Terrorist attack raises questions

Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen, is the name Jacinda Ardern doesn't want repeated by anyone, which is silly, because if nobody supports him, nobody should fear his name. Samsudeen wanted to kill people in New Zealand because he had become a jihadist fascist, and we can all feel very lucky he does not appear to have succeeded. What he has done though is awful enough, to take advantage of people under Level 4 lockdown, already under considerable stress, to attack the community that gave him a place to live and gave him more freedoms than the country he came from, or that he would grant to others.

Terrorism is, after all, an act of war. It is a political act to of violence to spread fear and incite change. It is incompatible with a free society which offers ample opportunities for people to express their views, and have them judged in the marketplace of ideas. Of course those with totalitarian ideologies are uninterested in having such freedom, although they will happily exploit it to spread their ideas and to do harm to others.

There are important questions to answer, that can't be answered quickly:

1. Did the Police follow all of the reasonable steps they could in surveillance of the terrorist? I've no reason to think otherwise, but it matters as the whole point of the exercise is to protect the public, and if there is any opportunity to not observe what the subject is doing, it is a risk to the public. If it isn't optimal, it should be revised.
2. Should the assessment of refugee status be tightened up, and more scrutiny given to such applications? Particularly noting that the psychiatric assessment appeared to be an exercise in tricking the psychiatrist (let's not start to think how much of psychiatry is snakeoil)
3. What should be the threshold for deportation for committing a serious offence? Should defrauding immigration about your status enable deportation?
4. The terrorist was granted "protected status" presumably out of concern he may be tortured or subjected to cruel treatment if returned, but if the person presents a real, present danger to the public should this be able to be overturned if the "protection" obtained was on false grounds? Does the right to be protected from another state get overriden when his intention is proven to be to wage terrorist attacks against NZers?
5. How long did he study under his student visa? Is there any indication that he breached its terms and if so, what sanctions were imposed, if any?
6. Is "protected status" being generally applied to Tamils from Sri Lanka, or did specific conditions of his case indicate he was likely to be tortured or subjected to cruel treatment? Were these verified better than his original false claims for refugee status?
7. Should terrorist protection orders be possible, so that someone who has expressed interest in waging terrorist attacks on NZ can be subjected to preventive detention?
8. On what grounds was he denied GPS monitoring? 
9. He was sentence one year with supervision, at a local mosque. How well did it supervise him?  Does anyone who interacted with him at the mosque share sympathies with ISIS or jihadist views generally? Was his supervision inclusive of a deradicalisation strategy?
   
10. Who paid for his defence lawyers and his immigration appeal? Was it him or supporters of his, taxpayers or a charity? Have his sources of finance, or any charitable support be investigated?
    

Should the law be amended? Quite possibly, and sure care needs to be taken with reform.  However, it is important to recognise that the core role of the state is to protect the public. Terrorism goes beyond criminal law and into defence, and the state should not act against people simply because of concern about what they think or what they are interested in, if they haven't expressed intent or taken action to support or engage in violent acts.  The threshold for that is very difficult to define, but in this case the patterns of behaviour are multiple.  Besides lying to obtain refugee status, he broke censorship laws about possessing content depicting murders and violence, and he demonstrably aligned himself with jihadism.  Jihadism isn't just Islamist theocratic totalitarianism, but a belief in using violence to wage war.

So what now?

First and foremost, hopefully all of the victims will recover fully. Their ages are vast, and there is no sense yet of them being targeted for any reason other than being peaceful people going about their business. However that is what terrorism is all about.  The victims deserve to be the priority, because the state has failed them.

Secondly, there should be a full investigation of procedures, from Police, through Immigration and the SIS. I'm not assuming anything was done wrong, but this could well have been much much worse. What if he had had a bomb?  We can't take the assurance of any politician or official that everything that could have been done was done, on face value. It needs to be demonstrated that there weren't further actions that could have been taken and that needs an independent investigation.

Thirdly, if the law permits a dangerous individual who clearly presents an imminent threat to wander the streets, albeit with intensive surveillance, then this must be changed. NZ is fortunate that the number subject to this is so few, because this situation would be unsustainable with ten times this number of budding terrorists.  It is important to preserve a right to a fair trial, but when someone has entered into the realm of supporting and promoting terrorism, it is not just a crime, it is an act of war and the state must act to protect people when the threshold is crossed in demonstrating intent to do violence.  The line between simply expressing support for a theocratic Islamic state and actively supporting and expressing interest in engaging in terrorism is a careful one to define, and whether intervention to deradicalise is useful in some cases, vs. preventive detention in others needs to be considered.

Finally, the ideology behind the terrorist must be called out for what it is and is not. ISIS comes from Salafist jihadism, and it is a cancerous, toxic and murderous ideology incompatible with any civilised modern liberal democracy. Absolutely this is NOT what most Muslims in NZ belief, which is very important, but it is simply wishful tihnking to continue the fiction that it is "nothing to do with Islam". It is something to do with Islam. It's disingenuous and absurd to pretend it isn't primarily to deter Muslim hatred.

Those who tout Muslim hatred aren't fooled by pretending that ISIS isn't from a branch of Islam, just like pretending the IRA had nothing to do with Catholicism, even though in both cases it is clear that most adherents of both religious utterly repudiated terrorism in the name of their faith. The blatantly anti-Muslim attacks of the Burmese government have roots in radical Buddhism, but to taint Buddhists everywhere with that is wrong, but it is also wrong to pretend that the link is not there.

It is enormously positive that the Al Noor Mosque has spoken against the attack, and completely unsurprising that the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has utterly condemned it. The GiveALittle page from the Al Noor Mosque is particularly generous and positive. Ahmadiyya Muslims are known for being possibly the most open, tolerant and generous sect of Islam, indeed it was five years ago that an Ahmadiyya Muslim in Glasgow was murdered by an Islamist who thought he was an infidel. Ahmaddiya Muslims have a special risk of being attacked by jihadists.  Long may all of this continue, and long may NZ remain immune to the rise of jihadism seen in the past two decades in Europe.

As a footnote, it's also notable the somewhat different response by some to this attack, compared to the Christchurch mosque attack. Maybe it's because nobody has been killed, but the actions of Tarrant, the Muslim-hater (who happened to have an incoherent ideology which included respect for the Chinese Communist Party and environmentalism) saw an outpouring of calls to confront white-supremacy, "division" and hatred towards Muslims, which is fair enough. Yet the calls to confront Salafist and Wahhabist jihadism have not come, the calls to confront jihadism are muted.

After all this call by Green MP Golriz Ghahraman is right, in that white supremacy should be dismantled:

So have any Green MPs called to dismantle jihadism? All racial eliminationists ought to be confronted, but religious eliminationists too. Is it that white supremacy particularly agitates the hard-left, but Islamic jihad is seen as, somehow, not quite as distressing? We shouldn't forget the use by Green MPs of the long-standing slogan "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free" used by Hamas to promote the destruction of Israel (as it means to clear Israel away from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean). Now by no means are they supporters of jihadists, but do the Greens think white-supremacy is widespread in NZ, but jihadism isn't? Why not confront both with equal vigour?

The Greens are loud on supporting Palestinian rights, as they are entitled to be, but hand in hand should be absolute clarity that jihadism is as morally repugnant as eliminationist white supremacism/neo-Nazism, and there should be no tolerance of either.  This message should be clear across all political parties.

There is reasonable concern of some sort of moronic backlash against Sri Lankans and Muslims more generally. Only a moron would think this is anything to do with Sri Lankans (most aren't Muslims), and it's immoral and absurd to think innocent people deserve to be abused for actions they have nothing to do with.  It is natural for people to fear the sorts of reprisals seen in some societies, but this concern has been expressed in a curious way by the Executive Director of Amnesty NZ:

Why just white people? Are white people known to be particularly antagonistic towards Muslims?  Is Muslim hatred not seen in people of Chinese, Indian or Maori descent, or is it just the "ruling" "dominant culture" "racist" white people (who in the critical race theory hierarchy are the most privileged, powerful, depraved and guilty)? This will be news to the Rohingya facing oppression from Buddhist Burmese, or Muslims in India facing Hinduist bigotry, Uighur facing Han Chinese acts of genocide, or indeed Sri Lankan Muslims who in their homeland fear the Buddhist Sinhalese.

What "counter narratives" does she want put out? That Muslims don't support this? Reports so far demonstrate this, and it is far more credible promoting what Al Noor Mosque has done, than to have a self-righteous left "liberal" try to convince you (from the class of people deemed to be bad in character) to not abuse of people who share the same broad faith of Samsudeen.  Indeed unless you circulate in circles of people who tend to think like knuckle draggers, this is at best pointless, and at worst going to generate antagonism. The terrorist was responsible for his actions, others are responsible for theirs. Would she ask Muslim people to put out counter narratives against ISIS and other Islamist jihadist groups, condemning them? Perish the thought. That alone demonstrates how absurd this really is. 

People who engage in moronic counter-attacks against Muslims or Sri Lankans apply the same ideology as the dominant critical theorists do in believing white people are to blame for the jihadist, or indeed for Tarrant himself. They all share the philosophical view that individuals can only be understood by categorising them in identity groups. That what people are born as is determinative of their lives much more than their own actions, and that life and society is about battles of power, privilege and identity.  

One of the clear ways to combat jihadism and white supremacy, and every other ideology branded lazily as "extremist" is to confront it with the focus on the rights of the individual, to respect the right of each other to live in peace and to pursue their own lives in peace, and for individuals to associate and interact voluntarily, and to find solutions to life and the universe under the non-aggression principle, and for the state to have as its number one priority, protecting us from those who reject this absolutely.

Three Waters Reform: The left opposed water reform in the 90s, why trust them now?

You might have noticed the childlike cartoons the Government has chosen to communicate to you about one of the most radical infrastructure policy reforms proposed for over twenty years – the Three Waters Reforms. Those cartoons might have put you off, but they shouldn’t. For all of the fluff government is involved in, one of the most important activities it unfortunately is responsible for is the supply of reticulated water and the collection of wastewater and stormwater. Forget Covid19, because if the water systems fail you really ARE in for a public health crisis. Millions of people worldwide don’t have access to clean drinking water and don’t have safe sewage collection and disposal, and it costs lives. This is important, too important to have those who use and pay for it talked down to like primary school children, and too important for you to ignore.  Bear with me, this is complicated...

What’s the problem?

The current system of managing water infrastructure is, in many parts of the country, a failure. Who could miss the regular reports out of Wellington, the capital, which has systematically failed to put enough ratepayers’ money into the water and sewage systems? Stories of drinking water from Hawke’s Bay to Otago being infected or tainted. So the case for reform is overwhelming. The Government’s own papers indicate 40,000 people lived under temporary or permanent “boil water” notices for their reticulated supply in the year 2018-2019. Four people died and over a third of the population in Havelock North became ill because Hastings District Council didn’t effectively manage the town’s water supply. An earlier study indicated 35,000 people get ill annually because of the quality of drinking water.

The Government’s own report estimates there is at least a $120 billion gap in capital spending on water infrastructure. Another stat is it is estimated that 21% of water is lost in reticulation – 1 in 5 litres of water that Councils collect to reticulate to homes and businesses is wasted in the distribution. That is frankly outrageous.  Local authorities are often reminding us all to look after the environment and not to waste water, but their own ineptitude results in enormous waste.  It is notable that there are limited statistics about the state of stormwater infrastructure, because local authorities just don't know. If your home or business has ever flooded due to rainfall, then you might care, because stormwater infrastructure is what helps protect your property.

Why has this happened?

The Government claims the problem is a matter of:

· Lack of economies of scale: 67 local authority entities supply water infrastructure (there are small private operations as well) without the capacity and capability to address issues. Career paths for those in the sector are limited with multiple small entities and small scale capital spending generates insufficient competition in the contracting sector to put price pressure on those costs. It claims water entities need customer bases in the high hundreds of thousands to be viable.  There is definitely merit in this.

· Unaffordability of needed investment: Under the current approach, the money ratepayers would need to be forced to spend to remedy historic underspending is enormous. Government estimates increases of 300-1500% in spending are needed over the next thirty years compared to current levels. This is quite credible, indicating a desperate need for both new capital and for ways to obtain efficiencies to reduce these costs over time.  However, it would be dishonest to pretend that those who use water shouldn't pay for this, albeit over many years. 

· Poor incentives and lack of effective oversight:  This is where the Government lays bear what’s REALLY wrong. It is that the model of “democratic control” of the provision of water services, and the “power of general competence” of local government in overseeing that control is a failure.  It is worth remembering that "democratic control" is a touchstone of leftwing political philosophy.  

To quote from the Government’s own report:

Local authority service providers operate in a political environment, in which investment decisions are made by elected representatives who have a duty to consider broader community interests (for example, other investment priorities and affordability of rates increases) and a constrained financial environment, in which the main funding and financing  mechanisms are via ratepayers and council borrowing. These factors combine to limit the level of three waters investment.

In short, local politicians prefer spending rates money on other stuff and prefer not to raise rates to pay for water infrastructure. It talks of misaligned incentives, which is surely a euphemism for politicians care most about being elected, second most about getting attention for shiny stuff they made ratepayers pay for, third most about other stuff they can get credit for in three years. How many local politicians campaign on fixing the pipes, especially when such work can literally take years to complete, is largely only visible as a disruption and the end result is… continuity of what you had before?

These failures are a legacy of opposition to water reform in the 1990s

Electricity, gas, telecommunications, aviation, ports, road transport, public transport, all were subject to significant reforms in the 1980s or 1990s, but water was largely left alone. With the sole exception of Auckland, with the creation of Watercare Services in 1991, all other water provision was left in the hands of territorial authorities. Water is a legacy of the Muldoon era and beyond, with the exception of some local authorities consolidating and in some cases implementing water metering, not a lot happened.

Some Aucklanders might remember the Water Pressure Group, led by the late, conspiracy theorist, Penny Bright.  One of the cause célèbre of the hard left was opposition to the commercialisation of water in Auckland seen in the creation of Watercare Services, which supplies water and wastewater (not stormwater) services in the city. The New Labour Party, later the Alliance (when it included the Greens) were loudly opposed to what they saw as the bogey of privatisation (which never happened).  As the Alliance was on the ascendancy, after the 1993 General Election, National pursued little in reform of the water sector, and as Labour went back to the left under Helen Clark, the idea of reforming water was parked.  After MMP, there was no majority for any serious reforms in the sector, and from 1999-2008 the Clark Government proceeded, with support from the Alliance and the Greens (who had now left the Alliance) to pass the Local Government Act 2002 to grant local government a "power of general competence".  In short, the left trusted local government to get on with the job. Of course the Key/English Government from 2008 until 2017 did nothing either to reverse it.

The power of general competence and community empowerment have been a failure

The implementation of the power of general competence was to usher in a new era.  Then Local Government Minister Sandra Lee said "It is both a reaffirmation of the place that local government has within our democracy, and of the rights of local people in their communities to exercise controls over their aspirations, their decisions, and the democracy that affects them."   

So communities were "empowered" which of course is code for empowering local politicians. Sandra Lee even made it clear that water privatisation was to be prevented. "We are not going to agree to allow councils to sell what is not a commodity--the access to clean water--but a fundamental human right."  I'm not sure how the people who died in Havelock North had their "fundamental human right" protected, and how asserting that right works if the Council has let the local infrastructure fall into disrepair.  Indeed then Associate Local Government Minister Judith Tizard later claimed credit for having including "cultural wellbeing" in the objectives of local government.  Not much culture if you're sick because the Council supplied water is contaminated.

Backed wholeheartedly by the Greens, the reforms were to usher in a new era of “local democratic accountability” with more powers to deliver what “the community wants”. Indeed, it is the heart of the mantra of the economic left that justice is achieved by more “democratic control” of resources. Well we’ve seen how democratic control of water has been going, and the results are in – it's been a failure.

 What needs to be fixed?

Users, in many cases, don’t pay for what they use. With the cost of water infrastructure for many hidden in rates bill, there are no incentives to manage water use, and those who need water face rationing alongside those who waste the resource. Furthermore, those who benefit from stormwater infrastructure don't necessarily pay rates reflecting the protection of property value they obtain from it (nor do insurance costs reflect that adequately).

Local authorities get paid rates regardless of how much water is used or wasted. So they have poor incentives to stop wasting 21% of the water collected and distributed, to plug leaks so that they can sell the water they collect. 

Local authorities aren't required to spend money on water infrastructure so they may levy water rates, or pay for water from general rates, but they have a "power of general competence" and they are accountable to you every three years at the ballot box.  They spend money how they like, and your power to change that is tiny.

Politicians are no better able to decide how best to spend money on water infrastructure than they are on electricity (which they don’t) or telecommunications (which they don’t) or on farms. Bear in mind local politicians are primarily responsible for housing shortages because they are the controllers of permission to build housing and to allow land to be used for housing. Expect them to make similar quality decisions around provision of essential infrastructure.

Imagine if your local power company spent the money raised from your power bill on a convention centre. The reason that, by and large, electricity and telecommunications infrastructure work is because you pay for its use and the providers spend the money on maintaining and providing the service. It’s capitalism working, because those companies borrow money based on future earnings and invest in the network to continue providing reliable service.

Given that the Ardern Government is the most leftwing government in New Zealand in nearly 40 years, you might think that with reality confronting ideology, they might actually think that this is a failure due to their own philosophy not working empirically. You see if the Douglas/Richardson reforms had NOT progressed, you’d be seeing the same malinvestment in electricity (which was beset with blackouts in the 70s and 80s before reforms), and telecommunications (which famously, before the mobile phone era, saw it take weeks to get a phone line installed).

What is proposed?

It’s curious that the Government has relied somewhat on Scotland as a source of advice for how to implement water, especially when its own report indicated much better performance in England (see above)– which DID famously reform water by privatising the lot in the 1980s. It notes that privatisation of water in England  improved productivity by 2.1% per annum over 24 years (64% all up) after adjusting for quality of service improvements. Achieving a net saving of 64% in cost over such a period has to be tempting.

That is, of course, the right answer.

It isn’t proposing that, because you see, the Ardern Government is in many ways, continuity Alliance,

It is proposing:

· A water regulator to set standards for water quality, with powers to direct water providers to act to meet its directives;

· Consolidating 67 entities into 4;

· The new entities will be owned by local government

· Two boards will govern the new entities. A professional independent board, akin to boards supplying other infrastructure (a semi corporate board) and a regional representative board, which is to be split 50/50 between local government and Iwi.

· The Regional Representative Board will appoint members to the independent selection panel to select the Board, which will then select the board. In effect local authorities and Iwi will indirectly appoint the board.

· Setting of charges must be done transparently, with no changes to how people are charged in “the initial years”. The new entities will have powers to borrow.

· Protections against privatisation, mostly by local government and Iwi having to have a 75% majority in favour of it.

· The entities be statutorily required to uphold “the principles” of Te Tiriti, with the board needing to have competence in Te Tiriti, Tikanga, Matauranga and Te Ao Maori;

· The entities must direct water users funds towards the capacity and capabilities of mana whenua to support delivery of water services

· To throw taxpayers’ money at the entities to lure in local government to agree.

So it is resisting commercialising the delivery of water, preferring to largely aggregate water into entities similar to what governs water in some parts of the country already. They will be, in effect, very large Non-Commercial Council Controlled Organisations with co-governance with Iwi.

What other options were considered?

Well not commercialisation or privatisation.

The report indicates that three other options were considered:

· Local government led reform: This of course would be consistent with the Government’s philosophy, but has no merit because there are few incentives to make it work.

· A National Water Fund, akin to how land transport funding operates. Except there are no fees charged for water use nationally, and it wouldn’t really fix anything other than enable consumers in places which have well managed water systems to subsidise those in areas that don’t.

· Regulatory reform only, in other words introducing a regulator without structural reform. This would not achieve efficiencies and achieve only limited accountability.

So privatisation wasn’t considered, but the Government should be transparent as to why – which is ideology and politics. Why wasn’t commercialisation considered, by creating genuine arms-length council owned water companies, similar to Watercare services? Why not vest those companies in shares held by ratepayers (noting that it is property owners that primarily benefit from stormwater infrastructure, which protects their property from damage) or even just citizens and permanent residents as consumers? After all, the success in England in holding companies to account for quality of service, levels of investment and addressing systemic underinvestment is considerable. Why does the Ardern Government acknowledge that success then steer down another path? It seems like it is purely ideological.

What's good about the proposals?

Large entities will be able to be more professional, achieve significant capacity building and attain economies of scale. There is no doubt that there are far too many local water entities. Having borrowing powers and the ability to levy charges on consumers is also critical, but these powers largely exist now within local government.  Regulatory oversight ought to result in better outcomes than just leaving it to local government and iwi to manage, and more money will ease the pain, but that's transferring a burden from ratepayers and water consumers to general taxpayers, with no sense of the distributional impacts of that.  

What's wrong about the proposals?

The new entities wont be companies, wont be required to make a return on capital or to pay tax, meaning it will be less transparent as to whether they are operating as efficiently as they could be, or maximising the utility of their assets. As a much larger version of the current model, there isn’t so much incentive to treat those who consume water and use wastewater and stormwater services as customers. Having a customer, provider relationship more directly would provide much more input into consumer preferences than by having an advisory board.  What's fundamentally wrong with considering water similar to electricity?

Local government will still own the entities, although this ownership effectively diluted because governance is now shared with iwi, who own none of the infrastructure, nor are accountable to ratepayers.

There are probably too few entities proposed and Watercare Services, which has fewer problems compared to many other water entities, will be required to be decommercialised and merged with Northland water provision, which may mean Aucklanders cross subsidising water infrastructure in Northland. There is no need to dis-establish Watercare Services and no options given as to the number or geography of the proposed entities. Local authorities that are successful ought not to be forced to be subsumed by entities of those that are not, noting that the three waters are NOT an integrated network like energy, telecommunications and roads. There is little need for disjointed networks to be managed together, except to achieve economies of scale and professional capacity for competency.

Governance remains highly political. With local government half responsible for appointing the panel that then selects the board, the incentives are there to offer positions to those they know and trust, in short local authority nepotism. With four entities, headquartered and dominated by Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch, expect the local authorities of those cities to take charge.

The introduction of iwi governance is a vast increase in power for iwi over core infrastructure that has no precedent in other industries, and which assumes that Maori as both consumers or voters is insufficient in protecting and promoting their interests, although it might certainly promote iwi interests. The iwi role will be to share oversight with local government, which already has a growing mandatory iwi co-governance role in any case. Iwi have the same incentives as local government in appointing people to select a board to govern water. The outcomes expected from this are extremely vague such as enabling mana whenua to express kaitiakitanga, but what will this achieve in terms of outcomes such as water quality, quality of investment and accountability? Embedding Te Mana o Te Wai is harmless enough, but this is hardly unique, because Te Mana o Te Wai is universal to humanity. More fundamentally, the Government is effectively proposing a transfer of 50% of the power around the water sector to iwi, with neither the responsibility of ownership, or accountability to consumers or the owners of that infrastructure. It is a significant uplift from current obligations around consultation with Iwi, to hand over an equal share of governance, with no indication of outcomes or what it means for other sectors such as electricity, gas or telecommunications. It is a form of privatisation of governance, to iwi. I

Now there IS a valuable point in “iwi/Māori have roles within the current three waters service delivery system that will need to be acknowledged. They are suppliers and/or recipients of water services (particularly to rural marae, papakāinga, and rural communities).” As suppliers, they should be subject to the same oversight as other suppliers, but as recipients they are little different from anyone else. They receive a mix of good and poor service, but it is unclear why their role as consumers is more special than anyone else. Sure, water is a taonga, but it is to all humanity. It’s ludicrous to claim that it is more special to iwi than it is to any other.

However, this is more fundamentally about the Government’s interest in what is, in effect, creeping constitutional reform, by redefining the Te Tiriti partnership of Crown and Iwi, into one that goes beyond meaningful consultation and engagement, to sharing powers over assets that do not belong to iwi (the three Waters are about infrastructure, not lakes, rivers and streams after all). There IS a role for consulting iwi about the use of property they own or control, but to privatise half of the control over ratepayer owned infrastructure, to iwi deserves to be justified in terms of outcomes, when the reforms themselves are based on addressing serious problems with the status quo. Should this really be used as an opportunity to facilitate more iwi control?

What should happen?

Reforms are badly needed, primarily because many local authorities have proven themselves utterly inept in managing and funding water infrastructure. However, the Government is proposing to consolidate existing water entities, including successful ones, into four entities which largely resemble Council Controlled Organisations and share governance with iwi. Yes, having professional large water utility entities will be a step forward, but continuing to have significant local authority governance, which has proven to fail, and using the reforms to implement iwi co-governance, with no sense as to what improvements to outcomes this could deliver, is missing an opportunity.

Government should be bold, it should transfer the water assets of local government into a handful of specialist water companies, and issue shares in them all to all property owners connected to their networks and float the companies on the share market (and as a sop to fear over foreign takeover, you could even cap foreign ownership at 49%). Let the water companies meter or flat fee property owners for their services, and force councils to drop rates proportionately and NOT increase them by more than inflation. Given their quasi-monopoly status, central government should oversee the water companies in terms of drinking water quality, but by having popular share ownership concerns over water companies gouging consumers can be ameliorated.  If the Government did this, I'd accept the value of an independent regulator, to monitor and report on performance.

 It’s time to take the three waters out of the hands of politicians and put it in the hands of consumers as shareholders, and run it like a business. You have no more reason to trust this Labour Government with water reform than you would Jim Anderton, who opposed competition and privatisation of telecommunications, electricity, aviation etc etc.

We've seen the results of having a utility sector entirely at the behest of democratic accountability to the community under local government. It's been a failure.  The water sector needs reforming, it needs bold moves resembling what happened and succeeded in England in the 1980s. Shame the Government is willfully ignorant and unwilling to even consider that model as an option.

The Government claims significant benefits from their reforms, over thirty years. This may well be credible, but is based on many assumptions around efficiency savings seen in Scotland with consolidation, and that these efficiencies wont be lost in a strange new co-governance model.  However, since the Government didn't even look at the option of following England  - even without privatising the companies - we wont know if it chose the best option, as the options analysis has clearly been politically cauterised, by people whose political ideology has so demonstrably failed in this instance.

Why would anyone trust them to get this right now?  

Local authorities are currently consulting on whether communities support the Three Waters Reforms, and many oppose it, not least because local government never likes losing power and influence.  You should let them know that you oppose the proposals, but not because it takes powers away from local communities (whatever that is), but because it puts power in the hands of people who are NOT primarily interested in delivering efficient, high quality services to consumers.

So tell your territorial authority AND tell your local MP what you think of these reforms.  Be grateful also that electricity and telecommunications aren't being run by your local authority.  Imagine the blackouts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are big questions that deserve answers. 

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

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

What are those questions?

Here are a few...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fighting racism in all of its forms?

Racism is “growing in temerity” says Race Relations Conciliator Meng Foon in Stuff and it should be dealt with in “all its forms”.  Pardon me if I think he doesn’t really mean that.

He cites the colonial history of racism that diminished the status of Maori, which is all very well, but in that he infers that this predominantly remains in the minds of many.  I’m not so sure that’s true. There are certainly some who cling to ideas of racial superiority and inferiority, even if it is subtle rather than explicit, but to consider that the thinking in the 19th century of settler is akin to the thinking in the 21st century of their descendants (and the millions of others who are not descended from settlers) seems a stretch.  He’s right to point out historic discrimination against Chinese New Zealanders and of course the Dawn Raids on Pasifika communities came from racist fear, which both main political parties took advantage of at the time.  In all cases this was actions by a state that believed it was right to treat citizens not as individuals, but members of a group deemed to be below that of others.  

Foon points to threats towards some academics, all of which is completely unacceptable.  Speech threatening violence is not protected, as it is a direct violation of the rights of those threatened. However, speech that is abusive and angry is not, and indeed anyone entering the public domain to express their views should not be protected under the law from people responding with anger.  There is nothing wrong with people expressing anger in debating issues, indeed it seems almost de riguer for MPs from Te Pati Maori to do so.

Any cranks promoting violence should be dealt with firmly, but Foon’s commitment to addressing racism “in all its forms” has a blind spot. He accepts on face value the claims of academics who take a post-modernist structuralist view of racism, in that racism doesn’t even need to be expressed in actions but is inferred through outcomes. His citing of AUT lecturer Dr Heather Came who claims there is structural racism “everywhere” is indicative of his view.  The same Dr Heather Came blames “libertarian discourse” for distracting people from the privileges of Pakeha (this is the radical idea that people have some agency for their lives, and that one reason why crime occurs is poor parenting).

This belief system means he wont see the rhetoric of Te Maori Pati MP Debbie Ngarewa-Packer as what it is. Ngarewa-Packer isn’t a traditional ethno-nationalist, she bases her world view on classifying people based on links to land, not land and blood (like ethno-nationalists do), and their belief system.  You’re one of three groups depending on whether:

• You are THE people of the land (or not); and

• If you have redeemed yourself in your belief system (or not).

Note if you are tangata whenua, you don’t need to redeem yourself.  Ngarewa-Packer wrote in the New Zealand Herald on 26 May 2021 that New Zealanders consists of three groups, Tangata Whenua (she includes herself in this, and presumably encapsulates all who identify as Maori), Tangata Tiriti who she calls “reformed racists” (those she deems as allies, basically those who agree with her view as to the constitutional, legal, policy and social structure of New Zealand as a nation-state and society) and racists (everyone else).  

So instead of treating over 5 million diverse individuals with distinct backgrounds, characteristics, abilities, knowledge, perspectives, beliefs and ideas, she pigeon holes them first and foremost into two groups. Maori and others. She declares Tangata Tiriti as equals, although they have sinned, they have redeemed themselves.  As far as everyone else is, they are still sinner, they may yet be able to redeem themselves (and become Tangata Tiriti), but they need to be “left in the past”.  

What is this view if it is not racist? Place these comments in the hands of any ethno-nationalist and they wouldn’t be unfamiliar. There are the best people, there are the people they let become their allies and then there are those that are against them.  Who knows what Ngarewa-Packer thinks should happen to the third group? Given someone who had responsibility for Rawiri Waititi’s Twitter account claimed Caucasians are an “archaic species” and she cites several demographics, she seems to think that eventually Tangata whenua and Tangata Tiriti will be the majority and so the “racists” can be ignored. What if she is wrong and a majority don’t share her little Aotearoa view of humanity?

If she were from another ethnic background, it would be called out for what it is, simple racism. Her view is that unless you are Maori there is something wrong with you that can be fixed, and the way you fix it is by agreeing with her world view and by actively promoting it.  You then gain mana equal to tangata whenua. You should feel lucky then, perhaps that you can be reformed through compliance.  What happens if you don’t agree with it all though? Are you racist if you think there should remain a liberal democracy with majority rule, and that the principles of a common law criminal justice system should remain over an undefined traditional Maori system of lore (which, as with all matauranga, was passed down by word of mouth and observation/tradition, and was not recorded with a written language)?

One indication of what she thinks is her belief that if you are not Tangata Whenua, your right to live in Aotearoa is conditional.

She wrote:

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

Hang on a moment. Chosen to live on? So, you may be BORN in Aotearoa, you may have no other citizenship, but you’ve chosen to live there. A choice that is not a right because you apparently had another “choice”, which will be news to millions who don’t have dual citizenship.

This is all a bit chilling.  You’re not equal after all.

Ngarewa-Packer in her maiden speech said Maori suffered a “holocaust”, which is demonstrable nonsense. Injustice, killings and discrimination is not industrial-scale extermination, and indeed to compare the violence of the colonial era (an era that Te Pati Maori thinks hasn’t ended) to the Holocaust might be seen as racist by members of those groups that suffered under the Holocaust. However, I doubt Meng Foon will be calling that out and to be fair, Ngarewa-Packer is not the first to make such a ludicrous comparison. 

Imagine for a moment if the Caucasians are an archaic species” comment from Rawiri Waititi’s account had been uttered from the Twitter account of a National or ACT MP, in describing Maori as “a species”. No apologies would have been accepted, the staff member would have had to resign and the mea culpa from the MP would never had been enough.  

So no, Meng Foon is not interested in racism in “all of its forms”. His is a narrow, post-modernist, structuralist view that racism can't be expressed by people who identify with groups he deems as not having power,  although it is difficult to see Members of Parliament as people who are lacking in power.  Is racism increasing in New Zealand? Foon gives no useful evidence, but rather cites a series of anecdotes, all from academics or politicians which universally share one political perspective. It would be better if he were to spend some of the taxpayer money his office gets undertaking balanced surveys of people's attitudes to other races, including testing various stereotypes. 

However, would Foon simply think I am the third category of the Ngarewa-Packer hierarchy of Aotearoa? I am not Tangata Whenua (I think), I am not Tangata Tiriti (I'm not keen on any state that believes power should be shared, rather than fully devolved to individuals as much as feasible), so does that just mean I am racist?

Transport policy with a vacuum of critical analysis

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

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

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

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

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

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

The market-oriented approach

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

New Zealand transport has a lot of the free market

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

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

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

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

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

The central-planners' approach

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

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

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

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

It's all about emissions

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

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

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

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

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

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