"Chris Bishop’s primary responsibility is reforming the RMA. ... The bureaucratic class has magnificently undermined his agenda."

"[Chris] Bishop’s primary responsibility, other than completing Steven Joyce’s highway from Warkworth to Whangarei, is reforming the RMA. ... [G]iven how central the reform of the Resource Management Act has been to this government, it defies comprehension that National didn't arrive with a draft ready to go. ...

"The excellent folk at the NZ Initiative have done an analysis of the two proposed [replacement] laws [which eventually emerged]: the Natural Environment and the Planning Bills. Nick Clark, the researcher, concluded, '...in the translation from principles to legislative text, something has gone wrong. Key elements have been weakened, complexity has crept back in, and an extraordinary amount of the systems' substance has been deferred to secondary instruments that do not yet exist.' ...

"The desire to place property rights at the heart of the legislation has been superseded by placing mana whenua into their customary central role in managing the land. ...

"[Also, i]f passed, these bills will not be the final word. That will be left to ‘secondary legislation’, or regulation; binding rules made by the minister of the day that determine how the law is to be applied. The proposal is for parliament to delegate its authority to the executive with minimal oversight. This time next year, Minister Swarbrick could use this secondary legislation to mandate her own vision into reality.

"Did we vote for that? ...

"[T]he bureaucratic class ... has magnificently undermined his agenda. This should have been self-evident thirty months ago ... "

~ Damien Grant from his post 'Chris Bishop has emerged as the main pretender to a shaky crown. How shall we assess his performance?'

The fuel crisis delivers a chance for genuine political leadership

"New Zealand does not possess the people, the capital, or the institutional settings to maintain our first world status. We are moving from the bottom of the OECD to the top of the developing world.

"[It's a] problem [when] ... the price of construction is the highest in the OECD, more than double the average, and ... the cost of capital formation '…which covers machinery, equipment and construction -- is 70% above average in New Zealand and also the highest in the OECD.'

"Meanwhile, global rating agency Fitch confirmed [this] gloomy assessment by downgrading the outlook for New Zealand from dismal to hopeless. I am paraphrasing. They noted that our promised return to fiscal surplus is perpetually delayed due to weak economic growth and expenditure proving more persistent than anticipated. ...

"[T]his [fuel] crisis [however] represents a greater opportunity [for real leadership]. It is chance for the Prime Minister to explain that we cannot borrow our way out of every economic shock. That the path back to fiscal solvency and economic vitality lies not in leveraging the sliver of headroom on the Crown’s balance sheet to avoid addressing our structural deficiencies but in aggressively dealing with those deficiencies.

"I do not mean to diminish the real progress his administration has been achieved but the underlying structural issues of over-regulation and lax fiscal discipline mean all we are doing is slowing the rate of decline.

"Leadership is about telling the electorate what they do not want to hear but need to understand; and that extends well beyond the prospect of a temporary fuel shortage."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'Is this moment that the PM forces me to eat my words? I hope so'

More than a covid's-worth of fiscal incontinence

"[W]hen the pandemic hit Ardern and Robertson had a decision to make. Respond in a fiscally prudent manner or borrow seventy billion, at least thirty of this was spent on non-pandemic frippery, and wrap themselves in a cloak of virtue while leaving an economic calamity to a future set of politicians. ...

"Ardern and Robertson used the pandemic to advance their own agenda ... [John] Key saw a crisis and, lacking an economic agenda or political philosophy, ran to the international money men to maintain the status quo rather than attempt meaningful reform.

"Given the content of the Covid Report the current government is right to highlight Robertson’s fiscal incontinence; pointing to the 70.4 billion total spend as a contrast with their own rectitude.

"Except. Well. ... [Nicola] Willis, who has managed to add over twenty billion new debt in her first two years in office, is projected to increase sovereign debt by more than Robertson achieved over the next five years.

"And this is without a pandemic, major earthquake or outbreak of foot and mouth. ...

"Imagine a company director who has seen revenue fall but maintains payroll by borrowing. Eventually the line of credit ends, staff lose their employment and the director is forced to sell the family home.

"That is our economic policy in one paragraph."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'John Key and Jacinda Ardern both turned to debt when disaster hit'

National is a party for business. For *specific* businesses.

"[S]ince we begin this week’s column at this beautiful [convention centre] let’s take a moment to remind ourselves how it was paid for...

"John Key wanted a convention centre. Since he couldn’t get a flag he needed something to show for his eight years in power. To induce SkyCity to build him a legacy, his government increased the number of permitted slot machines, extended their license, and gave the listed operator a regional monopoly until 2048.

"This is how National believe economics is done. Deals. Haggling. Concessions. Foreign visits and handshakes with oligarchs. National is not a party of free enterprise, it is the party of business."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'ACT is in a death match with NZ First, and the stakes couldn’t be higher'

"Our politics does not produce deep ideological thinkers"

"Our politics does not produce deep ideological thinkers, here in New Zealand. We produce people who do things and then write about them.

"'A Different Kind of Power' is in this tradition ...

"Ardern’s book is a series of events told in an accessible style; she takes us through what occurred, and what she did in reaction. ...But there are no ideas. And when she writes about political decisions of seismic impact there is a bland telling of what occurred. ...

"Things happened. She reacted. She resigned.

"What, I would ask those who are passionate either way when it comes to her Prime Ministership, did she achieve that was different if Winston Peters had elected to reinstall Bill English in office? ...

"The angst and adoration that she inspires is unwarranted in either direction; and all we have left is Kindness. But kindness is not an ideology, a school of thought or framework for governance.

"It is branding."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'July has become Ardern Reflection Month'

"The emergence of Ngāti Pākehā has become a feature of modern Aotearoa."

"The emergence of Ngāti Pākehā – that tribe of pale Kiwi with their pounamu lanyards and pained expressions – has become a feature of modern Aotearoa.
    "It is a harmless pantomime, as they cloak themselves in the culturally appropriated korowai of perpetual grievance and benefit from the Kiwi reluctance to cause unnecessary offence....
    "If half of the world’s plumbers were lost in the Rapture, we’d notice. If ninety percent of sociologists vanished who would report them missing? To which, these recent graduates find themselves competing with their equally educated peers for jobs that, a decade past, a Labrador with a good attitude could have secured.
    "This, for the entitled offspring of the muddling classes, is a shocking realisation. They are not important. They are not special. They are not, in truth, entitled to anything more than their inheritance which, thanks to their parents’ regimen of yoga and boiled legumes, is slowly receding along with their own hairlines."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'What being ‘woke’ may really mean'

Treaty Principles Debate: Have a Listen

I don't recommend many podcast episodes here at NOT PC, but here's one I reckon you should put aside some time for: it's the Working Group's latest podcast, featuring an hour-long debate over his Treaty Proinciples Bill between ACT's David Seymour, and Ngāti Toa's Helmut Modlik.

Hosted by commy bigmouth Martyn Bradbury and libertarian liquidator Damien Grant, it's worth a listen not least because the participants speak with candour, in good faith , and with humour — and (for the most part) are listening to each other. And how many political debates can you say that about today, especially this one!

"Our teachers are not taught how to teach but what to teach" [updated]

"Teaching in New Zealand is a highly regulated profession. You need a four-year degree ... at least two years on the job with a mentor ... and demonstrate that [you] adhere to six standards. You will not be surprised to learn that the first standard is to 'Demonstrate commitment to tangata whenuatanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand.' ...
    "Why, you may wonder, is it necessary for someone who wishes to teach maths to teenagers to hold a politically correct interpretation of a document signed in 1840? The ideological capture of the profession is not limited to this most important of the six principles. ...
    "[A]nalysis shows a heavy focus [at teachers college] on social justice and related fields, and only a small emphasis on the science of teaching, and on science itself. ... The analysis makes it clear: our teachers are not taught how to teach but what to teach. The only consolation is that, thanks to the lack of focus on the science of education, they are not very good at it."

~ Damien Grant, from his column 'The failure of New Zealand's teachers'

UPDATE:

Adding a data point for you (NB: Stephen Hicks's academic field is philosophy):

"At some point the kind folks who are funding our lifestyle will discover that we are insolvent."

"The key data point here is that since the GFC, Wellington has been piling on debt like there is no tomorrow; because when you are running on a three-year electoral cycle, there really isn’t....
    "Because we can no longer afford to pay our own way we borrow heavily. Not just the government; all of us. Our trade deficit is 8% of our GDP and the crown accounts are a mess. At some point the kind folks who are funding our lifestyle will discover that we are insolvent."

~ Damien Grant, from his column 'Skycity had a nasty tumble, and Prefu could bring the same for NZ economy'

"We do not have a cost-of-living crisis because the fall in our living standards is not a temporary condition"

"We do not have a cost-of-living crisis because the fall in our living standards is not a temporary condition....
    "As recently as the early 1990s, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore had a similar average income. Based in US dollars, we are now at $49,000 per capita in income, compared to $60,000 for those living across the Tasman and $72,000 for the island state.
    "Long-term trends matter and we are now falling not only in relative terms, but in absolute ones...
    

    "We have had three decades of consistently poor economic policies implemented by weak finance ministers, and prime ministers who rule by focus group rather than policy....
    

    "We believe that we are entitled to a high standard of living for reasons that we are unable to articulate, that are self-evidently obvious to ourselves but not, sadly, to the rest of the world.
    "And while we slide down both the relative and now the absolute rankings, we magnificently refuse to confront the reality of our economic situation. Our national discourse is consumed with petty disputes on the most crushingly banal of matters.
    "We are not in a cost-of-living crisis. We are just poor."

~ Damien Grant, from his column 'We aren't in a cost of living crisis, we're just poor'

"Our political elites do not get to define the boundaries of legitimate dissent..."

“But – and I realise this will come to as a shock to a few in the Beehive and those who pander to them – our political elites do not get to define the boundaries of legitimate dissent… There is a qualitative difference between the theatre of protest and the real thing...”
    "In all of the hyperventilating about the nature of those protesting, we haven’t confronted the dynamics of what is occurring, and why this is going to be difficult to resolve.
    "Those who refuse the vaccines do so for a variety of complex reasons, but if you are willing to lose your career rather than take the jab, then we need to acknowledge that this belief is genuine, if mistaken."

~ Damien Grant, from his column 'The Podium of Truth Has Shifted, and May Never Return'