New Zealand's foreign policy signals virtually no virtue

The war on Ukraine and more specifically the war on Ukrainian people is heart-breaking, revolting and has rightfully appalled most governments around the world. The response of many countries have been wide ranging sanctions. The Financial Times summarises many of them imposed by the US, UK, EU and other Western countries like Canada and Japan including:

• Travel bans and asset freezes for Russian and Belarus politicians and officials
• Bans and sanctions on banks, including prohibitions on trading and borrowing by financial institutions
• Bans on Russian companies raising finance and bans on trading with major Russian companies
  
• Restrictions on technology exports, including aerospace and telecommunications 

Australia has imposed its own series of autonomous sanctions, including banning exports of oil exploration technologies, prohibiting financial institutions from providing credit or loans to Russian financial institutions, military or petroleum companies. 

Even scrupulously neutral Switzerland has imposed asset freezes on certain Russian individuals. 

How about New Zealand? The Wall Street Journal has highlighted it for shame.

Well it has done the following: 

• a travel ban on Russian officials "involved with the invasion" (even though none could ever travel to New Zealand under current rules that prohibit entry to NZ for non-permanent residents/citizens without specific visas)
• Prohibit exports to Russian military and security forces
• Suspended bilateral foreign ministry consultations.

It's literally pathetic. Now the Government has since announced it will be looking to pass legislation to go further, but given NZ's foreign policy is awash with virtue signalling, this looks very much like very little virtue at all.  The constant declaring of what they might be thinking of doing is par for the course for this government led by someone who wants global acclaim.

Look at two of NZ's virtue signalling foreign policies:

• Anti-nuclear policy: This has achieved absolutely nothing to enhance the peace and security of NZ or anywhere else in the world. However, it is the height of virtue signalling against the US, UK and France.
• Climate change policy: NZ's contribution towards reducing climate change has infinitesimal impacts, but the Ardern Government wants to be "leading" global commitments to reduce climate change, regardless of the economic cost. It's a showcase designed to encourage others to go further, rather than to simply follow in concert with NZ's major trading partners, but in actual impacts it is almost "net zero".

Yet when a nuclear-powered sovereign state attacks another sovereign state, NZ is found wanting. Of course the Government rejected Gerry Brownlee's bill for multiple reasons.  Minter Ellison Rudd Watts gives various reasons for it being rejected.  

It concluded that "it is likely that the specific regime proposed would have achieved little more than political signalling (and some counter-productive signalling at that)". Yet that has been at the forefront of so much foreign policy to date.  The "counter-productive signalling" is being able to act outside multilateral organisations, but this is exactly what the problem is today. A Permanent Member of the UN Security Council is waging war, and multilateralism wont address this, as much as well-meaning NZ lawyers might think this is "counter-productive" they aren't likely to be victims of war waged by Russia, or indeed China. (Note the lawyers call Ukraine "the Ukraine", unfortunately). 

However the lawyers mainly opposed it because "if passed, the Bill would certainly have further complicated the regulatory compliance obligations of New Zealand exporters, importers and trade facilitators".  Do they seriously think Ministers would impose sanctions in some manner that doesn't take into account the impacts on those trading and investing in sanctioned countries? How is this remotely different to NZ having to impose sanctions mandated by UN Security Council Resolutions?

I'm not going to say Brownlee's Bill was perfect, but its timing deserved more attention. It certainly shouldn't have been rejected because moral equivocating Marxists like Teanau Tuiono think it might create "further risk of politicisation of sanctions rather than fairness and equity" (code for sanctions on regimes he quite likes). 

Now NZ sanctioning Russia would largely be symbolic, but it is also about plugging gaps in the global financial and trading system.  The New Zealand Dollar is apparently the tenth most traded currency in the world, so NZ does actually need to plug the risk that it will be used to subvert sanctions from other jurisdictions.  Fonterra has already announced it is suspending exports to Russia. 

Russia takes 0.49% of NZ's exports by value (27th place), slightly less than Egypt. Whereas about 0.97% of NZ's imports come from Russia (19th place), with NZ being a net importer from Russia. The main export is dairy products, the main import is oil products. 

There is no good reason to hesitate. If Switzerland... SWITZERLAND... which until recently refused to join the United Nations in order to remain neutral, can impose sanctions quickly, so can New Zealand.  

To say it can't do it quickly is of course a nonsense. The Ardern Government has demonstrated that when it sees urgency, it gets legislation drafted and passed under extraordinary urgency when it wants, and did so for Covid 19. It could get legislation drafted and passed in the coming week if it wanted to.

The difference is that the Ardern Government didn't plan to have to deal with actual war, war that shows the limits of the United Nations, war that was predicted for weeks in advance.  

It really does need to join the rest of the world, and quickly.

The purpose NATO exists for should be abundantly clear - the future beyond Ukraine is a new Cold War

During the Cold War, NATO was to the West what the Warsaw Pact was to the communist bloc. Both sides faced off at the Iron Curtain. So when the Cold War ended, and the Warsaw Pact dissolved (mostly because once the jackboot of the Red Army had been removed, most eastern European states were full of citizens that just wanted to be liberal democracies), the question was raised as to why should NATO still exist?

Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" was proclaimed, President Bush proclaimed a New World Order, after the UN Security Council endorsed collective action to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The new Russia was, in fact, a liberal democracy, had dismantled its centrally planned economy, and was now working with Western countries. Sure there was still tension and rivalry in the Middle East, with concerns over Iraq and Iran, the simmering Arab-Israeli dispute, and of course the Korean peninsula, but in Europe, the belief was that liberal democracy had won.

Except of course, it hadn't quite. 

The New World Order declared by Bush was no nefarious shadowy view of the international system, but one which would AT A BARE MINIMUM not tolerate one state taking the territory of another.

That is what the war to expel Iraq from Kuwait was about, and it is why Saddam Hussein's regime was not destroyed at the time. The New World Order was not about regime change, it was about protecting international borders from aggression.

Much happened after that. The war in the Balkans ultimately saw NATO action to deter Serbia from engaging in genocide in Kosovo, following the genocide in Bosnia and Croatia (not all from the Serbian side of course).  Hum.anitarian intervention became an addition to the New World Order as countries were confident that international cross-border war was a thing of the past

9/11 changed all that, although the attack and overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified as a response to the aggression of 9/11, the subsequent attack and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime was not. Overthrowing Saddam was a settling of old scores and an attempt to demonstrate Western military dominance against potential threats. What it did was show the West incapable of occupying and transforming a nation state without enormous loss of life, or in the case of Afghanistan, ultimately a lack of political will to pay the price in money and lives to institute government that was closer to the ideals of liberal democracies with Enlightenment values. This culminated in the weak withdrawal from Afghanistan last year

Yet Russia had already tested the limits of the New World Order a few years ago and found it wanting. Not only had Russia effectively annexed Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia (which had started in the 1990s),  but the 2014 annexation of Crimea under the Obama Administration (after Obama famously ridiculed Mitt Romney in the 2012 election campaign for claiming Russia was a growing threat) showed the West was unwilling to enforce post Cold-War borders against direct aggression.

NATO expansion has been occurring, with all of the former Warsaw Pact nations now NATO members, and the three Baltic states, all of which had been invaded and occupied by the USSR during WW2. The expansion of NATO to defend former Soviet republics was deferred, not least because of concern of provoking Russia.  Both Georgia and Ukraine have wanted NATO membership, and the results of denying it are now seen in the destruction of Ukrainian cities.

As much as the Western nations will crow about economic sanctions on Russia, and much global unity on condemning Russia, it has done nothing to stem the bombardment and the growing occupation of Ukraine. As much as it is significant that Germany has finally unhooked itself from equivocating on Russia, by stopping the Nordstream 2 pipeline, Russia knows its oil and gas supplies keep much of Europe from grinding to a halt. This is predominantly due to the virtue signalling policies of the EU in energy and the environment which have stopped Europe from pursuing domestic sources of fossil fuels as an alternative, in favour of trying to save the world. Unlike the US which wisely enabled fracking, and is no longer dependent on oil from the Middle East, Europe in transitioning from coal has become reliant more on Russian fossil fuels whilst it inches towards renewables. Even more disturbing, the inexplicable decision of Germany to abandon nuclear power as a bizarre reaction to the Fukushima disaster (even though Germany neither has earthquakes or a risk of tsunami) has further weakened European energy security. Russia, of course, funded and supported anti-fracking activists.  

In the coming weeks and months there is a likelihood Ukraine will fall to Russian tyranny, without a shot having been fired by Western liberal democracies in support of the principles they are meant to be defending.  For the first time since 1968, tyranny has advanced in Europe.

Disturbing as this is, what will be just as disturbing is what the Western response has to be. A return to the clarity that an attack on NATO means war with all of NATO, which includes the risk of nuclear war.  A rearming of European countries, which means a reprioritisation of public spending towards defence, at least matching the NATO target of 2% but realistically needing to go for 3% and above. Permitting expansion of NATO to any liberal democracy that meets the conditions for membership.

It goes beyond Europe though. In the Pacific, a reassertion of the defence of Japan and South Korea, but most importantly a clear assertion by the United States that it will not stand by if Taiwan is attacked by the PRC. It must become too risky and too dangerous for the world's two largest tyrannies, Russia and China, to go any further.  The single biggest risk now is that Russia and China perceive that there wouldn't be any pushback if they go further.

It's too late for Ukraine, we got here due to weak US Presidents, and by that I mean not only Biden, but also Trump and Obama. We can speculate endlessly about whether Putin would have risked attacking Ukraine under Trump or not, and the answer is far from clear.  About all that is clear is that Trump was unpredictable, and that unpredictability was probably a deterrent, but Trump was also a man whose positions on issues was not consistent.

All that can be done now is for a firm redline to be set, by Biden, by NATO and all of its allies, that the West is willing to go to war to defend the borders of liberal democracies.  It is frightening and plenty of people politically on the far-left and right will oppose it, but it also means that Western liberal democracies need to spend more on defence, and less on virtue signalling, "rebalancing/levelling up/building back better" and to strengthen their economies to be resilient against dependence on Russia and China. Allister Heath outlined it starkly in the Daily Telegraph here:

For the first time in more than 30 years, we face a truly existential threat. Our enemy is a hostile state armed with nuclear weapons, a large conventional army and led by an empire-building psychopath: the danger to the European powers is orders of magnitude greater than the very real risk posed after 9/11 by al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

This new conflict will almost certainly be long, complex and extremely expensive. It won’t be like fighting the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein, or lone wolf actors. It will require us to relearn strategies, tactics and virtues at odds with the hyper-emotional performative stupidity and instant gratification of the Twitter era. Our elites will need to reprogramme themselves psychologically, economically and militarily, read some history, become more serious and austere, and knuckle down for a lengthy fight.

The implications for Australia and New Zealand from that are going to be stark. The easy ride of China buying so much, and selling so much back is about to come to an end.

There is some hope, but as Heath wrote:

Yes, Russia is staggeringly weak, a decaying nation with a population much less than half that of the US, and a GDP far lower than that of New York state. But it has nuclear weapons and needs to be deterred and eventually defeated. We must also send a signal to China, a country that is immensely richer and more sophisticated than the Soviet Union ever was, that the West is serious once more. This is a new Cold War, and we must urgently contain the authoritarian powers at war with liberal democracy.

The international system is turning against freedom and liberal democracy

The last monumental change in the international system occurred in 1989-1991, with the end of the Cold War, driven by Mikhail Gorbachev's unwillingness to keep a jackboot on the throats of Soviet citizens and just as importantly, its satellite states, along with the US and the UK and their allies being willing to try to put international relations back on some sort of legal footing.  The Gulf War was a test of that, with the UN Security Council generating unprecedented international support for action to evict Iraq from its occupation of Kuwait.  It is difficult to underestimate the optimism of the time, with half of Europe freed from Marxist-Leninist dictatorships (including some of the most evil in history in Romania and Albania), the end of Cold War tensions between the former USSR and the USA, and even though China brutally suppressed dissent in Tiananmen Square, it seemed to accept a new world order based on rule of law.  Victory against Iraq at the time indicated a willingness to not tolerate territorial aggression.

So much has changed in 30 years. 

9/11 was critically important in refocusing Western attention on Islamist insurgency, but it paralleled change in Russia, as the relatively benign Boris Yeltsin was replaced with the altogether more sinister, ex. KGB official, Vladimir Putin. Russian liberal democracy has been wound back so much, it is little more than a fascist, organised crime syndicate running an authoritarian militarist dictatorship. China having become rich with capitalism under Marxist-Leninist rule, has seen the rise of Xi Jinping, who takes inspiration from Mao's era. Except now instead of being a gnat with a few nuclear weapons, China is the world's second largest economy, with businesses from Europe to North America and Japan all heavily invested in it. China is a major trading partner of many economies, and its requirement for local partners and investors has enabled it to steal intellectual property from some investors, and then copy what they do, at a lower price.

For much of the last 30 years Russia and China were content maintaining their regimes and growing richer. Russia on oil and gas (although this was severely dented for some years once fracking made the US in particular, capable of supplying its entire domestic demand), although little else. China on being a manufacturing hub. However, both have become bolder as Western liberal democracies have become weaker defenders of the international order.

Western liberal democracies have been damaged by 

1. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein: This demonstrated how utterly incapable Western democracies are in nation-building, and their lack of capacity and willingness to occupy and transform a defeated enemy. The blood and treasure lost in Iraq, and even the aftermath of the limited intervention to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya, have not been seen as worthwhile in most liberal democracies.  This has caused most to want to withdraw militarily.
   
2. Weak Western commitment to the international system: President Obama was committed to a future of US pulling back from conflict, and this was followed by European powers that by and large took the same view.  When Russia invaded Crimea, the Western reaction was one of resignation.  When Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk shot down a Malaysian airliner, only the Netherlands and Australia demanded explanations so vocally. Obama's "red-line" over Syria using poison gas against its own population was backed up by little.  Trump for his bluster, has largely been uncommittal on anything. Biden is yet to be tested, but looks and sounds weak.
   
3. Western ideological self-hatred: The weak commitment has been backed by both right and leftwing apologists for Russia and China.  Ones on the right regard China as a great business opportunity that shouldn't be disturbed. They also see Russia as a "traditional Christian" state, that has "understandable" interests in neighbouring states. They downplay Putin's authoritarianism. Ones on the left are back in the Cold War, thinking it is "time" the West stopped dominating, after all, it's Western capitalism that they blame for most of the world's ills.

The international system is led by actors that have proven unwilling to deter or confront Russia from irredentist behaviour.  Russia currently occupies not just Crimea, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, it also effectively backs a rogue breakaway entity called Trans-Dniestr in Moldova, and is Belarus's biggest friend.  

Russia's narrative that if Ukraine joined NATO it would provoke it was complete nonsense, as it is clear that HAD Ukraine become a NATO member some years ago, the chances of an attack would have been more remote.  

For what it's worth, the international reaction to the attack on Russia has largely been uniform and positive. Widespread condemnation, and the emergence of sanctions and increasing military and economic aid and assistance.  Yet it still looks pathetic for Ukraine to not be subject to military support from powers that completely support it politically and ideologically. Russia's vile defamatory narrative that it is "de-Nazifying" Ukraine (against its Jewish President!!??!) is laughably absurd.

Indeed, the Russian ethno-nationalist narrative Putin is expounding is absolutely fascist.  It is blood-and-soil, historical revanchism, that blanks out the USSR's alliance with Nazism that backfired, and glorifies the Soviet defeat of the USSR.  See this Twitter thread for an excellent summary of that, and how Putin now uses revival of WW2 myths to bolster Russian nationalism.

Let's be crystal clear, Putin is a nationalist neo-fascist.

Of course the West cannot directly intervene against Russia, not least because the price could well be risking nuclear war. What it CAN do, is make it crystal clear that it will use all necessary means to defend NATO member states, which means including nuclear weapons. Russia is only deterred by the risk of overwhelming force.

There have thankfully been very few voices seeking to downplay Putin. However, in NZ Chris Trotter, who has valiantly stood in favour of freedom of speech has revived his tankie instincts over the "tragedy" that the USSR collapsed. The Green Party's Golriz Gharaman has OPPOSED New Zealand sanctioning Russia unilaterally, implicitly accepting that Russia vetoing UN sanctions is preferable, but also essentially claiming sanctions just hurt ordinary people so shouldn't proceed.

Of course then she is happy to share a platform with Roger Waters, who supported Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea and Noam Chomsky who actively supports the Russian imperialist narrative.

Maybe she is more concerned about Palestine and attacking Israel, than actual imperialist warmongering, which simply reflects the weak-willed vacuousness of hard-left anti-Western so-called "peace" activism.

By contrast the Australian Greens, have got a backbone:

 

as do, it appears, a lot of governments that we perhaps otherwise didn't think had it in them. Finland and Sweden actively discussing joining NATO. Germany finally capitulating to cancel Nordstream 2.   Then there is this magnificent speech from Kenya.

We can only hope that the brave people of Ukraine, finally having some support (except direct military assistance) against Putin, can hold out and Putin can be rolled back into some capitulation.  Putin wants ALL of Ukraine for himself, but he will likely have to resort to accepting a ceasefire in the Donbass, unless he is willing to unleash a fury of weaponry that may cause more Russians to turn against him.

Let us hope that this puts paid to the PRC's ambitions to attack Taiwan.  A firm resolve is needed.  Ukraine is a test of the international system, a test of the resolve of the USA, under a President who has looked weak from day one (with the withdrawal of Afghanistan having been such a mess), the UK and France, the EU and the community of liberal democracies

About those protests

I’m of two minds about protests generally.  On the one hand freedom of assembly and freedom of speech come together in protest marches, and so they are a key part of a free society, especially protests which challenge Parliament, an institution which derives power directly from counting heads (in this case heads that choose representation). They are particular potent in societies that are not free because people literally risk their lives in order to get the attention of others, so that they might just break down the order of the system of power.

On the other hand I’m not a great fan of protests in liberal democracies, because they rely on the idea that because you can get a few hundred or thousand people to walk with some signs that this grants greater legitimacy to a political position than if it were held by one person. I’m no fan of counting heads rather than what is in them. Yet there is a place for them to highlight injustice which isn’t being reflected through mainstream discourse, through the media or through politics more generally.  

The protestors in Wellington would put themselves in that category, because their views are not supported by most politicians or media. Beyond debating vaccine mandates, I don't support much of the other rhetoric that seems visible.

I don’t support vaccine mandates for private property and private businesses, it should be the choice of individuals as to whether they get vaccinated, and whether their staff or customers must be vaccinated or not on their premises.  However, the health system is dominated by taxpayer funding and state owned institutions and as such, the state must decide as to whether it simply wants to promote vaccines or require vaccines for its employees in such facilities.  It has the right to do that, based on evidence and if you don’t like it, then you should be free to work privately, for others who wish to pay for your services.  There is a case for doing all that is reasonable to protect the vulnerable in a pandemic.

I’d be much more sympathetic if the protest was against how opaque this government is, how evasive it is over OIA requests, Parliamentary questions and the effort involved in managing narratives. This is everything from MIQ to Three Waters to inflation. For a government that has largely had support because it kept Covid19 at bay, the litany of other outcomes are worthy of protest. Housing costs that have skyrocketed (because of monetary incontinence and decades of supply constraints), inflation spiralling at nearly twice the rate of Australia, ICU capacity that is second bottom in the OECD per capita (after Mexico), at mediocre educational performance by global standards, and much more. Imagine the fear of this government (or any) if tens of thousands marched for housing.

I don’t have time for those who think there is some grand conspiracy around vaccines, or who tout quackery. Those engaging in quackery deserve to be challenged as much as they challenge others. Yes, there are also a few flotsam and jetsam that joined the protest that are vile and distasteful, including actual fascist/racial supremacists inciting violence, and some anti-semitism, and they deserve to be challenged, they ought to be confronted by protestors, and anyone who threatens violence should be arrested.  

What protest do you want to be on with this sort of vileness?

There is good reason to be wary of such people given Christchurch, but I am loathe to condemn the majority of protestors with such a label, although it has become a common trend to simply treat those they dislike as being “fascists”. Don’t be mistaken, such types deserve to be ostracised, condemned and monitored, and the protestors ought to know by now that letting such elements be tolerated utterly decimates sympathy they will get from many people. Yet what of those who oppose vaccine mandates and find that some of their fellow travellers are Nazis? What do you do if a largely anarchic protest attracts totalitarian eliminationists? You kind of have three choices. Confront the Nazis, ignore the Nazis or don't go and surrender the issue. To do the former requires some collective effort and will, the do the second is damaging and evasive, and to do the third might seem like surrendering the issue that matters to you. None of those types believe in individual freedom, not remotely.

Other protests do go down dark paths of promoting violence though, and it doesn't get the same attention from the left when it's not in power.

You see when lefties go on a protest that results in paper face beheadings of John Key, Bill English and Judith Collins 

… a protest backed by Labour and the Greens (called Aotearoa is Not for Sale), you’re just meant to blank that out. Meanwhile, Jacinda Ardern thinks there is something sinister about the anti-mandate protests to be "imported" (in that they are no doubt inspired by similar protests overseas), but it is just fine for BLM and climate change protests to be inspired by similar protests overseas. You see implying the anti-mandate protestors aren't "real" Kiwis is just the sort of noxious rhetoric seen by some of her nationalist opponents against Ardern and other leftwing politicians. It's not only mindless, but toxic as well. 

See it's awfully ironic when organisations like the Victoria University of Wellington Student Association (VUWSA) (which once warmly defended forcing students to belong to and fund it) openly take a conservative view of protest. when it almost certainly wont support this approach to protests when it comes to backing its own causes, which almost always are about demanding more of other people's money and more government. 

There are good reasons to arrest anyone who is threatening anyone, or vandalising property, and those inciting violence, but the recent trend for some politicians to treat the protestors as being somehow lesser citizens is both unfair and counterproductive. It’s hard to spin your way out of this, and people who feel treated as second class citizens (literally) are much more willing to hold out when they feel they have nothing to lose. They are also more likely to be aligned to seriously sinister types when they are the only ones giving them any form of succour. 

Unfortunately no MPs will talk to the protestors in part because they are fearful of violence from the protestors, but also because they know they will be hounded and vilified by media and other politicians for doing so. The only way to nullify that would be for one MP from each of the parties in Parliament to agree to talk with a few representatives - that would help to reveal whether this is just about mandates or not. 

It might also give the protestors some reason to move on, because they might feel that they have been heard.

UPDATE: David Seymour does appear to spoken to someone at the protest, and while the cynic might say it's because polling is looking not too great for ACT given Luxon seems to resuscitated the Nats, I'd like to think he actually is embracing the idea that mandates need to be phased out.

Auckland light rail - some thoughts UPDATED

The Government's announcement that it has chosen a nearly $15b option to build a single light rail metro line from Wynyard through the Isthmus to Mt Roskill then Mangere and the Airport utterly astonishes me, Although I obtain some schadenfreude from the urbanists upset that it isn't a street tram (in part because they WANT it to take away road space from other traffic), I remain utterly gobsmacked that the amount of money concerned and the hype surrounding what it is mean to do doesn't appear to have much concern at all from The Treasury.

On purely opportunity cost alone the idea that it is worth spending that amount on money on ONE fast tram line ought to be shades of the Think Big debacles of the 1970s and 1980s.  Sure it is easy to question whether some of the motorway projects the National Government advanced were the best use of road users taxes, but this is in another league.   If you were to put all of Kiwirail on the market, and even guarantee ongoing operating subsidies for commuter rail in Auckland and Wellington, I doubt you would get one-tenth of the capital costs of that single line - that ought to put in perspective what this is about.

What gets me the most is that the very basic pure public policy questions surrounding this project haven't been asked, it looks just like a politically driven legacy project, fueled by Phil Goff on the one hand, with Michael Wood and Grant Robertson willing to jump on the boondoggle.

Of course it has an "indicative business case", which like all massive government projects aren't business cases at all, because there is no business here. Auckland Light Rail will never generate a financial surplus of revenue over operating cost, let alone a return on capital.  Of course, large government transport projects rarely do, but the language used is instructive, because some companies will make a fortune from Auckland Light Rail, in construction and technical consultancy.  A common assumption that NZTA historically used for major projects was that 15% of construction costs were consultancy and technical advisory services, and there are multiple companies circling around that trough, after all it's over $2b in fees. NO consultancy has a commercial interest in being critical of this opportunity to obtain serious bonuses for their New Zealand operations. 

Anyway, what about this business case (PDF).

It says:

The following sets out the problems that the proposed investment in rapid transit will address:
• A high reliance on cars is adversely affecting the climate as well as increasing harm from injury and pollution
• Increasing congestion will further disrupt and lengthen travel times, threatening investment and quality of life
• Some communities have worse access to public transport connections, creating inequity and reducing social cohesion

This is frankly pathetic.  So the problems are "too much car use", "congestion" and "poor public transport connections".

Even if you leave to one side the absurdity that high reliance of cars in Auckland is adversely affecting the climate (like a child urinating in Lake Taupo is poisoning it), climate change policy is addressed through the Emissions Trading Scheme, which caps emissions from transport.  The efficient tool to address this is to lower the cap, increasing the price of fuel, so people drive less. If this is about climate change it's a monstrously wasteful way of doing it, and it wont have any meaningful impact.

The claim of "increasing harm from injury and pollution" is questionable.  MoT resources state:

and there is no evidence of increasing pollution, largely because engines are getting cleaner and there is a growing number of low and zero emission vehicles.  However, it doesn't really matter.  If you think a primary reason to build a light rail metro is to address injuries and pollution on the roads then you're a moron.  You can reduce injuries by better enforcing drink driving laws, speed limits, traffic light violations dangerous driving, not build a light metro line.

Then there is congestion.  The reason there is traffic congestion is that demand for roadspace exceeds supply and politicians choose to price that roadspace the same, everywhere in NZ at all times. Price it higher at peak times and locations and congestion will ease. Price the roads properly and there is more space for buses, and buses can run more frequently and reliably, but that's not exciting for politicians.

Building a light rail metro wont ease congestion, although it WILL provide a fast link, given that passengers are forecast to not be willing to pay more than a small fraction of the cost of building and running it, suggests they don't value time THAT much, and more importantly, that congestion isn't bad enough for them to pay a lot more to avoid it. 

"Threatening investment" by whom? If you think Auckland Light Rail will relieve congestion across Auckland you're a moron, in fact you're a moron if you think it will relieve congestion on the corridor it will serve too.

Finally there is the badly worded "Some communities have worse access to public transport connections" worse than what? This is no doubt true in some form, but do you really think $15b is best spent on a single light rail metro line when you could almost certainly spend a tenth of that on frequent cross-city buses and bus priority measures to seriously uplift the city's public transport network? 

After all this connection will be nice for people in Mt Albert and Mt Roskill wanting a quick trip into the CBD (remember only 13% of Auckland jobs are in the CBD), noting that Mt Albert already has a railway station connecting to the City Rail Link underground electric railway under construction.  Who wants to go from Mt Albert and Mt Roskill to Onehunga and Mangere? I doubt many do.  From Onehunga, the light rail metro will probably be slower than the existing train service, and from Mangere it is quite the indirect route to the CBD, but it is good to get to the airport.  Remember that, this will be a slow route from the airport into the city centre, but be marginally useful from Mt Roskill.

Then take this utter drivel from the "business case":

Using public transport to travel from Māngere to the city centre takes more than twice as long than using a private vehicle. As a result, private vehicles account for 85 percent of all journeys to work by Māngere residents

According to the census (using this remarkable visualisation), the number one destination for people from Mangere Central to work or school is Auckland Airport

It's a logical non-sequitur to claim that because it takes twice as long to go by public transport to the city centre than by car that this means that most journeys to work by Mangere residents are by car, because in fact only 5% of them actually work in the city centre.  

So when it estimates that nearly 32m rides will be taken on this line by 2051 you have to take it with a pinch of salt.  In 2019 there were 103m rides across ALL railway, bus and ferry routes in Auckland, so to expect ONE line to carry about a third of that is ludicrous. For that travel it is going to cost $109m a year to operate, so it needs to charge $3.40 per fare to break even on operating costs, but that's not going to happen is it? It is meant to have the capacity of 32,600 people per hou, this is not far short of London's Victoria Line (at 37, 226), does anyone seriously think that EVEN with intensification there is going to be that level of demand on this line?

So given THOSE problems to solve, Auckland Light Rail is an abject failure, it doesn't address any of these effectively.

So I'll make some not-so-bold assertions, that I would happily have refuted:

1. Auckland Light Rail will make next to no impact on traffic congestion (and the business case ADMITS this on pg. 59. 
2. There isn't going to be continuously growing demand for travel on this corridor to and from the CBD.  In fact, Covid19 and changing work trends mean that the norm will be that people wont be in offices five days a week, which completely undermines the case for large scale peak transport capacity in cities
3. For 1% of the cost of this project, there could be some significant improvements in bus reliability and travel times along corridors, with bus rapid transit, bus priority measures at intersections and use of road pricing
4. For 3% of the cost of this project, Auckland could have an interconnected cycle lane network across the whole city
5. For another 6% of the cost of this project Auckland could have a comprehensive network of bus lanes and bus priority measures, higher frequency services AND payment using contactless debit and credit cards which would address all of the social issues, and encourage people to drive less.
   
6. Auckland Light Rail not only wont and cant stop urban sprawl, but also is unnecessary to support housing intensification, primarily because most jobs are still not going to be anywhere along the proposed corridor.  Furthermore, housing intensification along the corridor will have a marginal impact on housing pricing
   

and no, there is even LESS point building the slow tram along the street that the Greens want, because they mainly want it to take away road capacity.  Tradespeople, freight and delivery are unimportant to them, it's just the war on driving, so that rightfully has been dismissed.

Auckland Light Rail is an incredibly expensive folly, it isn't transformative (but the money it costs COULD be transformative in more subtle, more geographically spread and more effective ways that aren't so exciting to politicians) and it is almost certain there wont be anywhere near enough demand to justify it. 

Fares wont pay a cent towards its capital costs, and even property taxes that could be levied to pay for it, wont pay for more than a small fraction of the project. Ratepayers aren't willing to pay for it, and there isn't enough money raised from motoring taxes to pay much towards it either. It needs to be scrapped, and Auckland transport planners (and both Auckland and national politicians) need to focus on how to make existing networks work better, rather than the exciting fetish of a big shiny high capacity boondoggle....

UPDATE:  Of course taxpayer-funded radio (RNZ) discusses light rail with a critical view from.... the Green/left perspective.  The argument Matt Lowrie from the urbanist blog Greater Auckland is partly opportunity cost (it's cheaper to build a slow tram than a fast metro, so there is money to spend on... more slow trams), but then he's quoted as saying it is needed for Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton and Tauranga? It's economic insanity, but why should anyone be surprised that state radio regards a different perspective to only be from its own tribe of Green Party supporters.