The Gulag Archipelago, the harrowing tale of life in one of Stalin's notorious Siberian death camps is what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn will be known best for, and he passed away on 3 August aged 89, but it started with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich essentially his story of life in the gulag.
Both should be essential reading for historians and give a flavour of the heartless inhumanity at the heart of Marxism-Leninism, a murderous cruelty that run roughshod over human beings for the pursuit of the socialist dream of equality. Equality in that you all sacrificed yourselves to the great "other", whether your bones were crushed or not, you all feared they would be, if you were smart.
Solzhenitsyn had a brief flourish with freedom and fame in the USSR under Khrushchev who used him to point at the brutality of Stalinism, before the Stalinists took Khrushchev himself, and crushed him and Solzhenitsyn again under the slow long death of Brezhnev.
No, he was no great supporter of capitalism, he was a devout Orthodox Christian and he was saddened that his books were more often read outside Russia than within. He saw the growing kleptocracy of post-Soviet Russia as disappointing, as smart men pillaged the state for what was worthwhile, and bought the government and the law at the same time as generations were left in a drunken stupor, without any spirit, as the great experiment of lies and crushing equality collapsed.
He bravely told the tale that tens of millions would never survive to do so -a tale that is still less well known than the Holocaust, yet cost more lives. Less well known perhaps because for so long the Soviet state couldn't really reveal what it was all about - it was, after all, still locking up and executing dissidents until the late 1980s - and after perhaps a decade of respite, has returned somewhat to its old ways.
He damned the view that Stalin was the root of the evil in the USSR, pointing out that Lenin started the executions and the secret police (Cheka). He rejected the evils of the communist system and ideology and embraced Western determination to fight them, but he also had little time for much Western popular culture (head banging caterwauling methinks). He was lauded by Vladimir Putin as a staunch Russian nationalist, which, along with his Orthodox Christianity, no doubt blinded him enough to describe NATO as no better than Hitler when it bombed Serbia in retaliation for its brutality in Kosovo.
Perhaps he didn't know quite what was best after communism, but he suffered and paid heavily for recording for us all about what was worst. It is also worth remembering some of those who miss the Soviet Union, glossing over the inhumanity of it all. Yes, that's you too Chris Trotter.
05 August 2008
04 August 2008
AA doing good work, hopefully
That's my reaction to this NZ Herald story.
The AA has written to the Minister of Transport Annette King, and the Chair of the ARC, Mike Lee, concerned that the ARC is going to implement a new regional fuel tax of 1c/l (increased to 3c/l in 2010) without public consultation.
Mike Lee, who is a hardened socialist convinced of the Auckland rail boondoggle, is upset he might have to actually consult about the tax (though he says it was consulted on, before it was legally able to be introduced - you see, this is another Labour tax). The AA says it is only reasonable that those having to pay for the rail electrification project - motorists - should be consulted when they are to be levied a new tax.
Mike Lee of course wont answer the single most important question - what does the average Auckland motorist get for this fuel tax increase? What are the travel time savings and reductions in fuel consumption from (presumably) reduced congestion from electrifying rail? Why wont anyone advocating it give the figures?
The AA has written to the Minister of Transport Annette King, and the Chair of the ARC, Mike Lee, concerned that the ARC is going to implement a new regional fuel tax of 1c/l (increased to 3c/l in 2010) without public consultation.
Mike Lee, who is a hardened socialist convinced of the Auckland rail boondoggle, is upset he might have to actually consult about the tax (though he says it was consulted on, before it was legally able to be introduced - you see, this is another Labour tax). The AA says it is only reasonable that those having to pay for the rail electrification project - motorists - should be consulted when they are to be levied a new tax.
Mike Lee of course wont answer the single most important question - what does the average Auckland motorist get for this fuel tax increase? What are the travel time savings and reductions in fuel consumption from (presumably) reduced congestion from electrifying rail? Why wont anyone advocating it give the figures?
One year
Since my birth mum passed, it saved her from the agony of the cancer inadequately treated and misdiagnosed, it was relatively quick and she was 56. It is death that challenges my atheism, that makes me wish more than anything that I'll see her again, but I have joy of the time we did have and the memories that will be with me till my final breath. Nine wonderful years for which I will always be grateful.
National's fundamental problem
Now as regular readers to this blog will know, I'm fairly merciless against the National Party. The reasons being fairly clear:
- Most of its policies are at best a limp-wristed one step better than Labour's;
- Most of its policies are more leftwing than what National implemented when it was last in government in the 1990s, even when it was in coalition with NZ First;
- It obfuscates when asked perfectly reasonable questions such as "how can you fund more spending in some areas of government and bigger tax cuts without cutting government spending in others?".
The response of some of my readers is simple. They essentially believe that what matters is that Labour is ousted from power as it is worse, and when National is in power then the more politically difficult issues can be confronted, such as what spending to cut. Some think National MUST be better, and given their loathing of Labour they see National as the only credible alternative government. Within all of this is a more fundamental political and cultural problem in New Zealand, and this needs to be conquered and fought more than the Labour party.
So when National rejects privatisation, why is that? Is it a belt of xenophobia of the kind both Winston Peters and Jim Anderton built their snivelling little envy milking careers on? Well in part. New Zealanders don't reject foreign investment, but it would be fair to say a majority have the feeling (and it is feelings not thoughts) that a foreign company buying what was once a New Zealand operation is somehow "taking something away", that it will "rip you off" or underinvest. It is no more or less true than a NZ company doing so, and more importantly no more or less true than the state doing so. The state has taking over a billion dollars from taxpayers for the railways and you've seen next to nothing for it. It's just taken another NZ$690 million to buy it back, and most New Zealanders don't really mind.
Why do NZers buy the Labour view that Air NZ's renationalisation was due to it being badly run by the private sector, rather than the more honest truth that Labour stopped Singapore Airlines from bailing it out? It's because National finds the argument too complicated, and because the mainstream media prefers simplicity. The argument requires effort and National doesn't want to take the effort.
Let's go further. Why do NZers prefer that the government tax $1.5 billion of their taxes to spend on telecommunications rather than get out of the way of the private sector to roll it out? Why wont the Nats point to how Vodafone transformed BellSouth into being a mobile phone network to easily rival Telecom, without ANY government involvement? Why wont the Nats points to how under their administration, TelstraClear rolled out a new broadband network to virtually all of residential Christchurch and Wellington/Hutt Valley, again without any government involvement? Why wont they point out that a main reason why this didn't happen in Auckland is because Auckland City Council used the RMA to stop extra cables being strung along overhead poles, and subsequently the change of government saw Labour let Telstra Clear use Telecom's network - then complained Telecom wasn't investing enough in its network.
Again, the Nats wont make the "complicated" argument, easier to say "we'll spend your money".
New Zealanders WANT the government to take charge, take money off them and pick winners - even though the evidence of doing this well is pretty appalling. Most of you may have forgotten than Jim Anderton set up an organisation now known as NZ Trade and Enterprise to subsidy businesses - pick winners. Noticed which of them has taken off and been a roaring success thanks to you being forced to pay for them? No.
So the Nats wont argue for capitalism, for private enterprise, they aren't prepared to say - look it worked before, we just need to get out of the way with lower taxes and abolishing the RMA, because Labour will talk of the "failed policies of the 1990s". What about the "failed policies since 1999"? Instead the Nats will argue for government spending, government ownership, government plans. They want to be seen to be doing something, instead of reiterating the simple truth that was learnt (and forgotten) from the 1980s and 1990s, that the government isn't smart enough to do anything well, often enough to risk taxpayers' money being diverted to those risks.
What incentives do the Nats have to get it right? The same Jim Anderton has had. He has had nine years of spending around $100 million a year and nothing much to show for it - why don't the Nats point THAT out?
No, apparently simpler to say spend money instead of giving it back to you. Yes, really.
Let's not even talk about roads. It's become the new pork for government, when at one time New Zealand governments proudly had moved away from picking winners on roads too - when once the Nats led ground breaking policy that essentially said roads should be run like businesses - not as political porkbarrel games.
So what about social policy? Again, the Nats can't even join the political mainstream of UK and US politics that have seen centre-LEFT governments (Labour and Clinton) reform welfare, and be tough on it. They have embraced the middle class welfare of "Working for Families", unwilling to put together a tax cut package that would be as good as or better for most recipients, and argue that government shouldn't be about welfare. However, they wont say welfare will be tougher.
Then health care. Could the Nats ever argue that it would be better to choose an option based on insurance rather like Australia and Germany, that means you pay more if you live an unhealthy lifestyle? No, if they said "insurance" or "private sector", the rabid left would say "Americanisation" and "Profit" and most New Zealanders would ignore the failure of the state run system, and the Nats just wont argue.
I could go on, but it is something endemic to the New Zealand psyche. It was seen in 2002 when Laila Harre was talking on TV with the "worm" and the "worm" rose when she talked about the government spending a lot more on health and education, and dropped when she talked about higher taxes.
You see people expect government to do things well, and can't accept that it can't do many things that well. People go through a state education system and can't think that it is that bad. The vested interests in state health, education and welfare are loud in their protestations that everything is ok, but there isn't enough money. The railways once said the same, as did the post office, and the Ministry of Energy, farmers argued for more subsidies, once. The truth is that those running and providing government services have little incentive to radically change them so they are under more pressure to perform and deliver what consumers want, rather than what they think is good for them.
That's the fundamental point. New Zealanders trust government too much. They trust it to spend their money, to tell them what to do, to buy their health and education, to buy their pensions and protect them in the event of accident. They damn governments when this doesn't meet their expectations, but can't connect that sometimes governments CAN'T meet their expectations, that government can make things worse, government forces people to pay for poor service, and people get paid for poor service.
That, is basically, why the National Party doesn't offer anything new. That, and its inherent lack of courage and conservatism. That is inexcusable that it wont argue for part privatisation of power companies to attract new capital and investment, it wont argue for funding roads on the basis of best quality of spend, not ones of "national importance", it wont argue that competition for the ACC employer account was good when it was in power and is good now, and it wont argue that the top tax rate was bad in 2000 so is bad now. That gutlessness to not even roll back what Labour has done to National policy in 1999 is an abysmal success for mediocrity.
However if the majority of the population didn't like that mediocrity, wasn't happy with a change in people rather than policies, the Nats wouldn't be doing well in the polls now would they? AND do you really believe after three years of government National will have radically improved health and education, cut people on welfare, cut crime and grown the economy beyond the mediocre 2-3% NZ is used to? You'll be happy that your taxes will have been cut down so there is virtually no waste?
- Most of its policies are at best a limp-wristed one step better than Labour's;
- Most of its policies are more leftwing than what National implemented when it was last in government in the 1990s, even when it was in coalition with NZ First;
- It obfuscates when asked perfectly reasonable questions such as "how can you fund more spending in some areas of government and bigger tax cuts without cutting government spending in others?".
The response of some of my readers is simple. They essentially believe that what matters is that Labour is ousted from power as it is worse, and when National is in power then the more politically difficult issues can be confronted, such as what spending to cut. Some think National MUST be better, and given their loathing of Labour they see National as the only credible alternative government. Within all of this is a more fundamental political and cultural problem in New Zealand, and this needs to be conquered and fought more than the Labour party.
So when National rejects privatisation, why is that? Is it a belt of xenophobia of the kind both Winston Peters and Jim Anderton built their snivelling little envy milking careers on? Well in part. New Zealanders don't reject foreign investment, but it would be fair to say a majority have the feeling (and it is feelings not thoughts) that a foreign company buying what was once a New Zealand operation is somehow "taking something away", that it will "rip you off" or underinvest. It is no more or less true than a NZ company doing so, and more importantly no more or less true than the state doing so. The state has taking over a billion dollars from taxpayers for the railways and you've seen next to nothing for it. It's just taken another NZ$690 million to buy it back, and most New Zealanders don't really mind.
Why do NZers buy the Labour view that Air NZ's renationalisation was due to it being badly run by the private sector, rather than the more honest truth that Labour stopped Singapore Airlines from bailing it out? It's because National finds the argument too complicated, and because the mainstream media prefers simplicity. The argument requires effort and National doesn't want to take the effort.
Let's go further. Why do NZers prefer that the government tax $1.5 billion of their taxes to spend on telecommunications rather than get out of the way of the private sector to roll it out? Why wont the Nats point to how Vodafone transformed BellSouth into being a mobile phone network to easily rival Telecom, without ANY government involvement? Why wont the Nats points to how under their administration, TelstraClear rolled out a new broadband network to virtually all of residential Christchurch and Wellington/Hutt Valley, again without any government involvement? Why wont they point out that a main reason why this didn't happen in Auckland is because Auckland City Council used the RMA to stop extra cables being strung along overhead poles, and subsequently the change of government saw Labour let Telstra Clear use Telecom's network - then complained Telecom wasn't investing enough in its network.
Again, the Nats wont make the "complicated" argument, easier to say "we'll spend your money".
New Zealanders WANT the government to take charge, take money off them and pick winners - even though the evidence of doing this well is pretty appalling. Most of you may have forgotten than Jim Anderton set up an organisation now known as NZ Trade and Enterprise to subsidy businesses - pick winners. Noticed which of them has taken off and been a roaring success thanks to you being forced to pay for them? No.
So the Nats wont argue for capitalism, for private enterprise, they aren't prepared to say - look it worked before, we just need to get out of the way with lower taxes and abolishing the RMA, because Labour will talk of the "failed policies of the 1990s". What about the "failed policies since 1999"? Instead the Nats will argue for government spending, government ownership, government plans. They want to be seen to be doing something, instead of reiterating the simple truth that was learnt (and forgotten) from the 1980s and 1990s, that the government isn't smart enough to do anything well, often enough to risk taxpayers' money being diverted to those risks.
What incentives do the Nats have to get it right? The same Jim Anderton has had. He has had nine years of spending around $100 million a year and nothing much to show for it - why don't the Nats point THAT out?
No, apparently simpler to say spend money instead of giving it back to you. Yes, really.
Let's not even talk about roads. It's become the new pork for government, when at one time New Zealand governments proudly had moved away from picking winners on roads too - when once the Nats led ground breaking policy that essentially said roads should be run like businesses - not as political porkbarrel games.
So what about social policy? Again, the Nats can't even join the political mainstream of UK and US politics that have seen centre-LEFT governments (Labour and Clinton) reform welfare, and be tough on it. They have embraced the middle class welfare of "Working for Families", unwilling to put together a tax cut package that would be as good as or better for most recipients, and argue that government shouldn't be about welfare. However, they wont say welfare will be tougher.
Then health care. Could the Nats ever argue that it would be better to choose an option based on insurance rather like Australia and Germany, that means you pay more if you live an unhealthy lifestyle? No, if they said "insurance" or "private sector", the rabid left would say "Americanisation" and "Profit" and most New Zealanders would ignore the failure of the state run system, and the Nats just wont argue.
I could go on, but it is something endemic to the New Zealand psyche. It was seen in 2002 when Laila Harre was talking on TV with the "worm" and the "worm" rose when she talked about the government spending a lot more on health and education, and dropped when she talked about higher taxes.
You see people expect government to do things well, and can't accept that it can't do many things that well. People go through a state education system and can't think that it is that bad. The vested interests in state health, education and welfare are loud in their protestations that everything is ok, but there isn't enough money. The railways once said the same, as did the post office, and the Ministry of Energy, farmers argued for more subsidies, once. The truth is that those running and providing government services have little incentive to radically change them so they are under more pressure to perform and deliver what consumers want, rather than what they think is good for them.
That's the fundamental point. New Zealanders trust government too much. They trust it to spend their money, to tell them what to do, to buy their health and education, to buy their pensions and protect them in the event of accident. They damn governments when this doesn't meet their expectations, but can't connect that sometimes governments CAN'T meet their expectations, that government can make things worse, government forces people to pay for poor service, and people get paid for poor service.
That, is basically, why the National Party doesn't offer anything new. That, and its inherent lack of courage and conservatism. That is inexcusable that it wont argue for part privatisation of power companies to attract new capital and investment, it wont argue for funding roads on the basis of best quality of spend, not ones of "national importance", it wont argue that competition for the ACC employer account was good when it was in power and is good now, and it wont argue that the top tax rate was bad in 2000 so is bad now. That gutlessness to not even roll back what Labour has done to National policy in 1999 is an abysmal success for mediocrity.
However if the majority of the population didn't like that mediocrity, wasn't happy with a change in people rather than policies, the Nats wouldn't be doing well in the polls now would they? AND do you really believe after three years of government National will have radically improved health and education, cut people on welfare, cut crime and grown the economy beyond the mediocre 2-3% NZ is used to? You'll be happy that your taxes will have been cut down so there is virtually no waste?
National looks to Muldoon and Pork
John Key announced yesterday National's "infrastructure policy" something which, in the past, has never really existed. I'm absolutely appalled. Two statements describe what this policy is a mix of:
- Think Big;
- Porkbarrel spending.
So what's so wrong with it? Well let's see what John Key said:
"This deficit spans from our roading network through to our energy supply. Nor is it a problem limited to central government. Over the next decade, local government will face an infrastructure deficit of some $30 billion."
Well ok, he recognises there is a problem, although he doesn't really explain why (after all Labour's spending record amounts on roads at the moment), and doesn't explain why it is a government problem. This is the start of his error.
"our infrastructure policy will be comprehensive and bold. This will require leadership. National will appoint a Minister of Infrastructure to reshape, co-ordinate and then oversee the Government’s infrastructure objectives. It will be spelt out in our National Infrastructure Plan."
Rob Muldoon will be proud, Bill Birch will wonder if anything has been learnt. OK, so...
- Wellington's Overseas Passenger Terminal, for ships, opened in the late 1960s for passenger liner traffic a few years before they all ceased;
- The Post Office rewiring Wellington's northern suburbs telecommunications networks for triple twisted copper wire, non standard, because it was the "new state of the art" idea in the 1970s. However it was completely incompatible with xDSL for high speed internet service, of course nobody knew of the internet in the 1970s;
- The Post Office/Telecom instituting card phones in the late 1980s that proved to be Y2K non-compliant;
- The Railways Department opening large shunting yards in the 1960s and buying new shunting locomotives in the 1980s, when freight trains were moving towards direct point to point services, not shunting individual sets of wagons between trains;
- The Railways Department introducing the Silverstar overnight luxury sleeper trains for the Wellington to Auckland run in 1971, three years after NAC had introduced Boeing 737s, putting the final nail in the coffin for long distance rail as a transport for business travellers;
- The Railways Department electrifying the North Island Main Trunk railway at the same time as the government allowed trucks to haul freight further than 150km, taking away the capacity pressure from the line, and at the same time as US consultants advised that far more would be gained by restructuring the operations of the railway to be more efficient;
- The government subsidising a new Wellington-Lyttelton ferry in the 1970s, as the Railways introduced a fourth Picton Ferry and NAC bought more Boeing 737s;
- Wellington hospital getting a multi-million dollar electricity generation plant in the 1970s with 2.5x the capacity of the requirements of Wellington Hospital which cost more to run and maintain than buying power from the national grid, and more than having backup generators;
- Invercargill City Council paying for international arrival and departure facilities, even though there have been no scheduled services from a foreign country to and from Invercargill, ever.
Let alone, what government department predicted the internet? What government department predicted international air travel would literally "take off"? What government department predicted mobile phones would start supplanting landlines? Don't worry, John Key and the National Party know the future - like they knew it in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a fortune of "infrastructure investments" had their debt written off.
Anyway...
"Changes like the growing price of oil and the need for public transport and roading networks that reflect that. Changes like growing connectivity between countries and people and the need for telecommunications networks that make the most of this."
Actually John, oil dropped in the last few weeks, so well done. Do tell how you can plan public transport and roads to meet this, in fact one of the biggest "public transport" industries is the airline sector, have you predicted what ones will fail and what will succeed John? Oh and do tell what's wrong with NZ's international telecommunications links, since they have been growing in capacity for ages without government involvement- actually Southern Cross Cable happened when the Nats weren't in power.
"our National Infrastructure Plan will include up to $1.5 billion in Crown investment for an ultra-fast broadband network connecting 75% of New Zealanders. And that’s why we will double the Broadband Challenge Fund and refocus it on rural communities"
Crown = money taken from taxpayers John. Don't hid that. You'll focus on rural communities, because of course, it's not enough they are already required to be cross subsidised by urban telecommunications users. Yes, but I hope urban property owners can get big land plots and their parking free of charge in exchange for this bit of pork. Yes, the pork has begun.
"Our National Infrastructure Plan will also include a new category of state highway. We will call these Roads of National Significance. These Roads of National Significance will be singled out as essential roads that require priority treatment. This would include, for example, State Highway 1, the essential backbone of New Zealand’s roading network."
What an appalling idea. This is pork in the worst possible form. State Highway 1 is an essential backbone apparently. So those segments of SH1 where traffic volumes are a tenth of those of SH16 in Auckland or a quarter of SH2 linking Wellington and the Hutt, or a third of SH29 linking Tauranga and Hamilton, are more important than those roads. Forget efficiency, safety and congestion reduction, name the pork barrel road and goldplate it, right John? So presumably Wellington can get a second Mt Victoria Tunnel because that's the "Road of National Significance", but forget widening Dominion Road in Auckland. Presumably SH1 from Invercargill to Bluff is more important than SH2 east of Auckland which has an appalling accident rate.
Forget rating road spending on the basis of objective criteria and getting value for money, getting quality spending like you harp on about with local government. No, name a road one of "national significance" and the money can be diverted to tart it up in any way you can think of. Meanwhile the roads which actually ARE congested, or actually DO have an appalling accident rate, are neglected, but John Key might have opened the new four-lane section of the Desert Road, or the unnecessarily exhorbitant Huntly Bypass or Transmission gully motorway.
Then he avoids fixing the RMA...
"National’s new Priority Consenting process will streamline consents for major national infrastructure. These will not go through the local council but instead will be called in and determined nationally."
Ah get it? So YOU wont get relief from local authorities and the RMA eroding your private property rights, but the state will in building its big grandiose projects. Rob Muldoon tried the very same thing of course.
He wants to borrow from you too...
"First, we will introduce infrastructure bonds. Secondly, we will make greater use of public-private partnerships. These new financing and asset management techniques will open up infrastructure to a wide range of financial investors. This will include Kiwi mums and dads through their super funds and Kiwisaver accounts."
Or he could just privatise the three remaining power companies, resell the railways, sell Air NZ, require councils to commercialise and privatise water, commercialise and privatise the state highways. None of this is unknown around the world, but no. John Key is scared of privatisation, even though his party did it in electricity with no ill effects, even though it has been a success in addressing infrastructure backlogs in the UK with water. He's gutless, unable to make the argument - but willing to be the 21st century's Rob Muldoon.
John, if you want to go on about financing techniques used elsewhere, all the countries you list have embraced privatisation and haven't turned back. In the USA whole highways have effectively been privatised, with the government leasing the roads to private concerns for 99 year periods.
However National ISN'T embracing the future, it is calling for a fortune of taxpayers' money to be used to subsidise the telecommunications sector. That's socialism. It is calling for 20 year plans for central and local government infrastructure. That's Muldoonism. It is calling for infrastructure bonds, like Michael Cullen. That's Labour "me tooism". It is calling for private public partnerships, that MIGHT work in a handful of cases but best works when government gets almost entirely out of the way. It is calling for politically designating roads as "important" implying money spent on those roads is more important than money on others, even if others have worst congestion or safety problems, even if others return more bang for the buck in investment. That's pork barrel funding.
National's infrastructure policy is looking back, back to the age of Rob Muldoon and central planning, with taxpayers paying for a selection of follies and winners. It looks like the sort of pork barrel promises seen in US politics, when "strategic importance" overrides reason and analysis. Most of all it pushes out the private sector. It tells power, gas and telecommunications companies that they should avoid taking risks, the government will do it for them, and it keeps transport stagnated in the politically driven supply side government planning of the past. What's most disgusting is that when National was in power in the 1990s, it rejected most of this nonsense for good reason - now it's trying to buy your votes with your future taxes, and those of your kids.
Don't be fooled. This is virtually indistinguishable from Labour.
- Think Big;
- Porkbarrel spending.
So what's so wrong with it? Well let's see what John Key said:
"This deficit spans from our roading network through to our energy supply. Nor is it a problem limited to central government. Over the next decade, local government will face an infrastructure deficit of some $30 billion."
Well ok, he recognises there is a problem, although he doesn't really explain why (after all Labour's spending record amounts on roads at the moment), and doesn't explain why it is a government problem. This is the start of his error.
"our infrastructure policy will be comprehensive and bold. This will require leadership. National will appoint a Minister of Infrastructure to reshape, co-ordinate and then oversee the Government’s infrastructure objectives. It will be spelt out in our National Infrastructure Plan."
Rob Muldoon will be proud, Bill Birch will wonder if anything has been learnt. OK, so...
"This 20-year plan will be developed in conjunction with local government. It will set a clear direction for vital national infrastructure investment, including top priority projects. The plan will set out the intended local and central government infrastructure investment in roads, public transport, electricity, telecommunications, and water."
20 years!! Now this WILL be fun, predicting what is needed in the next 20 years. Let's give some examples of how THAT has been screwed up in the past:- Wellington's Overseas Passenger Terminal, for ships, opened in the late 1960s for passenger liner traffic a few years before they all ceased;
- The Post Office rewiring Wellington's northern suburbs telecommunications networks for triple twisted copper wire, non standard, because it was the "new state of the art" idea in the 1970s. However it was completely incompatible with xDSL for high speed internet service, of course nobody knew of the internet in the 1970s;
- The Post Office/Telecom instituting card phones in the late 1980s that proved to be Y2K non-compliant;
- The Railways Department opening large shunting yards in the 1960s and buying new shunting locomotives in the 1980s, when freight trains were moving towards direct point to point services, not shunting individual sets of wagons between trains;
- The Railways Department introducing the Silverstar overnight luxury sleeper trains for the Wellington to Auckland run in 1971, three years after NAC had introduced Boeing 737s, putting the final nail in the coffin for long distance rail as a transport for business travellers;
- The Railways Department electrifying the North Island Main Trunk railway at the same time as the government allowed trucks to haul freight further than 150km, taking away the capacity pressure from the line, and at the same time as US consultants advised that far more would be gained by restructuring the operations of the railway to be more efficient;
- The government subsidising a new Wellington-Lyttelton ferry in the 1970s, as the Railways introduced a fourth Picton Ferry and NAC bought more Boeing 737s;
- Wellington hospital getting a multi-million dollar electricity generation plant in the 1970s with 2.5x the capacity of the requirements of Wellington Hospital which cost more to run and maintain than buying power from the national grid, and more than having backup generators;
- Invercargill City Council paying for international arrival and departure facilities, even though there have been no scheduled services from a foreign country to and from Invercargill, ever.
Let alone, what government department predicted the internet? What government department predicted international air travel would literally "take off"? What government department predicted mobile phones would start supplanting landlines? Don't worry, John Key and the National Party know the future - like they knew it in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a fortune of "infrastructure investments" had their debt written off.
Anyway...
"Changes like the growing price of oil and the need for public transport and roading networks that reflect that. Changes like growing connectivity between countries and people and the need for telecommunications networks that make the most of this."
Actually John, oil dropped in the last few weeks, so well done. Do tell how you can plan public transport and roads to meet this, in fact one of the biggest "public transport" industries is the airline sector, have you predicted what ones will fail and what will succeed John? Oh and do tell what's wrong with NZ's international telecommunications links, since they have been growing in capacity for ages without government involvement- actually Southern Cross Cable happened when the Nats weren't in power.
"our National Infrastructure Plan will include up to $1.5 billion in Crown investment for an ultra-fast broadband network connecting 75% of New Zealanders. And that’s why we will double the Broadband Challenge Fund and refocus it on rural communities"
Crown = money taken from taxpayers John. Don't hid that. You'll focus on rural communities, because of course, it's not enough they are already required to be cross subsidised by urban telecommunications users. Yes, but I hope urban property owners can get big land plots and their parking free of charge in exchange for this bit of pork. Yes, the pork has begun.
"Our National Infrastructure Plan will also include a new category of state highway. We will call these Roads of National Significance. These Roads of National Significance will be singled out as essential roads that require priority treatment. This would include, for example, State Highway 1, the essential backbone of New Zealand’s roading network."
What an appalling idea. This is pork in the worst possible form. State Highway 1 is an essential backbone apparently. So those segments of SH1 where traffic volumes are a tenth of those of SH16 in Auckland or a quarter of SH2 linking Wellington and the Hutt, or a third of SH29 linking Tauranga and Hamilton, are more important than those roads. Forget efficiency, safety and congestion reduction, name the pork barrel road and goldplate it, right John? So presumably Wellington can get a second Mt Victoria Tunnel because that's the "Road of National Significance", but forget widening Dominion Road in Auckland. Presumably SH1 from Invercargill to Bluff is more important than SH2 east of Auckland which has an appalling accident rate.
Forget rating road spending on the basis of objective criteria and getting value for money, getting quality spending like you harp on about with local government. No, name a road one of "national significance" and the money can be diverted to tart it up in any way you can think of. Meanwhile the roads which actually ARE congested, or actually DO have an appalling accident rate, are neglected, but John Key might have opened the new four-lane section of the Desert Road, or the unnecessarily exhorbitant Huntly Bypass or Transmission gully motorway.
Then he avoids fixing the RMA...
"National’s new Priority Consenting process will streamline consents for major national infrastructure. These will not go through the local council but instead will be called in and determined nationally."
Ah get it? So YOU wont get relief from local authorities and the RMA eroding your private property rights, but the state will in building its big grandiose projects. Rob Muldoon tried the very same thing of course.
He wants to borrow from you too...
"First, we will introduce infrastructure bonds. Secondly, we will make greater use of public-private partnerships. These new financing and asset management techniques will open up infrastructure to a wide range of financial investors. This will include Kiwi mums and dads through their super funds and Kiwisaver accounts."
Or he could just privatise the three remaining power companies, resell the railways, sell Air NZ, require councils to commercialise and privatise water, commercialise and privatise the state highways. None of this is unknown around the world, but no. John Key is scared of privatisation, even though his party did it in electricity with no ill effects, even though it has been a success in addressing infrastructure backlogs in the UK with water. He's gutless, unable to make the argument - but willing to be the 21st century's Rob Muldoon.
John, if you want to go on about financing techniques used elsewhere, all the countries you list have embraced privatisation and haven't turned back. In the USA whole highways have effectively been privatised, with the government leasing the roads to private concerns for 99 year periods.
However National ISN'T embracing the future, it is calling for a fortune of taxpayers' money to be used to subsidise the telecommunications sector. That's socialism. It is calling for 20 year plans for central and local government infrastructure. That's Muldoonism. It is calling for infrastructure bonds, like Michael Cullen. That's Labour "me tooism". It is calling for private public partnerships, that MIGHT work in a handful of cases but best works when government gets almost entirely out of the way. It is calling for politically designating roads as "important" implying money spent on those roads is more important than money on others, even if others have worst congestion or safety problems, even if others return more bang for the buck in investment. That's pork barrel funding.
National's infrastructure policy is looking back, back to the age of Rob Muldoon and central planning, with taxpayers paying for a selection of follies and winners. It looks like the sort of pork barrel promises seen in US politics, when "strategic importance" overrides reason and analysis. Most of all it pushes out the private sector. It tells power, gas and telecommunications companies that they should avoid taking risks, the government will do it for them, and it keeps transport stagnated in the politically driven supply side government planning of the past. What's most disgusting is that when National was in power in the 1990s, it rejected most of this nonsense for good reason - now it's trying to buy your votes with your future taxes, and those of your kids.
Don't be fooled. This is virtually indistinguishable from Labour.
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