What does the future of co-governance look like?

Power without being elected

With the impending passage of the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill, New Zealand will have taken a giant leap in the direction of reducing democracy in local government. It's important to be very clear about what this means:

1. Ngai Tahu will appoint two members of the Canterbury Regional Council (known as Environment Canterbury), they will sit alongside and have identical powers to elected members. 
2. Ngai Tahu members will be selected by Ngai Tahu by whatever means Ngai Tahu deems appropriate
3. Those councillors will have full powers to vote on spending, on taxes (rates), on buying and selling assets and on bylaws.
4. No electors in Canterbury region will be able to remove Ngai Tahu representatives (except of course, those with authority in Ngai Tahu), includes those affiliated with Ngai Tahu who do not have influence with the iwi.

It's very important to recognise what government, including local government actually is. 

Government is an institution with the monopoly of legalised use of initiated force against people and their property, and it devolves some of that power to local government. 

Environment Canterbury has such powers, powers to forcibly take money in the form of rates and to levy the public for services, it has powers to make bylaws and has powers to constrain the use of property. 

In a liberal democracy the constraints on that power come in two forms:

• Legislative constraints (as local government is constrained by legislation and regulation);
• Local democracy (the ability to vote out and replace Councillors who exercise these powers).

Parliament has chosen to weaken the ability of Canterbury electors to do the latter.  The key element in a free liberal democracy is more the ability to peacefully remove people from power than to select those that exercise power, but this legislation removes the right of Canterbury electors to remove two councillors.  Indeed, those councillors are only accountable to those with power in Ngai Tahu, not electors at large.

This is literal corporatism, in which a corporate private entity exercises direct political power, with there being no effective means of removing them (except of course if Parliament changes the law to abolish their position).

Bear in mind there is nothing stopping Ngai Tahu proposing candidates for election now, or funding and supporting the campaign of candidates it approves of, but it doesn't believe that would be successful.  

Bear in mind also that members of Ngai Tahu who are Canterbury electors retain the power to vote for Councillors, they have that power now, but they will also have some influence (it could be a lot or it could be negligible) in the selection of unelected councillors.  Members of Ngai Tahu who are Canterbury electors get two chances at selecting councillors.

Some may say sure but non-resident ratepayers get a vote too. Yes they do, but it is a vote and if they were residents as well, there would still only be one vote. There are sound arguments either way about non-resident ratepayer voting rights, but that is a separate issue.  Note that there are plenty of people affiliated to Ngai Tahu who are not electors in Canterbury too.

Where next?

There are  other examples that have parallels to Canterbury.  The Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill, would have generated higher Maori representation on that Council than their proportion of the population.  David Farrar ably demonstrated how unjust that would have been, as each Maori ward councillor would have represented far fewer people than a non-Maori ward councillor.  The Bill was dropped  in part because the Bill of Rights assessment said Maori wards would have disproportionately higher representation. 

Wellington City Council took it upon itself to include two mana whenua representatives on Council Committees (not full Council). One each from Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika and Ngāti Toa Rangatira sit on all Council Committee with FULL voting rights. It justified the idea as contributing towards decision making, but this is frankly absurd.  Having voting rights for unelected councillors (which is effectively what it is) is more than "contributing" it is exercising power.  The representatives also get reimbursed by ratepayers, "by paying each iwi an annual fee, equivalent to the remuneration of a full time elected member, which is currently $111,225".  So ratepayers get to pay for representatives they cannot vote for or against, that exercise power over them.  6 Councillors voted against this nonsense, namely Mayor Foster, Councillor Calvert, Councillor Rush, Councillor Sparrow, Councillor Woolf, and Councillor Young. However, the majority prevailed (Councillor Condie, Councillor Day, Councillor Fitzsimons, Councillor Foon, Councillor Matthews, Councillor O'Neill, Councillor Pannett, and Councillor Paul).

Noting this already happens for Rotorua Lakes District Council, it has iwi representatives with voting rights on Council Committees.

What would need legislation is to enable full Councillors to be appointed by iwi rather than be elected by electors. 

It seems highly likely that the Labour Government, with full support from the Greens and Te Pati Maori, would endorse local government having appointed (not elected) City, District and Regional Councillors, with the rights to vote on your rates, bylaws, spending, sale and purchase of assets and planning rules.

Let's be clear this is NOT the same as Maori wards. In principle, if a Council wants those on the Maori electoral roll to have Maori ward councillors, as it is for Parliament, it does not undermine democratic accountability. Maori electors shifting from general wards to Maori wards changes their representation, but they are still elected and accountable to electors.

Having iwi choose representatives is the same as having any large private interest choose representatives on Council. Councils exist to provide certain public goods and services, but also to regulate activity including planning activity.  Iwi themselves have substantial commercial and property interests.  Consider if Councillors (as some do) have large property or business interests in a district, they are at least accountable to electors, but the iwi representatives are not.  

So could Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori require all Councils to have unelected Mana Whenua councillors? Of course.... but could it go beyond that?

Iwi selected MPs?

Te Pati Maori Co-Leader Rawiri Waititi has already expressed his contempt for democracy as being the tyranny of the majority. Now I SHARE this concern, which is why I want the power of government limited, but I don't share his objectives or solution, or his perception of the problem. He wants a separate Maori Parliament which would decide on matters for Maori, although does not explain how that would work in practice.  

Applying the principles of the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Bill to Parliament would mean that all iwi would be able to appoint MPs to Parliament (perhaps with some proportionality? or perhaps each being equal?) to have the same voting rights as elected MPs (which Maori would continue to be able to vote for).  

That would make Aotearoa/New Zealand far from being a liberal democracy, as Parliament would be dominated by entities that themselves determine how to select people to exercise legislative power over people and their property. 

This isn't about race, this is about the exercise of powers of coercion and the primary means of constraining that, which is the ability of the subjects of that coercion to exercise a vote to change those exercising that power.

If Iwi Representation were required to enlist electors that are iwi affiliated, removing them from being able to vote for other Councillors (and indeed with numbers of Iwi Representatives proportionate to population of iwi affiliated electors), it would be completely different. It would simply be redesigning Maori wards to fit that model. The same in Parliament. 

If Maori seats were simply redesigned to be selected by Maori voters voting for representatives by iwi (and then there being some system to elect the appropriate representatives across multiple smaller iwi), it would also not be a problematic in applying liberal democracy.  However, if some MPs were just appointed, it would be undemocratic. 

Consider that Myanmar adopts this model, except it is the army that appoints MPs. 

Why do this?

Supporters of the legislation see it as implementing the Treaty of Waitangi, under the interpretation that the Treaty is not just about granting sovereignty over taonga and governorship to the Crown, but about a power-sharing relationship between the Crown and iwi (an interpretation that was largely confined to academic and radical political circles until the 2000s). 

If the Crown, represented by the liberal democracy of the New Zealand Parliament were separate and excluded Maori (as repulsive and Rhodesia like that would be) then this interpretation may have merit. Yet it does not exclude Maori, Maori have the same voting rights as everyone else, and both Maori and non-Maori vote for MPs who are Maori (and non-Maori).  In other words, Maori are represented in Parliament, their views are heard, and communicated by the MPs they elect, both from the Maori roll and the General roll. They are equal in their exercise of power to everyone else. 

Beyond that, consultation and engagement over public policy is extensive and is entirely within the role of a liberal democracy and for consultation with iwi to be treated as being part of implementing the Treaty.  Consulting Mana Whenua is entirely right and correct for local and central government, but when it comes to choosing who gets to exercise the monopoly of the use of legitimised force - through government- it should NOT be determined by unelected people.

For better or for worse, every single MP in Parliament, and up till now, every single Councillor in regional councils, territorial authorities and unitary authorities (et al) have their authority through public endorsement at the ballot box. The worst form of government every devised, except for all of the others tried throughout history, as Churchill was purported to have said.

Sure, I think most central and local politicians are utterly hopeless at defending the rights and freedoms of the public and private property rights, but their power is constrained by the ability of sufficiently outraged electors to throw them out of office.

Unelected politicians do not have such constraints. Be suspicious of anyone who is appointed to exercise legislative and tax raising powers.  

Environment Canterbury disgraces itself by actively seeking to weaken the power of its elected Councillors in this way, and Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori have all shown themselves to be parties in enabling this to come to pass. Imagine if Federated Farmers had appointed representatives on rural councils, or Chambers of Commerce on urban councils etc. 

Any future government should explicitly prohibit any local authority from appointing anyone to have voting rights in Councils or Council Committees without having been elected in local body elections, at a bare minimum.  

What's the alternative?

The role of liberal democracy in New Zealand needs to be able to be debated without the kneejerk reaction of "racist" from unreconstructed leftists and ethno-nationalists who want to shut down debate using pejoratives. 

Those who think mana whenua do not have a role in being consulted on local and central government matters are not helpful, because if the Treaty is to work in the context of a liberal democracy, then engagement and consultation is essential. However, mana whenua should not expect to exercise direct political power to erode or undermine the wishes of directly elected representatives of all electors in New Zealand (especially since they too get to choose those representatives).

Those on the radical left who think this is "white supremacy" and "neo-colonialism" ought to put up their models for a form of government, and have them subjected to scrutiny as to whether or not they can protect the rights of all individuals from unbridled power and the corruption of power which is much more likely under systems of those appointing people with power.  After all, the UK retains the House of Lords, with appointed politicians, who scrutinise and delay legislation (although they cannot stop it), as a hangover from a very much class supremacist view of government.  New Zealand should not replicate this sort of political structure.

After all, liberal democracy is now the dominant form of government in most of Asia, Africa and the Americas, and frankly it is only autocracies like the People's Republic of China, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Turkmenistan that question the validity of governments that are constrained by secret ballots and the essential, concurrent freedom of speech and the press. 

Have mana whenua consulted, include them on informal committees and boards used to advise Councils and Government.  Government and Councils can also include them in co-governance of assets or systems if they wish - the whole debate on Three Waters co-governance is entirely legitimate (sure I don't agree with the proposal, but everything local government does is entirely at the behest of Parliament, which grants local government its power, it is still fundamentally accountable to electors).

The co-governance of Urewera National Park and the Waikato River are enshrined in Treaty settlements, and there is no conflict between any of this and a liberal democracy, because elected MPs agreed to it.  

In liberal democracy power IS shared, between representatives by geography and representatives by political ideology and philosophy, and when enough electors tire of one lot, they replace them with a new bunch. Does it achieve much? Often it doesn't, but it does achieve one thing - it means that all of them fear causing so much disenchantment that they lose government or worse of all, lose their seat in power.  Ngai Tahu and all Iwi ought to value that, and ought not to be immune from it.

UPDATE: So Tamati Coffey is inviting other iwi to consider "this path" to better representation.  He introduced the Rotorua rorting local elections District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill, so he's showing his colours around corporatist government. Maybe it would be better if the former TV presenter simply abandoned representative democracy altogether if he doesn't believe in it?

The uninspiring blandness of the Australian Federal Election

I quite like elections, I like them being a battle of ideas, of philosophy and of personalities, as they provide the most obvious time to focus on what are the differences between the individuals who want the power to impose laws on people.

Australia is having a Federal Election, and as someone with a second home in Australia, I'm interested in the outcome, but I am not very interested in the contenders. I don't get a vote anyway (and if I did, it would be compulsory, which is just grotesque, as government shouldn't be decided by the proportion of the public who vote because they have to, without having a clue as to what is going on).

Typically I should be aligned with the Liberal Party - which is meant to be liberal in the classical sense, as the party of less government, of individual rights and freedoms.  However you wont see much sign of that in Scott Morrison and the Liberal/National Coalition (the "Coalition") agenda for what would be its fourth term (albeit second term for Scott Morrison).  It's gone from Tony Abbott, a committed conservative with some classical liberal instincts, to Malcolm Turnbull, a dripping wet centrist, to Scott Morrison, a marketing man. It is campaigning mainly on being a safe set of hands compared to the Labor Party (the ALP). 

The best that can be said about the Coalition is it isn't the ALP, which is currently led by a shiny light of its left faction - Anthony Albanese. A man who was a low ranking Infrastructure Minister when Kevin Rudd was PM, but who was adamently against the Hawke/Keating reforms that opened up the Australian economy, and stripped away decades of neo-mercantalist, protectionist inefficiency.  

However, the Coalition ought to be better than just that.  It might claim that it has been a safe set of hands over the pandemic, but the pandemic is almost over, and nobody cares anymore (especially since the States had a key role - the Federal Government was primarily responsible for vaccinations, and control of the national borders).  The Coalition has spent up large protecting the economy from collapse during the pandemic, and to its credit has advanced on national defence. Unlike the weak and almost irrelevant New Zealand, Australia does have a serious defence force, and the Morrison Government did scrap a ridiculous contract for French diesel submarines, in favour of US/UK nuclear-powered ones. The Morrison Government has been tough on the People's Republic of China and copped a lot of flak over that, for simply asking for an investigation into the origins of Covid 19. Australia has pivoted from its high dependency on Beijing for trade, to being clearly on the front-line of challenging Beijing over Covid and its expansionism.  It deserves some credit for this.

Domestically though, it is characterised as being a Government that grants favours to marginal electorates in terms of public spending, and has grown the public sector incrementally. It has embarked on no serious reforms to address issues such as housing or the hotch-potch of taxes at Federal and State levels.  There have been numerous report on how to raise productivity in Australia, and little to show for it. In short, the Coalition is virtually out of steam, and I doubt anyone who votes for it (or preferences it over the ALP) thinks they are supporting a reformist Government.  They're voting to stop the ALP.

And what of the ALP? It governs in 6 out of the 8 states or territories (the Coalition only governs in New South Wales and Tasmania), but it has focused on character with attack campaigns that claim Morrison is a flake who rejects he is accountable for anything. Yet the ALP's main promises are around being tougher on climate change (claiming enormous cuts in power bills by spending a fortune on renewables) and more for areas of social spending such as salaries for (mainly unionised) staff in aged care and healthcare.  

The rhetoric of both Albanese and Morrison is largely vacuous and banal.  The ALP is promising not very much, because last election it thought it would win, and lost because Australians feared more taxes and an unproven leader. 

On the sidelines are the Greens, who want to radically undermine mining and have candidates who think Australia should be much more accommodating to China.  Pauline Hanson continues to attract rightwing voters mainly in Queensland who are less tolerant of the woke culture wars, and billionaire Clive Palmer has been spending a fortune promoting his United Australia party which has wacky policies on taxing mining to pay off debt, and freezing interest rates.  This appeared as a full page ad in several newspapers (Craig Kelly has been touting Ivermectin as a cure for Covid for ages).

I mean really?

On the bright side is the Liberal Democrats, the closest to a libertarian party, which actually does campaign for less government and isn't socially conservative.  However, it will be a push for it to get a Senator elected (don't even get started on talking about the Australian electoral system).  A lot of attention has been paid to the so-called "climate independents" who all share branding and are funded by billionaire heir Simon Holmes à Court, to stand only in Liberal seats (and in many cases against moderate liberal MPs).  They are basically centre-left MPs who want radical action on climate change, but odds are maybe one might get elected.

So if you care, you might pay attention to Saturday night's election in Australia.  Polls suggest the ALP will win, which will send Australia facing left, and see it jumping down the line to spend a lot of money and/or intervene a lot to look like addressing climate change, as well as bungs for its usual union constituencies.  However, it isn't a huge jump from the status quo, and its hard to see it being a significant majority.  If Scott Morrison pulls off another win, it will solidify his faith, but it wont mean anything to be excited about except schadenfreude over the ALP, Greens, GetUp! (a leftwing campaign group), the ABC (the staffed by Green-left aligned people, state broadcaster) wondering what went wrong?  It will be business as usual, and Australia deserves better than that.

Australia deserves a clean sweep of Government, of political culture, to take down the shibboleths of corporatism, statism and entrenched bullying style unionism. It should embark on reforms that open up markets, reduce barriers to competition and look forward, but it wont.

If Albanese wins, it wont be good for Australia, but it might refocus the Coalition on principles and on standing for something rather than incremental electioneering based policies.  

If you want more freedom less government, then hope for a Liberal Democrat senator, but otherwise unless you're just going to hope to annoy the ALP and the Greens by watching them lose, there's little to care for a Coalition victory, and absolutely nothing to care for an ALP one

Submit today on the Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill

David Farrar's Kiwiblog has an excellent submission on this absolute travesty of basic individual rights and liberal democracy.

This debate about this issue has been muted. Stuff reports it, with taxpayer funding from NZ On Air, without ANY discussion about the implications for liberal democracy.

What is proposes is a form of racial gerrymandering that means that Māori Ward Councillors on Rotorua District Council will represent fewer people, but with the same amount of power as General Ward Councillors. 

As Farrar says:

This bill would give the Māori ward three Councillors for an electoral population of 21,700 and the General ward three Councillors for an electoral population of 55,600. This means the vote of someone on the general roll will be worth only 39% of the vote of someone on the Māori roll in terms of Ward Councillors, and 58% in terms of the whole Council. 

It debases the votes of non-Māori ward voters, and for what? To seek to equalise representation not on the basis of counting heads, but by valuing the votes of Māori ward voters 2.5x more than non-Māori ward voters.

Let's apply this to Parliament?

Extend this to Parliament (assuming no change in the number of seats) and the result would be this:

General Electorates: 36. 1 MP for every 89958 voters

Māori Electorates: 36. 1 MP for every 7591 voters

In essence it multiplies Māori roll votes 11 fold compared to non-Māori. The exact impact on Parliament is difficult to forecast for multiple reasons, as no doubt there would be more candidates, but also the impact on emigration (let alone immigration) would change the demographic as well (some advancing this policy would like that). 

It could be assumed that the majority of Māori Electorates would vote Labour, and some would vote Te Pāti Māori, maybe one or two could go Green or even NZ First.  

How would that affect the list seats? It is entirely possible to leave them as is, with one person one vote and let proportionality come to play, but that is likely to create an overhang. Let's say based on the current Parliament, that one in seven of the Māori electorates go to Te Pāti Māori, which would mean it gets 5-6 seats. Even if it got double the party vote of 2020 (which would be 2.34%) it would only be entitled to around 3 seats in Parliament, so Parliament would grow by 2-3 more seats in total.  Advocates of such a change might say the overall impact would not be significant, because ultimately National would get most of its MPs from the list, so proportionality might be retained overall, but the effect would be dramatic.

Moreover, if you can argue for electorates that require 11 general roll voters to elect an MP, but 1 Māori roll voter, then you can argue that Māori party voters get the same magnification of impact.

and that would truly be the end of liberal democracy as we know it, and is internationally recognised on the basis of one person one vote.

This sort of gerrymandering is seen in corrupt democracies, which try to construct constituencies that have small numbers of politicians representing large numbers of people who politicians want to reduce the franchise for, with higher numbers for the preferred group.  During the dying days of apartheid, the South African Government argued for its democracy to enable white South Africans to have a veto of decision making over the black majority.  This was rightly decried as racist and unacceptable. Going from total white minority rule to white minority veto was not advancing the rights of all South Africans.

However, there is a movement in Māori politics that is antithetical to liberal democracy and individual rights. Te Pāti Māori MP Rawiri Waititi said it clearly when he thought Aotearoa had a great future "but not necessarily as a democracy". 

It isn't exactly rude to ask if the Green Party of Aotearoa or the New Zealand Labour Party share his view. 

Now I'm highly sceptical of liberal democracy as a tool to protect individual rights, and Waititi is dead right when he raises concern about majority rule. Unfettered democracy does enable mob rule and does enable injustice, but the contraints on this should be constitutional to ensure basic rights are not overriden. I have a lot of sympathy for calls for tino rangatiratanga for everyone.

However, nobody advancing this change is caring remotely for the rights of individuals to peacefully go about their lives, this is about advancing power, albeit at the local government level, to regulate and tax people's property and businesses.

You have only a few hours to express your opposition to this racist travesty of a Bill, that has NOT been advanced by the local MP Todd McClay but rather Labour list MP Tāmati Coffey.  Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are all advancing it.

It deserves to be voted down in flames, and it deserves your submission in ardent opposition to it.

Either go here:

https://www.parliament.nz/en/ECommitteeSubmission/53SCMA_SCF_BILL_121327/CreateSubmission 

or here:

https://www.protectyourvote.nz/

now.

Is New Zealand abandoning independent foreign policy by backing Ukraine, or is Bryce Edwards missing the point?

Bryce Edwards in the NZ Herald declares that the NZ Government’s “independent foreign policy” is “virtually dead” because the Government has chosen to support Ukraine. It’s quite a take, particularly if I give Edwards the benefit of the doubt that he isn’t part of the “tankie” left that thinks Russia isn’t entirely at fault, or that Ukraine isn’t worth supporting because some of Russia’s claims about “Nazis” are true (I will take it for granted he isn’t part of the “tankie” right that sees Russia as a bastion of conservative Christian values against a decadent corrupt West).

NZ “falling into line” with Five Eyes and NATO assumes that it resisted supporting Ukraine, and in supporting Ukraine it is doing so somehow subservient to Western powers. This is an extraordinary position to take, reminiscent of the self-styled “anti-imperialist” peace activists whose stance against imperialism never extends to powers, such as Russia and China, that are antagonists towards Western liberal democracies.

Edwards believes it needs more debate and analysis, and he is not wrong, but to infer that a country cannot have an “independent foreign policy” if it provides military assistance to a UN Member State that has been attacked in a conventional war by another, is a curious interpretation. It infers that NZ has no interest in supporting a UN Member State that is a victim of such an attack or that there is no moral interest in doing so either.

You see international relations is primarily a matter of national governments asserting policy that is in their national interest. Although most proclaim that their foreign policy has an ethical foundation, ethics are largely secondary to national interest, and national interest is indisputably linked to the government of the day remaining in power.

An independent foreign policy for NZ puts NZ’s interests first, and within the boundaries of that, it can seek to promote an ethical vision of foreign policy. Although the Ardern Government proclaims loudly about its ethics, but it know it cannot take that too far, otherwise NZ would trade with much fewer countries and for what end?

Neutrality and foreign policy independence are quite different concepts. NZ is not obliged to support NATO, it did not provide support when NATO struck Serbia to deter potential genocide in Kosovo (having done little when Serbia supported “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnia and Croatia (let’s not mention Croatia’s “ethnic cleansing” of parts of its territory of course)).  That is foreign policy independence, but it is not neutrality. Switzerland and Sweden are neutral.

Edwards cites MP Golriz Ghahraman and former National Party communications advisor Matthew Hooton who essentially claim the decision to support Ukraine is not based on substance of either national interests or ethics.

Ghahraman claims that it is about “appeasing allies”, which is cynical sneering about contributing to a collective effort to defend a nationstate that is a victim of aggression. NZ’s commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions are arguably almost entirely symbolic and demonstrative as well, in terms of impact in reducing climate change, but that isn’t seen as “appeasing allies or trade partners”. Hooton appears motivated to sneer at Labour’s claim of an independent foreign policy, which isn’t particularly interesting. He has an axe to grind, as does Ghahraman, who is one of the most left-wing and anti-Western MPs in Parliament, is hardly supportive of either NATO or any military action from Western countries (given her biggest foreign policy focus appears to be criticism of Israel and silence against the authoritarianism and terror expounded by Hamas and Fatah).  She even retweeted a call by tankie UK MP Jeremy Corbyn (who bemoaned the fall of the Berlin Wall) demanding the State of Palestine be recognised days after Ukraine was invaded.

Ghahraman focusing on her highest foreign policy priority

Matt Robson is unsurprisingly in the Ghahraman camp (shocking that a former hard-left MP would be antagonistic towards Western powers) and makes the dubious claim that the Ardern Government “has drawn us into the largest nuclear-armed military alliance in the world, Nato, and has signed up to the encirclement strategy of Russia and China”.

This is deranged stuff. NZ is no member of NATO. NZ has no treaty obligation to defend any NATO member states (through NATO) or vice versa. Furthermore, the idea that there is an “encirclement strategy” is straight out of the Moscow and Beijing playbook of foreign policy conspiracies. There’s no evidence of such a strategy, but Moscow has touted for 20 years the paranoid claim that the West is keen to invade it, and China constantly claims that the West wants to contain and stop its growth.

Then there is Peter Dunne’s claim that moving away from UN-mandated sanctions is significant. This infers that the UN is somehow neutral, yet it is obvious that UN-mandated sanctions in response to Ukraine would not exist, because Russia as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, can veto any UN sanctions. The UN is absolutely impotent, so the choice is simple in foreign policy:

· Do nothing, because the UN is impotent. Effectively showing zero interest in punishing Russia for invading a neighbour.

· Join traditional Western allies and others in sanctioning Russia.

Edwards does say NZ should seek UN reform, but that is absolutely not going to happen without the consent of the Permanent Five, and that isn’t going to happen whilst two of the five are aggressive revanchists (which one has proven and the other has indicated it wishes to).

Dunne claims “New Zealand will now find it more difficult to resist United States' and British pressure to become involved in similar situations in the future”. Really? Why? Besides, why would it NOT want to be involved in similar situations? Does independent foreign policy mean turning a blind eye to Russia or China invading a neighbour? If so, why? Is it for trade, or is it a desire to not be allied to peaceful liberal democracies against aggressive tyrannies?

Edwards continues “there's a sense in which the New Zealand Government has been slowly but surely edging further into the Ukraine war, discarding any neutrality”. Hang on, neutrality? Since when has NZ had a policy of neutrality in international conflicts? Wasn’t the last significant step in NZ foreign policy to simply remove itself from the US nuclear umbrella and prohibit nuclear weapons but stay in ANZUS, or do some really think NZ is trying to distance itself from other liberal democracies so it can… wait for it… be NEUTRAL when another liberal democracy is invaded?

The claim that this is the biggest change in NZ foreign policy in 35 years is highly questionable. If NZ did become neutral, that would be news, but it has NEVER been, despite some on the hard-left in the Greens and Labour wishing it were so.

Edwards infers that it isn’t a conscious and willing decision to back Ukraine, but a “concession” from “demands”, which implies that the Government didn’t want to help Ukraine. That is worthy of debate, although it is not clear that is the case.

He bemoans that “alternatives to war and aggression are hardly being discussed at the moment”. Whose aggression? Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is not. Russia chose war, Ukraine did not. What is the alternative? Surrender? This is the morally bankrupt talk of the tankie Stop the War Coalition in the UK, which pleads for “peace”, but by taking a “pox on both their houses approach” is effectively siding with Russia. Is defence of the weak against aggression by the strong to be questioned when the cost of supporting the weak is so low?

He's right that NZ has done little on refugees, but that is beside the point.

His final point is both naïve and frankly ridiculous:

Abandoning UN processes for imposing economic sanctions and going to war, as New Zealand has done with Ukraine… just returns the world to a place where the international bullies are free to threaten and dominate smaller and poorer nations. That isn't the type of world we claim to want, but one which our current actions are leading to.

Why?

1. UN processes cannot impose economic sanctions on Russia.

2. International law allows nation states to go to war to assist allies in the event they are attacked, without the need for UN Security Council resolution.

3. NZ providing military assistance to Ukraine has NOT made the world a place for bullies to dominate smaller states. That’s so preposterous to be silly. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, Georgia before that. NZ is virtually irrelevant to Russia.

4. NZ assisting Ukraine is demonstrating a more unified resolve against Russia and is a sign to its ally, China, that a similar approach may apply if it seeks to say, invade Taiwan. That could very likely make the world a safer place.

The alternative to all of this, is for NZ to be neutral. That would put NZ in the position some would like, like India, of straddling the liberal democracies and the authoritarian aggressors. Some naïve peace activists may think this is advantageous, and some may see it so from a trade point of view, but Edwards hasn’t mentioned trade, at all. If NZ were neutral, Moscow and Beijing would cheer. If NZ imposed no sanctions or few sanctions, it would be seen as a place for the rich and powerful from both countries, and their allies, to place themselves and their money. It would be seen as a weakening of the liberal democracies, and as Beijing has already done, they would point out how Wellington is more “even-handed” than Canberra, London and even Warsaw, Tokyo and Helsinki.

I don’t know if Edwards thinks the counterfactual of neutrality on Ukraine is in NZ’s interests or is even morally defensible. It’s difficult to see how it would be, unless your vision of NZ is one that thinks there is no essential difference between Ukraine and Russia, or between the United States and China, and that is a bleak, dark and disturbing vision indeed.

The price of powering civilisation

The crisis in Ukraine and the growing embargo on buying oil and gas from Russia is, of course, creating the greatest crisis in energy since 1979. A crisis over half of the population has never experienced, and it is exposing in clear view the irrationality of energy policies in many countries from the past couple of decades.

Until recently the history of energy policy for humanity has been largely driven by a mix of scientific discovery and innovation, and market demand. As the late Julian Simon once wrote, humanity moved from using wood as a primary source of energy, towards coal in the 18th and 19th century (which saved many remaining forests in Europe from decimation), and then towards oil in the late 19th/early 20th century because of price and capacity.  This also paralleled the rise of electricity, largely generated by burning coal, oil and gas (but also some locations, like New Zealand and Norway, benefited from geography and geology enabling hydro). Nuclear emerged in the mid 20th century, but has been constrained to electricity generation (in jurisdictions not taken over by fear, resulting from hyper-catastrophising) and naval propulsion. 

As the world has become ever more electrified, the demand to generate electricity has been fed primarily by fossil fuel burning, albeit the efficiency of this has grown exponentially. The energy intensity of refined fossil fuels has meant their portability literally enabled aviation to become not just viable, but the dominant means of long distance passenger transport, consigning long distance intercontinental rail travel in the United States and Canada to leisure trips.

The economic impacts are palpable, and all of the rhetoric and hysteria from environmentalists about the evils of fossil fuels ignores what they have enabled in the standards of living for billions.  Goods, services, trade and travel are on the scales they are today because of this.

The push to slow down the effects of climate change has resulted in policies that are almost monomaniacally focused on cutting CO2 emissions at any cost. Sure, there are sound reasons to be encouraging a transition towards energy sources that create fewer emissions that contribute to climate change, but there is little point being concerned about climate change if thousands of people literally freeze to death in winter, or starve due to collapses in food production, or the inability of essential goods to be transported long distances. 

So when tyrannies control much of the energy that powers global economies, and the risks of actually going to war with them to stop their aggression are too high (due to the aggressor's possession of nuclear weapons), then cutting off access to that energy has a price, and you're paying it at the pump.

What the crisis in Ukraine has exposed is how utterly vapid and empty the likes of misanthropes like Extinction Rebellion and other environmental extremists are, because there is no easy path away from fossil fuels.  As wonderful as advances in solar and wind energy are, they still have some significant limitations.  Both require significant storage capacity to be sustainable and useful in their own rights, completely unlike fossil fuel or nuclear generated electricity.  Moreover, for most transport, fossil fuels (or biofuel equivalents) have no cost effective or feasible rivals, yet, for aviation, shipping or heavy road freight transport, or indeed many industrial processes like steel production.

One question New Zealanders might ask is what position the country would be in regarding oil and gas supply if the Ardern Government hadn't stopped enabling new exploration of oil and gas in 2017.  Removing this ban today would have no effect, as it takes years to invest, explore and gain any results, but had it happened in 2017, then there might have been a contribution to global supply. The Ardern Government has deliberately decided to constrain supply of oil and gas, not on economic grounds, not even considering national security, but to virtue signal.

The Ardern Government advanced a radical approach to climate change policy, not just to make a contribution equivalent to NZ's largest trading partners, so NZ would be in-step with those it competes with, but to virtue signal.  To cut net emissions by 50% by 2030 is not going to make a measurable difference to climate change at all, but it is all about Ardern and Shaw looking good on the international stage.  

Yet the oil and gas exploration ban does absolutely nothing to contribute to that, at all.  

The wisdom of the US in enabling unconventional oil and gas exploration has disconnected it from being too concerned about oil and gas from Russia (and the Middle East).  

Germany too, with its Green Party Climate Change Minister advocating a natural gas national reserve and to keep coal fired power stations available for energy security, is learning the value of reliable supply. 

New Zealand, on the other hand...