Does Winston really care about the constitution or is it baubles as usual?

So Winston Peters is doing what he usually does, after spending two years in the political wilderness he times a revival to tap the issue of the season, that the other parties aren't doing well at tapping, so he can ride his way back to Parliament with a bevy of people nobody has ever heard of before.

This time it is to tackle co-governance with Iwi, and the embracing of the Treaty of Waitangi in ALL aspects of central and local government.  Now I have some sympathy for that position, as important as it is to consult with Iwi and for Maori to be adequately represented in Government, New Zealand clearly achieves that, with Maori represented in both Parliament and local government on the basis of one-person, one-vote and a general consensus among the two major parties about the importance of including Iwi in consultation on issues affecting them. Winston is trying to do much more than address overreach of that.

He wants to tackle non-Maori fear of Maori cultural and linguistic growth, and dominance, whether it is seen in Maori phrases inserted into the ever declining audiences for television news (which frankly is a market decision, you can just switch it off), or the inclusion of references to Te Tiriti in more and more laws and government programmes.

Winston can tackle this because he is much more obviously accepted as being Maori (David Seymour is not so seen). He also knows he can guarantee that TVNZ, Newshub, RNZ and Stuff at least will seek to paint  HIM as being divisive, even racist and he can run rings around the fact he's spent his political career saying the media is unfair to him.

Winston has a couple of problems though:

1.  There is little evidence Winston did ANYTHING when in power, the three times he was a Minister, to slow down Maori nationalism. There was little of it to respond to when he supported National from 1996-1998, but from 2005-2008 and 2017-2020 under Labour, what evidence was there that Winston Peters ever did anything to push this back?

2.  He put Jacinda Ardern into power, notwithstanding that National clearly had the plurality of support as the major party in the 2017 election. It is disingenuous for him to be able to credibly claim that he knew NOTHING of the Maori nationalist aspirations of the Labour Maori caucus (or indeed the Greens, who were part of that coalition and are even more adamant of claims of Maori nationalist/statist based self-determination). However it is entirely possible Winston just took his portfolio, advocated for his pork-barrel Provincial Growth Fund, and the let the two parties on the left get on with it all. 

It might be welcoming to some to have Winston talk in a way that so much of the media would deem politically incorrect, but as he was with immigration, most of what he says reflects little about what he does. 

His other problem is that ACT not only polls but has multiple MPs to occupy this space. It might be notable that Winston talks mostly about the artifacts of the Maori cultural renaissance and the media expressions of it, rather than the more disturbing undermining of liberal democracy, such as granting Ngai Tahu a seat on Environment Canterbury, to sit alongside elected members with the same powers, or the efforts of Rotorua District Council to gerrymander Maori local authority seats that would represent a fraction of the number of non-Maori voters.  

There is a profound awkwardness of politicians, especially non-Maori ones, talking about these issues, because of a lack of philosophical conviction around what constitutional arrangements should exist for a free liberal democracy, and a lack of willingness to engage with views that claim that the underlying cause of poor socio-economic outcomes for Maori is not simply a legacy of colonialism and subsequent non-Maori settlement. The willingness of some Maori nationalists (especially now in Te Pati Maori) to go down the path of "it's us vs. them" should frighten most people, and if Winston Peters is more effective in having that debate that David Seymour (which I think he is), then so be it.

But don't expect a vote for NZ First to deliver anything transformational.  From 1996-1998 NZ First was a brake on a National Government continuing with free market liberal reforms, but not a stop. Similarly, from 2005-2008 and from 2017-2020 it was a brake on Labour Governments continuing with growth of the welfare state, but put a foot on the accelerator of economic nationalist interventions.  It was not a brake on Maori nationalism, because the policies now being advanced by the Government had their genesis in 2017-2020 (or earlier in the case of He Puapua).

There are reasons to be sceptical about ACT achieving much in this space, or National, but these pale in comparison to the reasons to be sceptical about Winston Peters. 

"Restore Passenger Rail" is a pathetic facsimile of Extinction Rebellion misanthropy

So for several mornings a group calling itself "Restore Passenger Rail" has shut down the southbound lanes of the Wellington Urban Motorway approaching the Terrace Tunnel.  This is completely bizarre stuff.

The disruption caused is enormous, not least because this is State Highway 1/2, the key route bypassing central Wellington, connecting the Hutt, Porirua and Wellington's northern suburbs to the southern and eastern suburbs, including Wellington Hospital and Airport.  Most recently they blocked State Highway 2 near Melling, making it impossible for some people to get to Melling Railway Station by car or bus.

The group is calling for passenger rail services to be returned to the extent they were in 2000, presumably excluding commuter services in Wellington and Auckland, both of which have expanded since then (Auckland has been electrified, with much more frequent services, and Wellington services extended to Waikanae, also with improved frequencies).

When asked on RNZ National, one of the spokespeople called for services to be restored as follows:

• Auckland-Wellington (which is actually operating although the overnight Northerner was cancelled in 2004)
• Auckland-Tauranga
• Auckland-Rotorua
• Wellington-Napier
• Picton-Christchurch (which is also actually operating)
• Christchurch-Dunedin-Invercargill and
• Christchurch-Westport (I think he meant Greymouth, which is also operating)

So they don't actually know what services are running.  They claim this is all about climate change and essential to save the planet.  This is completely unhinged, and if it wasn't a cause close to the heart of the Green Party and many on the left, a rational assessment of them would call their arguments misinformation and call them extremists - but no.

So let's make it clear:

1. Even if all of the intercity passenger train services that existed in 2000 were restored, the idea it would make a difference to emissions that was discernible in terms of climate impacts is absurd. Some people would take a trip they wouldn't have done before, some would have gone by bus, very few would have flown and a few would have driven.
2. Unless the trains carry several bus loads on average, every trip, they will generate more emissions than travel by bus.
3. It's all irrelevant because unlike agriculture, transport emissions are part of the Emissions Trading Scheme, within which a finite amount of emissions are available and sold as part of the price of fuel. Any shift will simply result in more emissions being available for other uses.

However I don't think any of the protestors know much about passenger trains and in fact they are just a NZ version of the Extinction Rebellion misanthropes.  They don't even know the train to the West Coast goes to Greymouth not Westport, any train enthusiast knows what trains used to run.  Of course they don't care that stopping traffic generates a LOT of additional emissions.

For all of their talk about saving the planet and humanity, one of the Extinction Rebellion founders, Roger Hallam, explicitly said he would block a road that had an ambulance with a dying person on board.

This isn't just environmentalism and it isn't really railway enthusiasm (which I have some sympathy for, because I like trains), but is hatred of human beings.  Hatred not only of their freedom of choice, but also their lives. 

What's particularly nuts is that Parliament is calling for submissions on the future of inter-regional passenger rail. (deadline next Friday 21st October).  The claim by the protestors that they have "tried everything" is vacuous empty nonsense.  This is undoubtedly the most rail friendly government for some time, and billions of dollars have been poured into Kiwirail to upgrade tracks and expand services, albeit the passenger focus has been on Auckland and Wellington, not least because most of the demand for intercity services was lost during travel restrictions under the pandemic.  

I'm not a fan of subsidising intercity passenger rail, because there are unsubsidised other modes that exist, and one of them (buses) will take some time to recover after the loss of international travel. However, I like intercity passenger rail, and if Kiwirail can develop a business case for new services, then good for them.  I was involved in reviewing intercity passenger rail viability in 2001, and the figures seen then were poor, but a lot has happened since then. The population has increased, overseas travel increased (although it may take another year or two for numbers to recover) and there may be more interest in travel  by rail, so I think there are merits in Kiwirail assessing opportunities or if it is not interested, in it being required to treat any potential private providers in a non-discriminatory manner.

but these protestors aren't REALLY interested in passenger rail. Do you really think they would stop disruptive protests if five new passenger train services were announced by the government? Of course not.

Of course not, they want attention, they want to promote catastrophism and they don't care for either the trappings of a free society to communicate their views like everyone else, or even a government that is sympathetic to their cause.

It's notable that the Government has said little about them, neither has the Green Party or Wellington's new Green Mayor, Tory Whanau. National's Chris Bishop called them "idiots" and rightly so, but maybe the Labour and Greens politicians LIKE measures that make driving more difficult, and don't want to abuse them?

They wont stop protesting until it becomes too hard for them to do so, they will block more roads and demand "action" from whatever government is in power, regardless of the action being carried out for their cause.  Because what they want is applause and approval from the like-minded, their own little network of misanthropes, and most of all, media attention so they can be interviewed, endlessly.  

This raises their social standing to have disrupted "evil" car "fascists" and drawn attention to a "righteous" cause (diverting taxpayers' money to some train services). They'll feel special and privileged, and hopefully get selected to go on the Green Party's list.

I doubt ANY of them have ridden on the Northern Explorer, Coastal Pacific or TranzAlpine trains, ever! Because it's not about trains.

It is, after all, performative, status-seeking, social misanthropy. 

Climate change and agriculture

I accept there is anthropogenic climate change, and there is going to be an ongoing process of reductions in emissions due to improvements in efficiency and technology.  Because New Zealand has such a low population relative to its production of agricultural commodities, emissions from agriculture are high per capita, compared to virtually all of its trading partners.

As a result, the agricultural sector will have to be a part of that, and New Zealand should be expected to cut emissions along with the rest of the world. 

However, most of New Zealand's agricultural production is exported, and export markets for agricultural commodities are heavily distorted by a mix of high subsidies, tariffs and other import barriers from major economies, specifically the European Union and the United States (Japan as well, but that affects the rice market).  As New Zealand's market is both open to imports and there are few subsidies, New Zealand exports effectively because it is an efficient producer, which also happens to have some of the lowest emissions per tonne of production in the world.  One study indicated that for lamb, New Zealand emitted 688kg of CO2 per tonne produced and imported to the UK, compared to 2849kg of CO2 for UK produced lamb. 

So let's paint the picture. New Zealand farmers, located further away from most markets than any other producers, compete on a global market, a market heavily distorted by import quotas (restricting how much New Zealand farmers can sell), tariffs (taxing their products but not taxing domestic producers) and subsidies (undercutting the higher cost of production). If there were largely a free market for agriculture, similar to many manufactured goods, then inefficient producers (that use more energy and emit more CO2) would be out of business or would need to improve efficiency.  

However there is not. There were some tender attempts by the Bush Administration to get rid of export subsidies for agriculture, if the EU also agreed, but this all faltered, and since the Obama Administration there has been little to no interest from the US in multilateral trade liberalisation (and the EU has never been keen on liberalising agricultural trade). 

For New Zealand farmers to face payments for emissions on a scale or in a manner that undermines their export competitiveness is likely to have several effects:

• Reducing the scale of New Zealand agricultural production 
• Increasing the price of commodities New Zealand exports
• Increasing the production of LESS efficient and HIGHER emitting producers that are heavily protected and not required to pay for emissions.

In short it risks exporting emissions, by shifting production to other economies.

The most generous view of this is it is futile. It buys virtue signalling from unproductive multi-national lobbyists like Greenpeace and enables Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw to claim they are "world leading", but the savings in emissions get replaced by higher emissions from elsewhere. When New Zealand reduces production, others will sell to those markets instead, at a slightly higher price, but with higher emissions and less economic efficiency.  The least generous view of it is that it is economic treachery.  It harms a local industry to ineffectively achieve a policy objective.

It would be quite different if Ardern and Shaw went to Brussels, Washington, Canberra et al and argued that New Zealand will charge for methane emissions if THEY will, and if THEY will introduce measures to reduce emissions in agriculture that at the very least do not distort international trade in agricultural commodities any more than their existing protectionist arrangements.  It presents options that show New Zealand is willing to move if they are as well.

Sure, whatever New Zealand does on emissions will make ~0 impact on climate change, but if there is going to be action on emissions New Zealand has to join in, or it faces the likelihood of sanctions from several major economies. What matters though is this small economy does not kneecap its most productive and competitive sectors in order to virtue signal.  

Of course there are plenty who hate the farming sector, either because of what they produce and who they vote for, and the Green Party thinks agriculture should go all organic, produce LESS at HIGHER prices, and you can imagine the impact of this on the poor (but the Greens think they can tax the rich to pay for everyone).  They are very happy to spend the tax revenue collected, but treat it as a sunset industry.

So sure, agriculture needs to be included, but there needs to be a Government that doesn't want to shrink the sector in which New Zealand has the greatest comparative advantage. 

Free public transport is not an environmentally friendly policy

Auckland's leading leftwing Mayoral candidate, Efeso Collins, has as one of his key platforms making public transport "free" at the point of use, by which he means he'll force everyone else (ratepayers and he's hoping taxpayers, as well as car and truck drivers) to pay for it.

The Greens, who want everything to be free, except your property rights, speech, powers to buy and sell and contract generally, support this.

Given how much publicity has been given to this idea, it's worth giving it a review.  You'll say, quite rightly, that a libertarian could never countenance forcing people to pay for others to get around, and you're right. Philosophically, the idea that if you want to travel somewhere, for whatever reason, that other people should be forced to pay for your choice of travel, is an anathema to individual liberty.  

However, let me put that to one side.  Does the idea that public transport should be fully taxpayer funded, has some merits? Could it actually result in less traffic, less pollution?

Tallinn, Estonia implemented free tram and bus travel for local residents in 2013. The National Audit Office of Estonia reviewed the impacts of the policy and came to the following conclusions:

• It did not reach its goal of reducing car journeys
• Public transport use increased, but not significantly
• Bus network doesn't meet the need of car users

A more detailed study of the impacts was more damning and it was based on a large scale survey in the city.  Note Tallinn previously had a fare-box cost recovery level of around one-third, so one-third of operating costs were recovered from fares, so fares were not high before. 

• Trips by public transport increased by 14%
• Trips by car decreased by 10%
• Trips by walking decreased by 40%
• Average distance travelled by car increased by 13%, resulting in total vehicle kms driven increased by 31%

Much of the public transport trip increase was for 15-19yos, 60-74yos, those on very low incomes, the unemployed/not in education.  However public transport trips for those on higher incomes decreased due to crowding. Higher income people preferred to drive. 

In short, free public transport saw more trips, most of them came from active modes, meanwhile the reduced car trips were more than offset by the remaining car trips being longer distances.  

This shouldn't be a surprise, Hasselt, Belgium (78,000 people) introduced free public transport in 1996.  The experience of that city was mixed:

• Public transport trips went up ten-fold
• 63% of additional public transport trips were existing users travelling more frequently
• 37% of additional public transport trips were new users, but only 16% came from car trips, the remainder were from bicycle and walking.  So the majority of mode shift was from active modes.
• There was also a five-fold increase in the bus fleet, doubling in bus routes and significant increase in frequencies at the same time as abolition of fares
• There was no noticeable impact on car ownership or change in trip mode share
• Free fares were dropped in 2014 because of the cost, with fare concessions applying only to only a small minority of passengers.

In short, free public transport saw people who already used it, used it a lot more often, and the majority of new users switched from walking and cycling to riding public transport.  

Templin, Germany (15,000 people) also introduced free public transport, in 1997.  The result were:

• 12 fold increase in patronage, with the majority being young people and children
• 35-50% of the modal shift came from walking, 30-40% from cycling, with only 10-20% coming from car trips
• Vandalism increased attributed to the higher numbers of younger passengers.

Once again, the main impact of free public transport is to attract people from active modes, so people ride buses instead of walking and cycling.  This costs more for taxpayers, costs more for the environment and so is a negative net impact overall. 

In NONE of the case studies of free public transport was there a meaningful impact on traffic congestion.  

In ALL of the case studies the two main impacts were:

• to encourage people who already use public transport to travel a lot more often
• Reduce walking and cycling (because people who walked and cycled found it quicker and easier to just hop on a bus)

Free public transport has a small impact on driving, but it is hardly worth the cost. It has a big impact on walking and cycling, which is a transfer from zero emissions transport to transport that generates emissions, both directly (fuel and electricity) and indirectly (production of buses/trams/trains, road/rail wear and tear).  

Some may say there is utility in people doing more trips by public transport, but if they were trips that weren't going to happen anyway, then the question is why should taxpayers/ratepayers pay for people to do joyrides, to visit friends, visit places they never thought of going before, just because it's free? Why is that a good use of taxpayer/ratepayer money?  

The simple truth is that free public transport is a political bribe that sounds nice, and gets a lot of support from some on the Green-left despite the evidence being that it is anti-environmental.  It might make a small difference to car trips, but it makes a big difference to reducing walking and cycling - and it generates a lot of arguably unnecessary trips.

So maybe consider that when voting in the local elections.

Do the Greens really back the demands of #schoolstrike4climate?

So on Friday the #schoolstrike4climate was held, whereby a bunch of hysterical school children demand that a Government, which is literally obsessed with mitigating climate change (even though the impacts of its measures are infinitesimal), should do MORE, NOW!

I don't want to bother with critiquing a bunch of kids, backed by environmentalist/leftist teachers (and the poor quality teacher protectionist racket), demanding public policy changes without the faintest clue of the consequences, but I do care about the Green Party - the main future coalition partner of the Labour Party, agreeing to all of its demands.  The kids aren't to blame, because the kids are being used by politicians and their supporters, because of the assumption that they'll get entirely positive media coverage and not be subject to criticism because... well... kids being political is meant to be a GOOD thing (imagine if kids were organised to go on a protest for something the Greens opposed though...)

#schoolstrike4climate put out a press release, published on Scoop of their rambling demands: 

• banning the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, 
• halving the herd of cows

(Taxpayers should apparently be forced to "invest in a just transition" to compensate farmers for this)

Then there is this 

"agriculture isn’t the only thing we want to see changes in"  (I bet, you little meddlers)

 In the words of one of our organisers, Charlotte Hoffman: 

‘We need to start making big changes to transport, too. If the New Zealand Government is really serious about committing to a sustainable future, then they need to completely cut our transport emissions. Compared to other things, these changes are simple to make. Ban unnecessary air travel, invest in better public transport. If the Government wanted to, they would.’

So add:

• Ban unnecessary air travel and
• Invest in better public transport

So what of it?

The last demand is just silly, because this government is pouring unprecedented amounts of road user tax and general tax income into public transport. The latest National Land Transport Programme is spending $2.3 billion on public transport infrastructure, $2.6 billion on subsidising public transport services.  Sure it's NEVER enough for the kids, but this is the most benign of the demands.

The rest are absolutely destructive.

• Synthetic fertilisers literally help sustain 3.5 billion people on the planet. This is a demand that will kill people. Without synthetic fertilisers food production would drop significantly, prices would rise, and although you can be sure the kids and the Greens wont suffer, it would mean hundreds of millions of people would starve, and billions would be undernourished.  Sure, if farmers can find alternatives good for them, let them do as they see fit, but let's remember New Zealand does NOT subsidise fertiliser (and hasn't done so since the late 1980s when the free-market liberal reforms the likes of the Greens opposed, got rid of agricultural subsidies).

• Halving the dairy farm herd would cut the country's export earnings by around 5% and GDP by 1.5%. That's about a quarter of the education budget. This will make the country poorer, especially rural areas. Sure the kids want to "invest in a just transition" (spend more taxpayers' money on people not producing anything to compensate them for banning their business), but it's just more money coming from nowhere.  This would also put up dairy prices and modestly increase global food prices. For some reason the Greens think it is "just" for the world's least subsidised dairy sector to kneecap itself by half, but the Greens don't care very much about production of anything.  If dairy drops because it is no longer commercially viable, then that's one thing, but this is just a demand of destruction.

• Banning "unnecessary" air travel is the real authoritarian scold streak coming out.  What's "unnecessary"? I am fairly sure foreigners taking a holiday in NZ is "unnecessary" so maybe kneecap international air travel (except, of course, for politicians going to climate change conferences). That's around $17.5 billion a year of revenue, which IS the total education budget.  Imagine the mentality that would want a law and a bureaucracy judging if your travel is "necessary".

So the Greens want an end to synthetic fertiliser, want to halve the dairy industry and stop you flying on holiday, or to go to a conference (except perhaps a Green approved one).

This will make people poorer, make them less free and will make next to no difference to the impacts of climate change, except by making them LESS able to respond to it, LESS able to afford to adapt.

The posh kids don't know or understand any of this, but the Green Party which uses them, which facilitates them as tools to advance its agenda should know better.  It's an agenda of misanthropy, of degrowth and authoritarianism.

What epitomised it was an interview on Newstalk ZB on Friday between Heather du-Plessis-Allan (HDPA) and Izzy Cook, one of the organisers of the #schoolstrike4climate.  She's under 18, so let's be clear here, she is being put forward to represent this movement, with the support of the Greens, environmentalist groups, some of her teachers and presumably her parents, but the kitchen of politics can get hot - and she has learnt a humiliating lesson is what being an adult, engaging in political debate, is all about.

The peak was HDPA asking how the ban on unnecessary flights would be implemented.  HDPA asked if it was ok if she flew to a conference, Cook said no, it should be done by video.  Then HDPA asked about travel, paraphrased as follows:

HDPA: I'm planning to fly to Fiji on holiday should I be allowed to do that?

IC: No, you shouldn't.

HDPA: When did you last fly anywhere?

IC: A few months ago

HDPA: Where did you go?

IC: Fiji...

I can't imagine how awful Izzy Cook is feeling after that, but she will be buttressed by adults who will call HDPA a "fascist" and play on Cook's youth as being a shield that should defend her from being cross examined on a political issue.

However, this is so profoundly dishonest and cruel.  The Greens want 16 and 17yos to have the vote, ostensibly because the decisions made in Parliament affect them too, and they can have jobs, pay taxes etc. Many of these arguments could go down to 12yos etc etc. but of course the Greens wouldn't want them to have votes if they didn't think they could harvest power from it.  Have no doubt, the Greens think that its brand of dishing out other people's money with no conditions and solving the world through banning "what's bad", making compulsory "what's good" and endlessly trotting out and abusing words like "fairness" and "sharing power", will bamboozle plenty of kids brought up in an education system that is tilted towards promoting their ideological view of the world.

Furthermore the utter intolerance of this ideological view is what the kids are brought up on.  Greta Thunberg's "How Dare You", is THE response to simply questioning the effectiveness and impact of poorly thought out extreme ideas about destroying parts of the economy.  The kids are taught themselves to humiliate those who disagree with them with hyperbole like "why do you want the planet to die?".  After all, they're being taught that extinction is coming, armageddon is near, and that the people getting in the way just want to  "make profits at their expense".  This simplistic binary, us (good) vs. them (bad) is what fuels this hysteria, and it is largely invented in the minds of Green activists.  

However they DON'T want the kids to be subject to the same scrutiny.  They want a mob of kids to be immune from criticism, advancing the policies THEY want.  Because it's a lot easier to risk one or two kids being cannon fodder to a critical journalist than to actually have James Shaw, Marama Davidson and the Green caucus confront voters with "you'll need a permit to book a flight somewhere".

The Greens are grooming a new generation of hypocritical climate scolds who want to destroy people's livelihoods, regulate how they live their lives and make food much much more expensive harming the poor.

So bear a moment of sympathy for Izzy Cook, she didn't expect to get scrutinised, to have her own personal hypocrisy highlighted on radio across the country, and she wasn't prepared. Nothing the activists who have groomed her mind prepared her for an alternative point of view, and the Green Party itself, eager to be a much more influential force on the next Government, used her and the other school kids to advance policies that, if subject to proper media scrutiny, would shrink the party's support close to the 5% threshold.

If you're going to advance political ideas that impose enormous costs on people, then you actually need to front up and propose them openly yourself James Shaw, Marama Davidson, Chloe Swarbrick et al.