing the books. The Truss administration didn’t even bother pretending. The bond markets, seeing no plan for growth and no sign of an interest rate rise, naturally demanded a greater return on their investment. 30 year yields nudged toward 5 per cent. The pound fell to a low of $1.07. Pension funds that had been making what the Economist describes as ‘obscure derivatives bets’ found themselves short of liquidity thanks to higher gilt yields - although they insisted that they were not short of capital - and so the Bank of England stepped in to lower yields by buying gilts....

Liz Truss was dealt a bad hand and played it badly, but despite the broadcast media spending a fortnight treating every day as if it were Black Wednesday, she did not ‘crash the economy’, as the Labour Party has claimed. The economy was already in pieces and there is much worse to come. Goldman Sachs has already taken 0.6 per cent off the UK’s GDP forecast for 2023, partly because of the rise in Corporation Tax.

....

Interest rates have existed for thousands of years for good reason. They are, to quote the title of Edward Chancellor’s excellent book, the price of time. Or, if you prefer, the cost of impatience. They should provide an acceptable return to lenders and should certainly be above the rate of inflation. The international experiment with very low interest rates has, unsurprisingly, led to governments, businesses and individuals becoming heavily indebted. As people take on more debt, they become increasingly vulnerable to interest rate rises. This leads to a doom loop in which central bankers are reluctant to tackle inflation because interest rate hikes will make people poorer and so inflation persists, making people poorer.

Even in the absence of inflation, interest rates couldn’t be raised because it would ‘wreck the recovery’. An economic recovery so feeble that it cannot withstand an interest rate of one or two per cent barely deserves the name. The economy had become like an alcoholic. Every drop in interest rates and every bout of money-printing made it feel better in the short-term, but they made the addiction worse and was slowly killing it. It was hair of the dog economics.

The left have already started wailing about ‘Austerity Mark 2’, but they are now going to have start telling us which taxes they want to increase to pay for their spending priorities. They may find that they get a rough reception. It is notable that almost the only thing left from the mini-budget is the scrapping of the Health and Social Care Levy. Even Labour didn’t want to keep it. It’s unpopular. Fine. But if you can’t get the public to support a tax specifically earmarked for the NHS - the one thing that normies say they are happy to pay more tax for! - good luck raising taxes for Net Zero and foreign aid.

The MMT loonies will say that the recession could have been avoided if the Bank hosed us down with one more burst of QE. Everything looks like a ‘political choice’ if you ignore trade-offs and consequences, but the number of practical options available have narrowed considerably. As Janan Ganesh says in the FT today, Labour are not going to enjoy governing without a magic money tree to shake.

Hair of the dog economics has had its day. The era of big borrowing has come to an end. We have run out of road. It would be unfortunate if Liz Truss has given economic growth a bad name because it really is our only way out of the woods....

Does Winston really care about the constitution or is it baubles as usual?

So Winston Peters is doing what he usually does, after spending two years in the political wilderness he times a revival to tap the issue of the season, that the other parties aren't doing well at tapping, so he can ride his way back to Parliament with a bevy of people nobody has ever heard of before.

This time it is to tackle co-governance with Iwi, and the embracing of the Treaty of Waitangi in ALL aspects of central and local government.  Now I have some sympathy for that position, as important as it is to consult with Iwi and for Maori to be adequately represented in Government, New Zealand clearly achieves that, with Maori represented in both Parliament and local government on the basis of one-person, one-vote and a general consensus among the two major parties about the importance of including Iwi in consultation on issues affecting them. Winston is trying to do much more than address overreach of that.

He wants to tackle non-Maori fear of Maori cultural and linguistic growth, and dominance, whether it is seen in Maori phrases inserted into the ever declining audiences for television news (which frankly is a market decision, you can just switch it off), or the inclusion of references to Te Tiriti in more and more laws and government programmes.

Winston can tackle this because he is much more obviously accepted as being Maori (David Seymour is not so seen). He also knows he can guarantee that TVNZ, Newshub, RNZ and Stuff at least will seek to paint  HIM as being divisive, even racist and he can run rings around the fact he's spent his political career saying the media is unfair to him.

Winston has a couple of problems though:

1.  There is little evidence Winston did ANYTHING when in power, the three times he was a Minister, to slow down Maori nationalism. There was little of it to respond to when he supported National from 1996-1998, but from 2005-2008 and 2017-2020 under Labour, what evidence was there that Winston Peters ever did anything to push this back?

2.  He put Jacinda Ardern into power, notwithstanding that National clearly had the plurality of support as the major party in the 2017 election. It is disingenuous for him to be able to credibly claim that he knew NOTHING of the Maori nationalist aspirations of the Labour Maori caucus (or indeed the Greens, who were part of that coalition and are even more adamant of claims of Maori nationalist/statist based self-determination). However it is entirely possible Winston just took his portfolio, advocated for his pork-barrel Provincial Growth Fund, and the let the two parties on the left get on with it all. 

It might be welcoming to some to have Winston talk in a way that so much of the media would deem politically incorrect, but as he was with immigration, most of what he says reflects little about what he does. 

His other problem is that ACT not only polls but has multiple MPs to occupy this space. It might be notable that Winston talks mostly about the artifacts of the Maori cultural renaissance and the media expressions of it, rather than the more disturbing undermining of liberal democracy, such as granting Ngai Tahu a seat on Environment Canterbury, to sit alongside elected members with the same powers, or the efforts of Rotorua District Council to gerrymander Maori local authority seats that would represent a fraction of the number of non-Maori voters.  

There is a profound awkwardness of politicians, especially non-Maori ones, talking about these issues, because of a lack of philosophical conviction around what constitutional arrangements should exist for a free liberal democracy, and a lack of willingness to engage with views that claim that the underlying cause of poor socio-economic outcomes for Maori is not simply a legacy of colonialism and subsequent non-Maori settlement. The willingness of some Maori nationalists (especially now in Te Pati Maori) to go down the path of "it's us vs. them" should frighten most people, and if Winston Peters is more effective in having that debate that David Seymour (which I think he is), then so be it.

But don't expect a vote for NZ First to deliver anything transformational.  From 1996-1998 NZ First was a brake on a National Government continuing with free market liberal reforms, but not a stop. Similarly, from 2005-2008 and from 2017-2020 it was a brake on Labour Governments continuing with growth of the welfare state, but put a foot on the accelerator of economic nationalist interventions.  It was not a brake on Maori nationalism, because the policies now being advanced by the Government had their genesis in 2017-2020 (or earlier in the case of He Puapua).

There are reasons to be sceptical about ACT achieving much in this space, or National, but these pale in comparison to the reasons to be sceptical about Winston Peters. 

"Restore Passenger Rail" is a pathetic facsimile of Extinction Rebellion misanthropy

So for several mornings a group calling itself "Restore Passenger Rail" has shut down the southbound lanes of the Wellington Urban Motorway approaching the Terrace Tunnel.  This is completely bizarre stuff.

The disruption caused is enormous, not least because this is State Highway 1/2, the key route bypassing central Wellington, connecting the Hutt, Porirua and Wellington's northern suburbs to the southern and eastern suburbs, including Wellington Hospital and Airport.  Most recently they blocked State Highway 2 near Melling, making it impossible for some people to get to Melling Railway Station by car or bus.

The group is calling for passenger rail services to be returned to the extent they were in 2000, presumably excluding commuter services in Wellington and Auckland, both of which have expanded since then (Auckland has been electrified, with much more frequent services, and Wellington services extended to Waikanae, also with improved frequencies).

When asked on RNZ National, one of the spokespeople called for services to be restored as follows:

• Auckland-Wellington (which is actually operating although the overnight Northerner was cancelled in 2004)
• Auckland-Tauranga
• Auckland-Rotorua
• Wellington-Napier
• Picton-Christchurch (which is also actually operating)
• Christchurch-Dunedin-Invercargill and
• Christchurch-Westport (I think he meant Greymouth, which is also operating)

So they don't actually know what services are running.  They claim this is all about climate change and essential to save the planet.  This is completely unhinged, and if it wasn't a cause close to the heart of the Green Party and many on the left, a rational assessment of them would call their arguments misinformation and call them extremists - but no.

So let's make it clear:

1. Even if all of the intercity passenger train services that existed in 2000 were restored, the idea it would make a difference to emissions that was discernible in terms of climate impacts is absurd. Some people would take a trip they wouldn't have done before, some would have gone by bus, very few would have flown and a few would have driven.
2. Unless the trains carry several bus loads on average, every trip, they will generate more emissions than travel by bus.
3. It's all irrelevant because unlike agriculture, transport emissions are part of the Emissions Trading Scheme, within which a finite amount of emissions are available and sold as part of the price of fuel. Any shift will simply result in more emissions being available for other uses.

However I don't think any of the protestors know much about passenger trains and in fact they are just a NZ version of the Extinction Rebellion misanthropes.  They don't even know the train to the West Coast goes to Greymouth not Westport, any train enthusiast knows what trains used to run.  Of course they don't care that stopping traffic generates a LOT of additional emissions.

For all of their talk about saving the planet and humanity, one of the Extinction Rebellion founders, Roger Hallam, explicitly said he would block a road that had an ambulance with a dying person on board.

This isn't just environmentalism and it isn't really railway enthusiasm (which I have some sympathy for, because I like trains), but is hatred of human beings.  Hatred not only of their freedom of choice, but also their lives. 

What's particularly nuts is that Parliament is calling for submissions on the future of inter-regional passenger rail. (deadline next Friday 21st October).  The claim by the protestors that they have "tried everything" is vacuous empty nonsense.  This is undoubtedly the most rail friendly government for some time, and billions of dollars have been poured into Kiwirail to upgrade tracks and expand services, albeit the passenger focus has been on Auckland and Wellington, not least because most of the demand for intercity services was lost during travel restrictions under the pandemic.  

I'm not a fan of subsidising intercity passenger rail, because there are unsubsidised other modes that exist, and one of them (buses) will take some time to recover after the loss of international travel. However, I like intercity passenger rail, and if Kiwirail can develop a business case for new services, then good for them.  I was involved in reviewing intercity passenger rail viability in 2001, and the figures seen then were poor, but a lot has happened since then. The population has increased, overseas travel increased (although it may take another year or two for numbers to recover) and there may be more interest in travel  by rail, so I think there are merits in Kiwirail assessing opportunities or if it is not interested, in it being required to treat any potential private providers in a non-discriminatory manner.

but these protestors aren't REALLY interested in passenger rail. Do you really think they would stop disruptive protests if five new passenger train services were announced by the government? Of course not.

Of course not, they want attention, they want to promote catastrophism and they don't care for either the trappings of a free society to communicate their views like everyone else, or even a government that is sympathetic to their cause.

It's notable that the Government has said little about them, neither has the Green Party or Wellington's new Green Mayor, Tory Whanau. National's Chris Bishop called them "idiots" and rightly so, but maybe the Labour and Greens politicians LIKE measures that make driving more difficult, and don't want to abuse them?

They wont stop protesting until it becomes too hard for them to do so, they will block more roads and demand "action" from whatever government is in power, regardless of the action being carried out for their cause.  Because what they want is applause and approval from the like-minded, their own little network of misanthropes, and most of all, media attention so they can be interviewed, endlessly.  

This raises their social standing to have disrupted "evil" car "fascists" and drawn attention to a "righteous" cause (diverting taxpayers' money to some train services). They'll feel special and privileged, and hopefully get selected to go on the Green Party's list.

I doubt ANY of them have ridden on the Northern Explorer, Coastal Pacific or TranzAlpine trains, ever! Because it's not about trains.

It is, after all, performative, status-seeking, social misanthropy.