The poison pill smuggled in with the Indian FTA

Another Constitutional Trojan Horse: advancing change through political stealth

FOR ALL THE FOOLISH NONSENSE about "tsunamis" talked about the Indian-NZ Free Trade Deal, there is a genuine issue that Gary Judd KC has identified in reading through it, and it's not about free trade or butter chicken. It's about a poisonous clause inserted at the obvious behest of the NZ negotiators. 

"The striking feature of this Free-Trade Agreement," notes Judd, "is that it brings the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into the text of a trade treaty. That is not a side issue. It is a political and constitutional declaration inserted into an agreement that is supposed to be about trade. ... New Zealand’s Free-Trade Agreements with the United Kingdom and the European Union refer to indigenous rights and Māori participation. But the India agreement goes further. It is the first to affirm UNDRIP expressly. That is a significant escalation."

Why the hell is it there?

Everything points to this UNDRIP wording having been included at New Zealand’s initiative, not India’s. India appears to have agreed only on condition that its longstanding reservation was recorded. There is no obvious reason why India would want UNDRIP written into a trade agreement with New Zealand. ...

If it truly changed nothing, it would not be there. The obvious reason for including it is not trade with India but politics within New Zealand. A trade agreement is being used to advance a domestic constitutional and political agenda. That is an abuse of the treaty-making process. A provision with no real trade function, but clear ideological value at home, has no legitimate place in a Free-Trade Agreement.

Once this affirmation is in a ratified treaty, it will inevitably be invoked inside New Zealand as proof that the country is committed to UNDRIP in a serious and operative way, not merely in some airy symbolic sense. Lawyers, activists and judges will be invited to treat it as yet another marker of state commitment. To dismiss that as mere technicality would be naive.

You'll remember that Helen Clark, as Prime Minister, was astute enough to have her UN representative vote against the Declaration -- one of only four nations to oppose.  (As Judd notes: "India voted in favour (see here) but immediately made it clear that it did so subject to an important reservation. That same reservation now reappears in the FTA.")

It was John Key who blithely acceded to signing up simply in order to bolster his parliamentary support from Pita Sharples's Maori Party. 

What Key casually signed away was not trivial, as we saw when Ardern's Labour Government began drawing up the He Puapua document under UNDRIP's impetus. "He Puapua is not a minor discussion paper," Judd reminds us. "It is a blueprint for major constitutional change, including forms of co-governance. One example is paragraph 15: 'If they choose, Maori must be able to participate in Crown governance."

Clark's objection to the Declaration was principled, and what Clark's UN representative  Rosemary Banks said about it then is as valid now: Four provisions in the Declaration in particular were [and still are] "fundamentally incompatible with New Zealand’s constitutional and legal arrangements, [with] the Treaty of Waitangi, and [with] the principle of governing for the good of all its citizens."

What were those four provisions?

• Article 26 stated that indigenous peoples had a right to own, use, develop or control lands and territories that they had traditionally owned, occupied or used. For New Zealand, the entire country was potentially caught within the scope of the article, which appeared to require recognition of rights to lands now lawfully owned by other citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous, and did not take into account the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned. The article, furthermore, implied that indigenous peoples had rights that others did not have.
• The entire country would also appear to fall within the scope of article 28 on redress and compensation. The text generally took no account of the fact that land might now be occupied or owned legitimately by others, or subject to numerous different or overlapping indigenous claims.
• Finally, the Declaration['s articles 19 and 32] implied that indigenous peoples had a right of veto over a democratic legislature and national resource management, she said. She strongly supported the full and active engagement of indigenous peoples in democratic decision-making processes. New Zealand also had some of the most extensive consultation mechanisms in the world. But the articles in the Declaration implied different classes of citizenship, where indigenous had a right to veto that other groups or individuals did not have.

In short, the Declaration set up two standards of citizenship based on race, and a legal veto over other's property based on ancestry. Clark understood that. Key was too dim.

And so too are Luxon and Todd McClay, who either called for this clause's insertion in the Indian FTA themselves, or were insufficiently astute to have seen it there and taken out.

The He Puapua programme itself was begun without explicit acknowledgement of its goals. Those goals, indeed its very existence, were only revealed when it began to seem that some underlying framework was at play in Willy Jackson's and Nanaia Mahuta's legislative agenda.  Turns out there was. Media organisations uncovered the document, who then obtained it under the Official Information Act, and it was finally released only in April 2021 after pressure from the Ombudsman. "That is not transparent government," points out Judd. "It is disclosure dragged out by resistance."

The irony is that the same thing is happening here. 

Neither Government appears ready to argue openly for setting up two standards of citizenship based on race and ancestry.

Instead, they have to do it by stealth.

Gary Judd explains the danger in detail here, including illustrations "why ratifying the FTA in its present form is not a harmless gesture." I recommend the read.

He concludes:

What is most objectionable in all this is the contempt it shows for ordinary New Zealanders. Constitutional change of this magnitude should be argued for openly, defended honestly and submitted to democratic judgment. Instead, it has been advanced by ministers, officials and sympathetic elites through opaque processes, delayed disclosure and legal increment. That is no way to alter the foundations of a country.

The obvious remedy is greater democratic control. If politicians, officials or judges wish to drive constitutional change, they should have to defend it before the public in clear terms and win consent for it, not smuggle it through advisory reports, bureaucratic process or the fine print of a trade treaty.

That is the real issue raised by this agreement: not trade, but whether constitutional change in New Zealand will occur by democratic choice or by political stealth.

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good."

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."

~ Thomas Sowell from his 1993 book Is Reality Optional?

"Emotion has its place. You might argue that it was appropriate in crisis situations like the pandemic, the Christchurch shooting, and the White Island eruption. ...
    "But emotion can only go so far, because wanting something to be true, because it's kind, is not the same as it actually being true."

~ OJB from their post 'I Blame Women!'

"It is not kind to keep borrowing against future generations’ futures. It isn’t kind to promise the world and deliver sweet F all. Remember Ardern was going to house all of NZ’s homeless within 4 weeks of becoming PM, end child poverty, and build 100,000 houses? How wonderful! And what happened? ..."

~ Ani O'Brien

"The Maori seats encourage people to ghettoise themselves"

"It has become starkly obvious that the Maori seats are being used by activists to [ghettoise Māori: to isolate them, separate them, cut them off, according to a cultural identity]. ...

"Ghettoisation can be done to a person or group, or people or groups can do it to themselves. ...

"Israr Kasana, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant to the Canadian city of Calgary, explains why he and his family rejected the temptation to adopt the comfortable way of establishing themselves within a Pakistani community. He says 'Ghettoisation or marginalisation of any kind is bad for society. It creates exclusion, imbalance, envy, anger, ignorance and, more importantly, distrust.' ...

"The Maori seats encourage people to ghettoise themselves according to cultural identity, whereas what we must surely want is a society in which people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law." ...

"[Then National leader Bill] English said [in 2003] the National Party 'stands for one standard of citizenship for all.' ... 'That’s why a National-led Government will abolish the Maori seats.” Of course, it did nothing of the sort when National came back into government in 2008 under John Key. Instead, the Key government abetted the infiltration of all parts of New Zealand society by elements who would substitute authoritarian tribal rule for a free and democratic society, a process which was accelerated by the Ardern/Hipkins governments. ...

"Under pressure from ACT and New Zealand First, the coalition government has walked this back a bit but not to the extent needed to offer meaningful restraint of the authoritarian tendencies which unthinking acquiescence by most of us has unwittingly allowed. ...

"Leadership is needed. We need a Prime Minister who will say loudly and clearly what English said in 2003 ... Today, when NZ First has advanced a Bill for a referendum and ACT says get rid of the Maori seats now, the opportunity is ripe for that sort of leadership.

"Getting rid of the seats, especially by or endorsed by referendum to show it is peoples’ will, would not only remove an anti-democratic excrescence, but also be a signal that enough is enough and that henceforth we shall be a 'multiracial society [where] people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law.'

"Yet the National Party is silent. ..."

~ Gary Judd, composite quote from his posts 'Ghettoising the mind' and 'National could signal its support for democracy'

SOME HISTORY: 

"[T]he Māori seats were created to bring Māori into the parliamentary system and guarantee representation, rather than exclude them.
 

"By 1867, when the Māori Representation Act 1867(1) passed, Europeans outnumbered Māori roughly four to one. ...

"The Māori seats addressed a real problem: under the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 [2] voting required individual property or household qualification. Most Māori land was communally held, leaving Māori largely unable to meet the franchise. ...

The Māori electorates solved the voting problem by granting all Māori men over 21 the right to vote, decades before universal male suffrage applied elsewhere in New Zealand [3]. Far from limiting Māori rights, the law expanded them. ...

"The seats also guaranteed meaningful participation. Four electorates—three in the North Island, one for the South—were superimposed over existing electorates. Māori with qualifying property could still vote in European electorates, giving many a dual vote. [4] Officials went to extraordinary lengths to ensure participation: in 1890, a returning officer undertook a six-day trek through dense Urewera bush to establish a polling station at Maungapōhatu. [5] Such efforts are hardly consistent with a strategy to suppress Māori voices. ...

"Seats were originally intended as temporary until Māori qualified under the general property franchise [6] ...

"While Māori were under-represented by modern proportional standards [when the Māori seats were created in 1867, each European electorate represented roughly 3,500 people, while each Māori electorate represented around 12,500 people [7]], the four seats ensured guaranteed parliamentary representation, at a time when European immigration was rapidly outpacing Māori numbers. This was enfranchisement, not suppression.' ...

"However today the original rationale for the Māori electorates has disappeared. In the current Parliament 33 MPs identify as having Māori heritage — about 27% of the House — far exceeding Māori’s roughly 17% share of the population. Even without the seven reserved seats, Māori representation would remain substantial, the historical purpose of the Māori electorates has now been fulfilled and, consistent with the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System and with Article 3 of the Treaty of Waitangi, they should now be abolished in favour of equal representation for all voters."

NOTES

1. New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats

2. New Zealand Parliament, “History of the Electoral System,” https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/how-parliament-works/history/history-of-the-electoral-system/

3. New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats
4. McRobie, Alan, Electoral Atlas of New Zealand, GP Books, 1989.
5. New Zealand History, “Polling in isolated Māori communities,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats
6. Ibid.; New Zealand History, “Setting up the Māori seats,” https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/setting-maori-seats

7. Te Ara, “Māori representation,” https://teara.govt.nz/en/nga-mangai-maori-representation

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'

Ardern: "The myth-making begins immediately."

"'Prime Minister,' the new documentary charting Jacinda Ardern’s ascent, apotheosis and eventual retreat from public life, bills itself as an 'intimate portrait' of political power. ... Most of the footage is seemingly shot by her partner, Clarke Gayford, and the result feels less like a political documentary and more like stumbling across somebody’s unguarded home videos and realising, with horror, that they want you to watch all of them. ...

"The myth-making begins immediately. We’re whisked back to 2017, those breathless days when Ardern – 37, photogenic, permanently on the brink of tears – was hoisted into the Labour leadership and proclaimed the Kiwi messiah by people who really ought to get out more. The film dwells on this moment with something approaching religious fervour. ...

"Admirers will be transported; critics will develop a nervous tic. And the rest of us will ponder whether the world truly needed two hours of Jacinda’s domestic cinema. Spoiler: probably not."

~ UK's Daily Telegraph on a new home movie

Jacinda: "Rarely has a person seemed so suited for a job"

 

"Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand, is reportedly in the running to be the next UN secretary-general. Rarely has a person seemed so suited for a job: an overpraised politician with no ability leading an ineffective organisation with no accountability."

~ Hugo Timms from his op-ed 'Jacinda Ardern leading the UN? God help us'

When I hear warmists whinge about the rocketing cost of living, I think about climate justice.

When I hear warmists whinge about the rocketing cost of living, I think about climate justice.

Why?

Because these are climate activists complaining about the effects of climate activism.

Let's start with the cost of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces, capsicums ... you know, all the things now generally grown in greenhouses. To heat them economically, growers use gas. And "because carbon dioxide is a plant food, concentrations of the gas are sometimes elevated in greenhouses to accelerate growth....

...All this requires a lot of energy, making greenhouses vulnerable to climate taxes on carbon dioxide emissions and bans on hydrocarbons, which drive fuel and electricity prices higher.

Government policies have tripled natural gas prices for Simon Watson of 'NZ Hothouse,' a 25-year tomato producer in South Auckland, who says the very foundation of his business is crumbling.

Twenty-five years ago, gas was abundant and we were told it was going to last forever,” said Watson. “It was a wonderful thing.”

But the good times are gone. Natural gas supplies are running out [sic], and rising costs threaten to uproot the entire operation, disrupting hundreds of workers. Watson’s two plants represent about 10% of New Zealand’s 500 acres of covered crops in the upper North Island. He predicts many will have to cut back or close because they can’t afford to pay for gas.

And salad dodgers have to pay too.

Watson points out that 80% to 90% of supermarket products – from meat and dairy to sugary drinks and liquor – rely on gas-intensive processes. The decline in natural gas reserves is pushing prices higher.

As energy commentator Vijay Jayaraj explains, this is an entirely self-inflicted energy crisis.

This manufactured crisis reveals the true cost of climate virtue-signalling – not just in New Zealand but across the globe where similar policies are damaging the agricultural sector. ... The government and the energy industry have nine months to come up with a solution before the high energy demands of next winter make the situation catastrophic.

"Catastrophic" is precisely what warmists were after. So it's funny to see them whimpering now.

You want to ban gas, ban exploration of gas, to price gas off the market? Then, you know, how about sucking up the consequences without whimpering.

But it makes things no easier for the rest of us.

Helen Clark's women

Helen Clark: "Women should stick together. But not those women!"

"According to the NZ Herald this morning: 

'Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has described the departure of former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern from politics as “devastating for women around the world”.'

"Not this one. ...

"Clark's comments relate to the abuse that women politicians have to endure and how they must stick together and build networks to protect themselves.

"When I had a brief fling with political advocacy, and later campaigning for ACT in 2005 and 2008, not many women wanted to stick together with me."

~ Lindsay Mitchell, from her post 'Why I disagree with Helen Clark'

"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'

"This is what Ardern's famous form of kindness and compassion actually looks like."

"[C]hildren who get murdered ... were definitely short of ... love and care. That is what lies at the heart of New Zealand's high rate of child abuse and neglect. Not material poverty. Not a lack of money.

"It's a fact ex-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern either wilfully or naively chose to ignore. Her solution to the plight of too many suffering children was [instead] greater wealth redistribution. Inventing new payments for families with babies, lifting benefit rates and installing families in motels were three major policies designed to alleviate poverty. But the mayhem goes on. ... 'Violence against children is increasing. The number of children admitted to hospital with injuries because of assault, abuse or neglect increased sharply in 2024 to the highest number in at least a decade. Violent offending against children also continued to increase ....'"

"Throwing money at people who become parents willy-nilly, who lack any financial or emotional wherewithal, who can't look after themselves let alone a demanding, time-intensive baby, is nothing more than a salve to the conscience of people who have misdiagnosed the problem. Led by the likes of Jacinda Ardern.

"This is what Ardern's famous form of kindness and compassion actually looks like. ...

"So while we endure the massive media-hype around Ardern's biography, and most detractors focus on her horribly hypocritical claim to a compassion-driven Covid response, remember, her main reason for entering politics was to help children.

"Not only did she fail, but she may have made matters worse."

~ Lindsay Mitchell from her post 'Ardern: If she insists on being remembered, I will oblige'

"Announcing the winner of the children’s book awards. ... Jacinda Ardern’s new memoir"

"Announcing the winner of the children’s book awards. Much of Jacinda Ardern’s new memoir reads like an experiment in Young Adult literature—the heartwarming story of a Mormon who lost her faith but held onto her values, and even now continues her lifelong mission of knocking on doors to spread the message that love and a left-wing vote conquers all....

"'A Different Kind of Power' is ... aimed at a particular kind of young, liberal, educated American idiot eager to drink the Kool-Aid that Ardern goes around dispensing in her various meaningless roles in the US as an ambassador of kindness. Be vulnerable, she advises throughout 'A Different Kind of Power.' Be sensitive. Above all, be kind. I remember the first time I heard her articulate this sort of thing when she tried it on at a rather dismal Labour Party event in the Grey Lynn RSA in about 2011. Labour were in opposition, lost and afraid; Ardern was a list MP, optimistic and possibly insane. 'I’ve been thinking about a politics based on love,' she said, and even the party faithful looked at her like she was mad. She was an artist ahead of her time. ...

"It’s an entertaining story. Weird little Mormon kid becomes world figure. ... Ardern never does things by halves, or even by wholes; a theme of 'A Different Kind of Power' is that she goes the extra distance, rabbits on, bangs the empathy drum through the streets of her book, all hear-ye hear-ye, a town crier literally crying her head off at the sorrows of the world but determined to face its evils with a sopping handkerchief and a set of wet slogans. It’s a very Jacinda Ardern book, as in true to her idea of herself."

~ Steve Braunas from his 'Jacinda, the first review'

UPDATE: A second review ...

"[T]he book wasn’t written with the New Zealand market in mind but for all those progressives in the Northern Hemisphere who exulted in Ardern’s considerable wins, such as her handling of the Christchurch Mosque shootings, the Whakaari/White Island disaster, her successful Covid-19 shut down of the country in 2020, and the political qualities of kindness she espouses.

"Ardern has always been the queen of identity politics. She turns her beliefs into full-blown convictions that you’re either onside with, or absolutely not. It’s revealing that issues outside of that, for example the broken promise to build 100,000 KiwiBuild properties, receive scant attention in her book. ... Ardern, a priestess of presenting just-enough information at the right time, seems to be sharing the PG-version of events. ...

"[P]olitics is a zero-sum game. You enjoy some success until, eventually, you lose. Covid-19 presented leaders around the world with a once-in-a-lifetime challenge–and in the first year it arrived on Aotearoa’s shores, Ardern shone. .... By and large the country’s population of just over five million rallied.... By the end of that year Labour had won more than 50 per cent of the vote in the October election, and the country was enjoying a summer of festivals and barbecues.

"Fast forward to just over a year later to February 2022 when Ardern’s zero-sum game reached its nadir. Because if 2020 was where she excelled, 2021 was the year where the mistakes piled up, layer upon layer upon layer.

"First the then-Government was too slow to order vaccines. Then it gave the Rapid Antigen Testing contract not to a provider with a track record but an outfit who didn’t even have one. By December 2021, Auckland had been in a different lockdown from the rest of the country for three months, and many, many Aucklanders were fed up. Not that Ardern mentions anything about this. ...

"But she does talk about her nadir – the Parliamentary Protests. ... She ... say[s] the occupation 'was about trust…. or more accurately mistrust.' That mistrust rose, biliously, from a fed-up nation. Less than a year later Ardern announced she was stepping down as Prime Minister and leaving politics. ...

It’s too early yet to assess Ardern’s political leadership skills except to note it was an administration of striking highs and lows. Her own book doesn’t attempt to make an assessment. It’s less a political memoir than another sprinkling of Jacinda fairy stardust to her adoring Greek Chorus of devotees. ... Ardern is their posterchild after all. ... 

"[E]xpect the virtue signalling to continue unabated."

~ Janet Wilson from her review 'Jacinda, by Janet Wilson'

Tweedledum, and Tweedledumber

"My reading of NZ Treasury's Half Year Economics & Fiscal Update 2024 is that little has changed since the government changed. ...
    "The average of [the fiscal deficit (excess of government spending over taxes)], which comprise the Coalition's first term in office, is -3.4%. ... How does it compare to when former PM Jacinda Ardern & Finance Minister Grant Robertson governed? ... The[ir] average is -1.6%. So National, ACT & NZ First are on course to more than double the size of fiscal deficits that were run during the Ardern-Robertson years.
    "What's more, the year when the deficit really blew out, being 2020, was due entirely to the wage subsidy scheme expansion [for which] National lobbied hard ... to make it of unlimited size ... Before the wage subsidy cap was lifted, the maximum any one firm could take was $250,000. After the cap came off, firms like Fletcher Building scooped over $50 million each.
    'What's the moral of the story? That National and Labour are essentially the same party, just run by different actors, sales folks and marketing directors who are pretending their two products are different, because they use different branding & colors. They're like Coke and Pepsi Cola. ... Same old. Same old."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Its Official: Behind all the Hot Air from the PM & Finance Minister, National is Running a Bigger Borrow-and-Spend Government than 6 years of Ardern & Robertson.' 

NZ's govt health 'system': "delivering equally awful health-care to everyone"

"Enough is enough. Former PMs Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern should come clean about how they were the Chief Architects of the omni-shambles that has become our health system. ... for the folks who suffer from long waiting lists and declining health-care quality, some of whom didn't make it. 

    "The person who wrote the report [that is] the inspiration behind the disaster that is Health NZ was Heather Simpson, Clark's Chief of Staff for 9 years ... reincarnated by Labour to advise Ardern and Hipkins on health-care. ... The report was the inspiration behind the [disastrous] centralisation of NZ's health system. ...
    "I read the report. No intellectual basis is built for its suggested re-design of health-care delivery. No wonder our system is failing. 

    "It keeps repeating the word 'equity,' seemingly in the hope that by writing that word on paper is enough to deliver it in practice. The report bizarrely repeats 'equity' 219 times (!?) By contrast, the word 'competition,' which is a requirement to ensure quality and efficiency in nearly every economic system, is not mentioned one time. The report thereby seeks to deliver equally awful health-care to everyone."

    "... [The report's] half-baked idea is that the monolithic super-structure it invents ... would create 'economies of scale.' It uses the jargon, 'scaling up.' Health NZ has succeeded only at being a large scale disaster."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Former Labour PM's Clark and Ardern wrecked NZ's Health System: they should be held accountable for the lives that have been lost'

 

Budget 2024: The Mother of All Disappointments

"'Nicola Willis’s first Budget is the 'The Mother of All Disappointments',' says the Taxpayers’ Union, failing all three tests the National Party were elected to deliver on: 

• The tax reductions amount to just half the costs to the average worker of 14 years of inflation pushing them into higher marginal tax brackets. Instead of delivering the required $49 per week for the average earner, Willis has delivered just half – at $24.89 for the average worker on $66,196 a year. This amounts to a reversal of just the last three years of fiscal drag. 
• Reducing the size of Government back to pre-Covid levels after an 84 percent increase in spending and hiring an extra 18,000 bureaucrats. 
• Instead of cutting spending, Budget 2024 spends $12.7 billion more than Grant Robertson’s largesse last year. 

"Nicola Willis has totally failed to balance books with the date for surplus pushed back a year. This is a breach of the first 'fiscal principle' listed in National’s pre-election Fiscal Plan. The deficit for the year ahead is even larger than the current year. Instead of stopping the Debt Clock, Nicola Willis is making it tick faster, and for longer. 

    "Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director, Jordan Williams, said: 'The Budget delivered by Nicola Willis today is The Mother of All Disappointments.' Each of the three coalition partners were elected to cut wasteful government spending. While there’s a little reprioritisation, this Budget spends more than Grant Robertson ever did. 

    “'Both Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon have repeatedly made the point that personal income tax brackets have not been adjusted for inflation since 2010. But rather than deliver the $49 a week less tax to put this right, the Government has opted for just half that, and unwound just three years’ worth of inflation pushing workers into higher tax brackets. That isn’t tax relief, it’s shortchanging Kiwis who are continuing to do it tough. 

    “'Nicola Willis can only reduce tax by a tiny amount as she won’t take the steps needed to right-size the Public Service. Even by 2038, Nicola Willis will have higher Government spending as a share of our economy than Grant Robertson proposed in his 2019 Wellbeing Budget lolly scramble. 

    “If Nicola Willis is a fiscal conservative, she’s certainly not showing it – in fact, this Budget will be known for effectively ‘locking-in’ the new super-sized state created by Ardern and Robertson. 

    “All in all, this Budget means New Zealand goes further into the red. Debt servicing costs for the coming year will be $9.2 billion. That’s the same as we are forecast to spend on primary schools, secondary schools, and justice combined. This level of ongoing borrowing simply means we will be paying higher taxes for years to come.”

~ press release from the Taxpayers' Union

"How did Hipkins, Ardern and Robertson manage to make Kiwis less productive over the six years they were in office?"

 

SOURCE: Productivity figures, NZ Treasury, The blue line comes from

the Treasury's Productivity Slowdown publication released this past

week, which uses updates from the latest Budget Policy Statement 2024.

"How did Hipkins, Ardern and Robertson manage to make Kiwis less productive over the six years they were in office? My suspicion is that they changed our culture. They divided the nation. They turned rich against poor, farmers against environmentalists, pro-vaccinators against anti-vaccinators. Neither of these sides ever deserved to be demonised. Yet that is what the past Labour government did. It took away the largely harmonious nature our society, which was one of NZ's great achievements & which had previously lifted us above the troubles of nearly every other nation. We lost our comparative advantage. Ironically, though 'kindness' was the mantra of the last government, it turned Kiwis mean. It rewarded people who had not put in the effort and did not have the achievements required to make them deserving of high office and top jobs. In doing so, it took away the reward for truly high-achieving NZ children, which made them feel they had to go overseas to be recognised for their talents, or drop-out.
    "My explanation for our currently plummeting productivity lies in a culture shift which has undermined out national unity and taken away the incentives to perform. Ardern, Robertson and Hipkins took away our pride in ourselves."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Was the Hipkins-Ardern Government the only one in NZ post-World War II history that ended with productivity lower than at the start of its term?'

"What stupendously depressing words, declaring the only way a human can be fulfilled is dependence on politicians."

"Although Ardern tried hard to divide Kiwis along every imaginable line for her own political benefit, an inescapable fact is that a profound cultural factor, way bigger than her, unites us all together. We have our roots in making our way through our own industry. 

    "When people started to migrate to NZ, whether indigenous or not, they had to depend on themselves, friends and family for survival. There was no welfare state back then. Out of this history, an important part of our culture became the 'can-do' attitude — Kiwi ingenuity, the number 8 fencing-wire, practicality —the taking calculated risks that many in the Old World had lost. Cut to modern times however, and this is the current philosophy of the NZ Labour Party, as espoused by its current and former leaders:

Ardern: 'People ... look for light, hope, a fulfilment of their own ambition and they will either find that in political leadership or they will seek out reasons why they have been failed.'

Hipkins: 'Governing is about choices — choosing subsidies ... '

"What stupendously depressing words, declaring the only way a human can be fulfilled - can achieve their dreams & ambitions - is dependence on politicians..."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'A brighter Future for NZ'ers involves the outright rejection of Labour's Make-the-People-Dependent Doctrine' 

"Getting post-Covid spending back to what Prime Minister Ardern had promised in the first Wellbeing Budget is hardly austerity."

"When Labour took office in 2017, Core Crown tax revenue was 27.5% of GDP. It is forecast to hit 29.1% of GDP in 2024 and 30% by 2028...

"Covid did not just increase government spending to deal with the pandemic. It also seems to have ratcheted in a very substantial increase in the overall size of government. In December, Treasury forecasted [the National-led] government's spending, as a fraction of overall economic activity, to be more than two-and-a half percentage points above Labour’s longer-term promise in 2019. ...  even though Ardern’s budget [then] was hardly austere. ...

    "Getting government spending back down to the longer-term proportions of GDP that Prime Minister Ardern’s wellbeing agenda had promised in 2019 hardly seems radical or austere. It would simply be a getting-back-to-normal after a crisis.
    "Getting core government spending down from Ardern’s promised 28.8% of GDP to the 27.7% of GDP that Bill English’s National-led government bequeathed to the incoming Labour government would not be radical either. It would be the normal partisan shifts in the relative size of government that come with changes in government.
    "Keeping these things straight matters....

"[D]ecades ago, economist Robert Higgs warned that post-crisis retrenchments may be wishful thinking.
    "Professor Higgs looked at American government spending over the Twentieth Century and found a worrying pattern. Every crisis brought a sharp increase in government spending to deal with the crisis. But, after the crisis, spending would only partially retrench before expanding even further during the next crisis.
    "And so, a one-way ratchet effect meant a continued increase in the size of government. A lot of ground can be covered over decades of two steps forward and one step back. ...
    "Getting post-Covid spending back to what Prime Minister Ardern had promised in the first Wellbeing Budget is hardly austerity. It should be the least that fiscal conservatives should expect."

~ Eric Crampton, from his op-ed 'Ratcheting up govt in a crisis goes just one way'

"Jacinda Ardern ... is now one of the leading anti-free speech figures in the world"

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the UN that free speech 

is "a weapon of war," "censorship is necessary" to protect free speech .. and that 

war is peace and freedom is slavery. (Pick any two.)

"Jacinda Ardern may no longer be Prime Minister of New Zealand, but she was back at the United Nations continuing her call for international censorship. Ardern is now one of the leading anti-free speech figures in the world and continues to draw support from political and academic establishments. In her latest attack on free speech, Ardern declared free speech as a virtual weapon of war. She is demanding that the world join her in battling free speech as part of its own war against “misinformation” and “disinformation.” ...
    "In her speech, she notes that we cannot allow free speech to get in the way of fighting things like climate change. She notes that they cannot win the war on climate change if people do not believe them about the underlying problem. The solution is to silence those with opposing views. It is that simple. ...
    "[It is] chilling ... to hear Ardern express her fealty to free speech as she calls on the nations of the world to severely curtail it to prevent people from undermining their policies and priorities. She remains the 'empathetic' face of raw censorship and intolerance. She is now the virtual ambassador-at-large for global speech regulation and criminalisation."

~ Jonathan Turley from his post 'Harvard’s Jacinda Ardern Calls on the United Nations to Crack Down on Free Speech as a Weapon of War'

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"The organised Left—once a bastion for free speech, equality, and social justice—has become drunk on the heady wine of identitarianism, losing its way in the maze of its own making. The politics of identity have eclipsed the quest for universal values, and in doing so, mutated into a grotesque facsimile of the very far-right extremism it purports to fight. The great irony lies here: In their incessant mission to highlight the pervasive evils they claim to battle, they have themselves become the embodiment of these forces." 

~ Dane Giraud, from his post 'The real devils among us' [emphasis in the original]

"So why did the current Labour government go so wildly off the rails?"

"People want stability, which is all the Nats ever offer. That’s why since the war every National government has received 9 year terms, except the Holyoake one which lasted 12 years. Helen got 9 years by behaving like a National government and not rocking the boat but every other post-war Labour government has lasted respectively, one term (twice) or been bumrushed out after two terms before they go power crazy.
    "I last voted National over 40 years ago when I woke to their reality as a Party of not rocking the boat, uninspiring, minding-the-shop-style dullards. I certainly wouldn’t give them sixpence, nor do they need it ...
    "But periodically radical changes are required and these are only ever delivered by Labour which is a Party of malcontents.
    "So why did the current Labour government go so wildly off the rails?
    "Blame the public for that, specifically a phenomenon that saw the nation lose its head; the only time I was embarrassed to be a New Zealander. I refer to the ludicrous Jacindamania phenomenon which induced in Labour a thousand-year Reich, faith in their longevity, and a corresponding dictatorial mentality resulting in sheer totalitarian insanity in so many ways....
    "The next Labour PM is not in the House yet but will probably emerge after the 2026 election...."

~ Bob Jones, from his post 'Political Donations'

"Language abuse"

 

Cartoon by Nick Kim

"Ever since socialist ideology was buried in the 1980s by the near universal adoption of market economies, culminating at the decade’s end in the Soviet Union’s collapse, embittered left ideologues have resorted to language reinvention to mask their personal inadequacies as ongoing collective aspirations....
    "Thereafter, [the word] 'socialist' was replaced by the vacuous term 'social democrat.' Jacinda used it frequently. But what does it mean? No user of it has ever been able to explain.
    "The most amusing language abuse by these lefty types is 'activist,' usually applied to protesters lying about in groups, holding signs complaining about this or that. Their major characteristic is inactivity.
    "The current fashionable ludicrously dishonest term these losers use to smother their now unfashionable 'socialism” is 'progressive.' Nothing could be more inaccurate. Collectivists are literally the very opposite of progressive; rather they’re ultra regressive, seeking to resurrect tried and failed big government statist policies of yesteryear."

~ Bob Jones, from his post 'Language Abuse'