Time for Jim, Peter and Peters to retire

Three of the eight parties in Parliament exist because of three men – Winston Peters, Peter Dunne and Jim Anderton. They are all of a similar generation, and all of them should retire in 2008. The parties they lead are, by and large, built around those personalities. Most would struggle to name more than 1 other MP from NZ First, United Future and, well, Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party is just that. All had political careers because they were MPs with either National or Labour and split off to form their own parties (Jim Anderton has been in three, Peter Dunne in three or four, Winston has always had his own personality cult) – and it is about time Parliament was cleaned out and these half-baked parties of individuals were gone.
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Winston is losing the plot, he is propping up a lameduck Labour government that is barely hanging onto power, he lost his electorate seat, and only manages to get elected because the greedy grey grizzlers, the deluded Maori groupies and the conspiracy slobbering talkback idiots like him, until he gets into power. The greedy grey grizzlers are slowly dying off, and by 2008 should mean NZ First gets less than 5%. Meanwhile, Winston can enjoy his baubles. He left National for principled reasons - it broke election promises - but he ran a party that is solely about tapping into the redneck conservative anti-intellectual talkback mob, Rob Muldoon's lot. The people of Tauranga have tired of their former hero, he wont be the first Maori Prime Minister of New Zealand - and he ought to go off and have fun in retirement.

Peter Dunne leads a motley bunch of conservative liberal Christian urban power lusting middle of the road nobodies. His party has been Labour’s most faithful coalition/confidence and supply partner now since 2002, and besides voting against any socially liberal legislation (but keeping Labour in power), worshipping the Transmission Gully cargo cult and cozying up to the Christian right, it is a party that is meaningless. It is a testament to Labour that it can even look at this bigoted bunch of narrow-minded busybodies to stay in power, and a testament to United Future that it hooks up with Labour – regularly. Peter Dunne’s Ohariu-Belmont electorate love him, for some unfathomable reason (he hangs around there a lot). When he retires this will become a swing seat, going National/Labour according to the national mood. Peter Dunne left Labour because "Labour left him", which is true. The Maoist coup conducted by Helen Clark, Maryanne Street and Heather Simpson against Mike Moore, and the leftward swing of Labour alienated Dunne, and he tried to woo the Labour right to form a centrist coalition partner for National and Labour. That failed miserably, and so he wooed the Christian right, and alienated the centre. The Christian right went National last time - Peter Dunne ought to cut his losses and move up to Kapiti, where he can sit waiting for Transmission Gully for at least the next ten years.

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Jim Anderton is a died in the wool socialist and central planner, who has enjoyed dishing out millions of your money to businesses and mad schemes like a strategy to bolster the forestry sector in Gisborne/Wairoa. Jim thought thousands of jobs would be created by pouring millions into roads and training in those districts – and nothing much has come of it. He has become more sensible over the years, Cabinet has helped to moderate his mad views on economics, and he basically is an appendage of Labour, while having old fashioned conservative leftwing views on social issues like drugs and alcohol. Once he retires, his Wigram seat will go back to Labour. His party will fade away even more than the Alliance, which still stands for something (which doesn’t even exist in eastern Europe anymore). New Labour and the Alliance are history, as Labour has marched sufficiently to the left to make enough voters happy, without being the card carrying socialists of the Norman Kirk variety that old Labour supporters wanted. Time magazine was wrong - Jim Anderton wont be Prime Minister. Jim Anderton and his family have paid a high personal price for his busy career, and he doesn't need the income of a Cabinet Minister to survive - time for
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So I want all three to go, and their parties from Parliament. It would clear out some history and some parties that don't really stand for much at all. NZ First stands for populist nationalism, but sways and swings according to how Winston thinks the grass the growing. United Future stands for nothing at all, as long as it is about families and commonsense, and has undercurrents of stopping all those queers from running things, and Jim Anderton is a virtual member of the Labour Party.

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Oh and will the end of those parties make it harder for Labour or National to govern, losing these three potential coalition partners? Of course it does – it means Labour is forced to resort to the Greens and Maori party, and National resorts to ACT. National might worry, but then it never really understood MMP as well as Labour has. Its strategy of decimating ACT demonstrates that. Then the minor parties in Parliament will be ones that actually subscribe to different political ideologies - ecological socialism, ethno-nationalism and neo-liberalism.

Tiananmen Square remembered

One piece of history I have neglected to comment on is Tiananmen Square. Not PC has a great review of commemorations worldwide and commentary. Of course I do remember is, it’s hard to forget – it happened on my birthday. I remember seeing the coverage on television, I was a student at the time. I have always wondered if I had been a Chinese student in Beijing whether I would have been there, whether I would have survived and how I’d feel now about it.
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The USSR and eastern Europe were in the throes of optimism due to glasnost and perestroika. Freedom of speech and the ability to criticise government was becoming the norm in the “second world” (communist bloc), and Mikhail Gorbachev had come to visit China. This was part of a successful effort to normalise relations between China and the USSR, after over 30 years of Cold War enmity after Khrushchev criticised Stalin, and Mao became the leader of the completely mad murderous Marxist-Leninists of the world (the USSR wasn’t mad, just murderous to a lesser degree after Stalin).
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The death of reformist former Secretary General of the Communist Party, Hu Yaobang prompted the demonstrations. He died on Kim Il Sung’s birthday 15 April 1989, and had called for rapid reform, condemning the excesses of the Maoist era. The protests initially were motivated by mourning for Hu Yaobang, who had been stripped of his title two years previously for not cracking down on other student protests. The protestors called for political reform, the addressing of corruption and more openness and transparency in government. A split in the Communist Party leadership saw General Secretary Zhao Ziyang support a soft approach, and Premier Li Peng a hardline. Eventually martial law was declared on 20 May and in the early hours of 4 June, the 27th and 38th armies of the People’s Liberation Army (commanded by President Yang Shangkun, unlike earlier units which were locally based and not inspired to attack those who could include family) turned on the people. Between 2,000 and 3,000 were killed, and the state media in China called it an “anti-government riot”.
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China’s state media is widely considered to have been a mouthpiece for the communist party, but at least one outlet had reason to be proud, before the individuals concerned were themselves arrested. Radio Beijing’s English language service (China’s international shortwave radio station) broadcast the following message:
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"Please remember June the Third, 1989. The most tragic event happened in
the Chinese Capital, Beijing. Thousands of people, most of them innocent
civilians, were killed by fully-armed soldiers when they forced their way
into city. Among the killed are our colleagues at Radio Beijing. The
soldiers were riding on armored vehicles and used machine guns against
thousands of local residents and students who tried to block their way.
When the army conveys made the breakthrough, soldiers continued to spray
their bullets indiscriminately at crowds in the street. Eyewitnesses say
some armored vehicles even crushed foot soldiers who hesitated in front of
the resisting civilians. [The] Radio Beijing English Department deeply
mourns those who died in the tragic incident and appeals to all its
listeners to join our protest for the gross violation of human rights and
the most barbarous suppression of the people.”
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Radio Beijing’s name changed a few years later to China Radio International. Unfortunately, China Radio International is today a disgrace – it whitewashes the murder carried out against its own staff. It broadcasts a lot of news and interesting cultural programmes, has cooking shows and other programmes that are quite good - but is also a propaganda engine par excellence. What is telling is what it doesn’t discuss, it rarely broadcasts the sort of blatant ideological invectives that characterised it during the Maoist era. However, try it out yourself.

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You can still listen to it in English around the world on shortwave and the internet. It’s website is here, and it broadcasts to New Zealand with strong signals in English on shortwave between 9-11pm and then again after 1am, but you can also hear it online. This is the worldwide shortwave broadcast schedule (turn off your computer before listening, and put the radio near a window with the aerial fully extended) and the website audio feed.

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The Tiananmen Square massacre will always be remembered, the current Communist Party leadership can't destroy the photos, videos, audio, transcripts and other reports of what happened. All they do is persuade Google to censor the images for them, which you can get here. More recently a documentary on BBC4 has sought to find the man who stood in front of the tank in the famous footage clip seen above. The conclusion was, nobody can confirm what has happened to him or what his name was, despite the claims on wikipedia.

Sedition law an attack on free speech

The case of Tim Selwyn's prosecution for sedition shows Labour's complete utter contempt for individual freedom, and demonstrates the truth of one of Helen Clark's early statements "the state is sovereign" to justify her view that the government can do what the hell it likes once it is elected. I'd disagree vehemently with many of Tim Selwyn's views (he has commented on Not PC's blog), but no matter my agreement or otherwise, he deserves the protection of free speech.

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It's not often that I will agree with former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, but Libertarianz Leader Bernard Darnton's quotes him in the party press release as below:

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"Selwyn's act of vandalism has already been dealt with under a separate charge, to which he's pleaded guilty. The sedition charge is simply an attempt to punish criticism of the government..
The law against sedition is a medieval hangover that should be removed from our law books immediately. Sedition law is an assault on free speech - it only criminalises political expression. Speech that really incites violence can be dealt with under existing laws against public disorder, as pointed out by Sir Geoffrey Palmer during a review of Crimes Act Reform: 'Sedition should not be a crime in a democratic society committed to free speech. Libelling the government must be permitted in a free society.'

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Indeed! Every party in Parliament should oppose this, ACT should be crying this at the top of its lungs, but silent. I think it's quaint for Rodney Hide to be dancing on TV, but where is ACT - the liberal party on something so simple as this? The same place as National sadly - silent. Imagine what a reaction those parties would get from the left for supporting abolition of sedition laws - isolating Labour.

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David Farrar and No Right Turn (who has written extensively and well on this) agree with me on this. Abolish sedition as a crime. Follow this case at Tim Selwyn's blog Tumeke and his website.

Metiria Turei - and a childlike view of water

Metiria Turei is claiming that a study from DOC that indicates economic benefit of $136 million from water derived from its own land (Te Papanui Conservation Park estate) means that water should be free everywhere (opposing tradeable water rights). What delusional nonsense.
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For starters, the study said this benefit was equivalent to the actual cost of getting the water from another source. If the water isn’t there, then someone has to pay for it. Secondly, the park costs money to maintain and ensure that the water supply from the catchment area remains clean. That isn’t free – it gets paid for by taxpayers. Far wiser, and a far better use of water resources would come from charging for the use of water from the conservation park. At somewhat less than $11 million p.a. (the cost of alternative supplies to those benefiting from the water), this could ensure the Conservation Park is maintained and makes a healthy profit. A profit from selling water!
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On top of that, pricing water means users value it more. It is less likely to be wasted, and more likely to be conserved, which I thought the Greens would be thoroughly in favour of.
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Metiria lacks much understanding of what is going on. Of course there is economic benefit in clean drinking water, people demand it and are willing to pay for it. To claim “commoditisation” of water is a dirty word, is sheer nonsense – otherwise people would take what they could, without any concern about where it came from or how much they used, and then wonder why not much is left.
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Take this statement of economic vapidity of the likes a 12 year old would be able to see through:
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“There are those who think the economic value of water overwhelmingly rests on its potential for exploitation for hydro or irrigation purposes. This evidence suggests otherwise. The study estimates that the park's contribution to Dunedin's water supply is about $93 million, which dwarfs the $31 million supplied from this same source for hydro-electricity purposes, as well as the $12 million that the park provides for irrigation of Taieri farmland.”
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Well that does, it everywhere there is water it is best used for a city water supply, even if there is no city, even if there are torrents of water going down a river beside arid farmland. How bloody stupid can she be? In THIS case, the conservation estate is convenient to Dunedin city, there is only one hydro dam and little prospect for another (have a guess who would oppose it), and there is little farmland that needs irrigation. Elsewhere water may be better used to produce clean renewable hydro electricity for the electric trains and trolley buses the Greens love (funny how hydro power is good if it exists but bad if you want more of it unless it is for electric trains, then you should conserve, but the price should be cheap!!). In other cases, it has enormous value for irrigation.

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The solution is simple. Water has value for all the purposes listed above, and others, for fisheries, for recreation and for industrial purposes. Its value in particular cases can only be determined by a market, and who is willing to buy or sell it. The greatest move to improve water conservation would be to require councils to operate water as commercial concerns then privatise them - but you wont hear the Greens agreeing to that. It means that the government couldn't control it, and they are, after all, statists through and through.

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(and I haven't even raised whether or not a study commissioned by DOC that would suit its interests has been independently peer reviewed. Imagine the Greens accepting a report commissioned by Telecom on New Zealand's broadband environment, or DPF for that matter!)

Russel Norman's links Easter Island and the WTO and comes up with ?

Yesterday I described how Russel Norman’s speech of 4 June on becoming Co-Leader was intellectually vapid on matters like “resources running out” and the evil of roads.
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Today I’m going to attack his view on the World Trade Organisation (WTO). To his credit he describes largely accurately what the WTO commitments mean, something Sue Kedgeley never seemed to get her head around. I described this in a previous post, and it means quite gloriously that local content quotas on TV and radio are against government treaty commitments that are not easy to get out of. Officials told Labour this when it got elected, and the National Government that signed up to those commitments knew it at the time - the problem is that leftwing Labour didn't want to listen, but eventually had to accept it.
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Russel said:
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“The commitments that these parties have made under the World Trade Organisation are drawing a tighter and tighter net around the capacity of national governments to act in the interests of their citizens. And they are limiting the ability of governments to act in a sustainable manner.”
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In other words, he is complaining that WTO commitments restrict governments on interfering with the voluntary transactions of citizens engaging in trade and investment across borders. The “interests of their citizens” is actually the interests of those who produce inefficiently, wasting labour, capital, energy and land to produce something that consumers are not willing to buy, without prohibitions or taxes on the competing products. This means putting up the price of goods and services, or even prohibiting the trade in goods and services that sellers and buyers are willing to trade in. There is no sustainability in protecting industries where, basically, not enough people are willing to buy enough of their products to keep them going, without state intervention. The WTO binds countries to open, transparent trade and to reducing the barriers to free trade – this is ENTIRELY in the interests of their citizens, because they are able to produce, sell and buy freely, without Russel sticking his beak in the way. He can buy "fair trade" goods, or good certified to be environmentally friendly if he likes - all of those schemes are voluntary, and fine for those wishing to sell and buy them, at a premium. No force involved.
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Russell then said “In the 1990s the National Party Government made commitments to the WTO under the audiovisual services section of the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Now this rather obscure commitment means that the New Zealand government can no longer introduce compulsory New Zealand content quotas on radio and television without being in breach of its WTO commitments. And these WTO commitments are effectively irreversible within the WTO rules because any country which tries to withdraw trade liberalisation commitments must compensate every other country in the world that thinks it may suffer somehow as a result.”
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He’s absolutely correct. Not only that, but New Zealand has similar commitments under CER with Australia. Unlike Russel, I think this is good. It protects New Zealand television and radio stations from state enforced control of what they broadcast.
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He continues "So when the Labour-led Government came into power in 1999 they sought to implement mandatory minimum New Zealand content quotas on radio and television. They had promised to do this in the election campaign and such local content quotas are very common around the world as countries seek to defend their cultural identity. But the new government was told by their officials that they could not without breaching their WTO commitments. They were forced to back down.

Had they proceeded they could have faced action taken against New Zealand in the WTO by countries that sold television programs into New Zealand, like the US, claiming that their television production companies were being discriminated against by this New Zealand content quota, in beach of New Zealand's WTO commitments, commitments remember that were made by the previous National Party government”
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Actually Russel, they are not “very common around the world”, you see them in Australia, Canada and France. The UK does not have them, nor does the USA and most other countries are confident enough of their local culture (and often language) that the government see little need. Otherwise he is correct.
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“The National Party government made WTO commitments that effectively bind all future governments and parliaments and prevent them from introducing minimum New Zealand content quotas on radio and television. A new government was elected on a platform of introducing local content quotas but were told they could not because of the commitments of a previous government. And if they had proceeded anyway, then trade lawyers meeting in secret in Geneva would have told us to change our law or face trade sanctions. This is not conspiracy theory this is actually how trade law and the WTO actually works.”
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It’s called a treaty Russel. Labour enters into treaty commitments too, and New Zealand has commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that stop it acquiring nuclear weapons (one Russel probably supports). Now, I’m not advocating that this should change – but this is binding, and New Zealand would have to formally withdraw from the NPT (like North Korea did) to develop nuclear weapons. New Zealand could do two things to introduce quotas, either liberalise other areas of trade to compensate (e.g. eliminate all tariffs immediately), or formally withdraw from the WTO. I suspect Russel would support the latter, and not give a damn that other countries could block our products in “their citizens’ interests”. The Green movement in the UK for example sells the nonsense that it is better to buy local produce instead of food or wine from New Zealand, because of the distance they travel – ignoring how unsustainable much European agriculture is through subsidies.
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Russel then follows on with a non-sequitur that:
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"Now if we are to avoid the fate of the Easter Islanders then we need international environmental treaties that empower governments to discriminate on the basis of how products are made - that is whether they were made in an environmentally harmful way or not. But currently if governments do this then the WTO will rule against them in the same way that they would rule against New Zealand if we tried to introduce mandatory minimum New Zealand content quotas."
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Now hang on. The fate of the Easter Islanders? Oh yes, he described the old Rapa Nui society that worshipped statue building, fell all of the trees and then embarked on civil war because they consumed more than they produced. Pretty much true too. That story in itself says a lot about a society with no property rights (according to some Green supporters, property rights are just a social contract which some libertarians worship), so no wonder that happened. The tragedy of the commons was all too evident, as a native people besotted with worshipping that which is not real (cult of the statue), did not trade and exchange value and manage scarce resources (the management of scarce resources is called economics – something the Greens are sceptical about because they know so little about it). So no wonder trees went to the first comer, nobody maintained land for wood, fruit or hunting and a culture of pillage was the order of the day. This has nothing to do with free trade or the WTO, and everything to do with primitive people with no concept of trade, contract and property rights. Remember, the Greens are rarely advocates for property rights, and usually opponents.
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So besides his example of Easter Island being completely wrong, he then advocates treaties that prohibit products or services if they were made “in an environmentally harmful way or not” or which are made in sweatshops. Well for starters, the example of the WTO commitments on free trade on audio-visual services can’t by any rational stretch of the imagination have anything to do with the environment or sweatshops. The entertainment industry (TV, radio, music) is hardly a sweatshop industry, in fact it is the opposite. It is full of people well paid living a dream career – to protect New Zealanders doing this from people overseas is sheer nonsense. Not only is it nonsense, but offensive. By what right does any government dictate what a privately owned broadcaster must play or not play in terms of music or TV programmes? Privately owned broadcasters are NOT owned by the state – and must be free to broadcast whatever programmes they wish, as long as they are not defamatory or involve anyone coerced to participate. The Greens, however, think New Zealand music is special, and that despite New Zealanders NOT wanting to listen to more of it (the ratings of Kiwi FM are a testament to that), the Greens want to force radio stations to play something to people who don’t want to listen.
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Bullies.
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New Zealand’s audiovisual sector commitments secure a level of free trade in music, movies and television programmes that is admirable. New Zealanders are not forced to watch or listen to anything, and broadcasters are not forced to programme what the state thinks it appropriate. Local content quotas are about protecting people who are some of the most fortunate in society, working and earning a living through the entertainment industry. If they can’t generate an audience on their own behalf, then a quota is merely protecting mediocrity over talent – another form of welfare.
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Beyond that, there is another argument about whether free trade should be limited by government restrictions on importing goods or services from countries with poor environmental or labour records (define those please) – that’s another issue. I will come to that another day.
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However, just as he failed to understand that oil wont run out, cars wont disappear and roads are not going to be empty, Russel tenuously linked a primitive culture that failed due to lack of property rights (Easter Island), New Zealand’s WTO commitments on audiovisual services and foreign producers with poor environmental records. Not a good start.

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Russel Norman's speech
Radio quota bluff
Kiwi Fm you didn't listen to it, so now you pay for it
WTO website search engine to find specific commitments