Lying Phil Goff

 

Remember when Auckland mayor Phil Goff pledge to hold rates to 2.5%? As far back as 2015 he told Morning Report, "There is a limit to rate increases, and I think we've reached that limit.” That was just before Lying Len Brown and his cronies hiked them by 9.9%.

But far from acknowledging we are now well beyond the limit, Goff instead is following in the footsteps of his predecessor. We’re going to limit rates increases to 2.5%? No, stuff that. That was then. That was when he was campaigning for the mayor’s job. Now he has it, he doesn’t want to hold rates or cap rates or limit them. Quite the contrary. Just four months after being elected the lying piece of shit now wants to raise your rates by 16%. The council, he says, “is running out of alternatives to increasing rates by 16 percent next year.”

Here’s one very sound alternative, you toerag, and I can give it to you for nothing: Stop Spending So Goddamn Much.

Goff is a trough-dweller wholly ignorant even of how his trough gets filled.

People who vote for entities like this deserve them. The rest of us: we get punished.

Feel free to message the lying turd and tell him how you feel about his deception.

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Auckland councillors all ready to raise rates?

 

Q: How do you know a politician is lying?
A: Their lips are moving.

Latest riff on that theme:

Tomorrow Auckland Council Finance Committee meets to set next year's budget and rates. Goff has said he wants a 2.5% rates rise but many Councillors have signed the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance Pledge to keep annual rates rises to 2%. Will they capitulate to Goff’s demands and fall at the first hurdle? [Having been handed lucrative positions to as Chairs and Deputy Chairs of the various Council Committees] it looks like some might….

There also being a very big difference indeed between what a politician says before an election and after. It gets worse:

Goff is already signalling that his 2.5% is mere smoke and mirrors [says ratepayers’ watchdog Jo Holmes]. He could have given the hard pressed ratepayers a rates holiday by cutting out the myriad of wasteful projects left behind as the legacy of the failed Len Brown era. Instead, he intends to increase the financial burden of ratepayers through a series of indirect taxes and levies.

Goff’s mooted levies, impositions and indirect taxes already include a tourist tax, a petrol tax, a tax on “large-scale developments” and a raid on the Government’s Housing Infrastructure Fund. And that’s just the pickpocketing he’s dreamed up so far. (And given Bill English’s love of a levy and new finance minister Steven Joyce’s ease with corporate welfare -- and Phil Goof’s undoubted ability with spin -- you wouldn’t put any of it beyond him.)

We will find out tomorrow who sold out Auckland ratepayers and who didn’t.

It will take a wee bit longer to discover how much and to what extent Joyce and others sells out the country’s taxpayers.

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Goff dreaming up new ways to pick your pocket

 

I can’t help thinking Phil Goof’s focus as mayor is somewhat the same as his predecessor’s: picking your pocket for more millions on his pet projects.

Yesterday’s brainfart: dunning tourists while pledging to “peg” rate rises to only 2.5 percent a year. Len Brown pledged the same thing with rates–even the same number—and we saw how well that peg worked, didn’t we.

Given the way rates and debt both exploded under Pants-Down’s round, any pledge to “keep rate increases below inflation” now is like a strangler promising only to suffocate you more slowly. And that’s even if the politician were to keep his promise. (Q: How do you know a politician is lying … )

So I can’t help but think that the touted tourist tax is just a way, just one small way, to help fill the very large pot he needs to gets his own monuments out of the ground (new stadia; new train sets; who the hell knows what else) and pay for his not-inexpensive pledge to raise the wages of most people employed by the council..

The fair city of Sydney has used this ploy for some years to help it pay off the Olympics. The costly event has long gone, but its debts and room-tax remain, raising room rates for everyone who roams there while turning their hosts into tax collectors.

Goof wants to use it, he says, to pay for more tourist promotion – which has as much credibility as that from Brown that the petrol tax he toyed with would help him build more motorways. Goof has plans for his own spend-up, and he needs to fill the pot.

Notice that in addition to this touted tax he’s already flagged both a petrol tax and a tax on “large-scale developments” that are increasingly struggling to get off the ground financially – both of these to be paid in the end by you and I [UPDATE: Plus he’s “bidding for a significant share of the Government’s Housing Infrastructure Fund.”] To paraphrase a popular line, a room tax here, a petrol tax there, and several other taxes later like it and sooner or later you’re talking real money. Brown raised debt and core rates to pay for his projects; Goof hopes to get these and several other taxes off the ground to pretend he’s kept a core pledge – but of what worth is it that rates themselves rise at 2.5% if a score of new taxes is added to the amount we pay to his Grey Ones.

And who really believes he won’t keep raising that rates bill anyway.

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Mt Roskill by-election candidate suggests the whole electorate take a NAP

 

The Mt Roskill by-election now has a candidate who takes a NAP. Literally: Dr Richard Goode is the candidate for the Not A Party party, or NAP for short.’ He reckons the electorate needs to declare itself a politician-free zone in the forthcoming by-election “which was triggered when Phil Goff switched troughs.” This is his full statement:

Goode said he was “chuffed” to be chosen to stand for Not A Party (NAP) in the seat made vacant by Phil Goff.

“Let’s keep the seat vacant,” says Goode. “Let’s make Mt. Roskill a politician-free zone, with the rest of New Zealand’s electoral map to follow suit at next year’s general election.”

Not A Party (NAP) is the forerunner of a new breed of post-democratic political party. The party advocates a peaceful transition to a free, peaceful and prosperous society based on voluntary cooperation. “Don’t look to politicians for answers, they don’t have any.”

“Individuals and local communities know best what’s best for themselves.” Not A Party (NAP) believes in the efficacy of the man in the street. It is at a grassroots level that people understand what they need to achieve peace and prosperity.

Goode strongly supports people’s right to self-determination. So much so, in fact, that the candidate says he hopes to get no votes. “If you simply must vote, vote NAP. But why not stay home on election day and NAP instead?” He goes on to point out the benefits, “You’ll feel better for it, and be more productive.”

“DIY. Be the change you want to see. Don’t pander to the corporate oligarchs in the Beehive.” This is Goode’s challenge to the electors of Mt. Roskill.

The by-election, which was triggered when Phil Goff switched troughs, will be held on Saturday 3 December.

Phil Goff is 63.

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Playing politics with Auckland infrastructure? It’s just what politicians do!

 

What’s the connection between an Auckland stadium project and today's by-election politicking over light rail (or not) down Dominion Rd? Well, apart from the billions being fought about coming from the same pot (yours and mine) it’s the fact it’s so clear that politicians so readily place politics before sense when it comes to spending (or promising to spend) those billions. 

It was no more surprising that Phil Goff elected to kick off his mayoral duties by wool-gathering about stadia any more than Labour kicked off this by-election with a $1.4 billion dollar promise they’re in no position to make – any more than anyone should have been surprised when National promised millions of dollars in bridges to kick off the Northland by-election campaign. Because this is how dumb politicians think voters are. And thank goodness for Northland's voters showing them we’re not.

But do take the lesson from what we see from these people: their decision to spend billions is made often on the hoof, and more frequently judged by the standards of politics rather than sense.

It’s why stadium politics have been an issue in Auckland ever since Trevor Mallard first used it to divert attention from Labour’s transparent corruption with the pledge card – like a good conjurer misdirecting attention towards a decision about location that was in the end purely political, and as dumb  as it continues to prove expensive.

Businesses need certainty if they’re going to do business, yet this is the last thing politicians promote. While the politicians promise, the uncertain outcomes their promises present become a nightmare for everyone trying to do business with the “regime uncertainty” this creates. (Just ask businessmen and women trying to do business in central Christchurch with all the grand plans flying around down there!)

This is the point made by the Dominion Rd Business Association today over the years of broken plans and promises over politicians’ plans for the street who called on both National and Labour parties to “stop playing politics over the future form of mass transit along Dominion Rd.”

Businesses along the 7km iconic strip want certainty over what transport will look like over the coming years [they say], not political posturing.

Absolutely right they do, having been shafted for years by the uncertainties of 20 years of political plans and promises.

Various concepts for Dominion Rd have been put forward over the past 20 years including 24 hour bus lanes with no on-street parking, then a complete widening of the road with peak-hour only bus lanes through to light rail with no on-street parking.
    In 2014 the plug was pulled at the 11th hour on widening and creating continuous peak hour-only bus lanes down the full length of Dominion Rd because light rail was deemed the new weapon against burgeoning congestion on the road.
    This was after two years of consultation between Auckland Transport, business and property owners about the project which included much needed upgrades to the three commercial centres along Dominion Rd.
    [Business Association Manager Gary] Holmes says the uncertain future for Dominion Rd has been a constant source of worry and confusion for businesses and landlords alike, holding back any significant investment in the area.

He’s right. It has. But that wouldn’t worry the politicians at all. Not a jot.

It wouldn’t worry them, because their decisions affecting millions and costing billions are made purely on their own political calculations, about what is best for them. Because the fact is, politicians will always place politics before sense when it comes to spending (or promising to spend) billions of your dollars. No matter the cost, or the harm caused.

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So the Auckland mayoral election winner is … no confidence

 

This year in the Auckland mayoral election there were more than a dozen candidates, and no-one to choose from – which is why I stayed home. Why would it matter to me which of the power-lusters put my rates up when there’s nothing of any importance to choose between them?

It seems I wasn’t the only one feeling this way, but with only a 35 percent turnout across the greater Auckland electorate.

Which means around 65 percent of people didn’t vote – many, like me, because there was only garbage to vote for. Don’t encourage them, I reason, it only encourages the bastards.

So central government loser, Phil Goff, will this morning be calling himself a winner, but with a vote of just around 17 percent of the electorate who voted against the 65 who didn’t vote at all, it’s clear who the real winner is: the real winner is no confidence.

And, just like in every election, all of us are the loser.

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Mayoral candidates to ratepayers: “Let them eat monuments”

 

In the old days to win a mayoral election a candidate had to promise bribes and monuments costing in the millions. Now, that wouldn’t even get you into the debates. Now, to head Auckland’s super-sized council bureaucracy, you have to make promises costing ratepayers billions – Victoria Crone to build bridges, Phil Goff for new train sets, John Palino for satelite cities somewhere.

Promises costing billions at a time when the city’s debt, $7.6 billion and rising, has never been higher!

The debt is unprecedented. And not one of them has a plan or any intention to bring it down.

Rates are at an all-time high, and rising – and the council is borrowing hand over fist to keep spending rising even faster! – and yet not one of these pricks has made any pledge* or has any intention of slashing spending or bringing rates down.

Not one.

Oh yes, they all talk vaguely about reducing “waste.” Of making “savings through efficiencies.” About “reducing non-core and wasteful spending.” But this is all just hand waving to suggest they’re concerned about spending while concealing they have no intention to make the savage substantial cuts necessary to begin making the city affordable again.

Instead, they all talk as if there’s a bag full of cash under your couch that they get to spend on monuments.

You might think all the monuments are worth it. You might think they will make the city more liveable.. You might think it will add to the city’s prestige. But whatever you think, for or against, you’re going to be paying for them anyway. And the “prestige” of the projects will fall like manna from heaven on the heads and shoulders of your autocratic leaders.

So it has always been.

One may see in certain biblical movies [writes Ayn Rand] a graphic image of the meaning of public monument building: the building of the pyramids. Hordes of starved, ragged, emaciated men straining the last effort of their inadequate muscles at the inhuman task of pulling the ropes that drag large chunks of stone, straining like tortured beasts of burden under the whips of overseers, collapsing on the job and dying in the desert sands—that a dead Pharaoh might lie in an imposingly senseless structure and thus gain eternal "prestige" in the eyes of the unborn of future generations.
    Temples and palaces are the only monuments left of mankind's early civilisations. They were created by the same means and at the same price—a price not justified by the fact that primitive peoples undoubtedly believed, while dying of starvation and exhaustion, that the "prestige" of their tribe, their rulers or their gods was of value to them somehow.
    Rome fell, bankrupted by statist controls and taxation, while its emperors were building coliseums [ to deliver bread and circuses]. Louis XIV of France taxed his people into a state of indigence, while he built the palace of Versailles for his contemporary monarchs to envy and for modern tourists to visit. [Meanwhile, as the bread in the kingdom dwindled, his queen Antoinette was advising her subjects’ rulers to “Let them eat cake.”]

And now, in a New Zealand already mired in debt, our mayoral candidates are going to rate us further into penury to make us believe they’'’re making our cities liveable.

Do any of these political leaders really believe anything they say about making the city affordable?

 

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* Yes, to be fair, Palino’s website talks about a “wasteful council” and has a policy of reducing rates by 10% over 3 years. But he has no serious plan to make the savage spending cuts commensurate with that, and since that was set up he’s been talking instead abour “capping” rates to the Reserve Bank’s rate of inflation. In other words, no rate cuts.

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While Goff backs kauri bullies, Crone et al remain silent

Guest by Affordable Auckland mayoral candidate Stephen Berry

The campaign by a Titirangi neighbourhood to prevent two landowners legally felling their own tree has got a boost after Auckland Mayoral candidate Phil Goff gave his support yesterday. It's time, I think, that all the declared Mayoral candidates give their position on the issue.

Both Goff from the left and Bright from the loony left have shown they support replacing proper legal process with mob rule, and that the invasion of private property by neighbourhood thugs and bullies is completely justified if it furthers their own causes. Mr. Goff has also stated that he is drafting a private members bill which will give greater protection to particular trees.

Essentially Mr. Goff is now using parliamentary resources to shore up his support in next year’s election which is completely inappropriate.

I am the only Auckland mayoral candidate to publicly support landowner’s Jon Lenihan and Jane Greensmith.

The Kauri tree is their property, and they have gone above and beyond their legal obligations to obtain permission to clear their own land. Whatever promises the protesters claim to have extracted when they prevented the tree’s felling back in March are irrelevant. There is no moral obligation to keep a promise extorted through coercion.

As of now, both centre-right candidates Mark Thomas and Victoria Crone have been silent about the kauri debacle.

Ms. Crone really ought to try expressing an opinion on something since her recent ‘no policy’ campaign launch.

And I’m sure the true blue ward of Orakei would be interested to hear their Local Board Deputy Chair’s view on whether private property rights are important to him.

Since the Kauri tree in question is not collectively owned, it's clear enough that the campaign by a group calling itself ‘Save Our Kauri’ is a total misnomer. It isn’t our kauri; nor is it their Kauri. The Kauri belongs to Lenihan and Greensmith. While other people are welcome to hold an opinion on the future of the tree they should not be permitted to invade the owner’s property and occupy their land.

It’s time the police stepped in to remove the illegal occupiers and allow the landowners to go about their legal business.

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Stephen Berry is the Affordable Auckland mayoral candidate.

A mayoralty, if you’re interested.

On Monday, Victoria Crone announced she would be standing for the Auckland mayoralty and, as the former NZ CEO of high-flyer Xero, was immediately installed by the media as the "business" candidate.

Mind you, being the business candidate doesn't mean you really mean business—nor that running a successful business is  the same as being top dog at a super-sized council spending the proceeds of everyone else's super-sized rates bill.

Even Labour-ite adviser Josie Pagani understands that, pointing out that

If you’re going to stand for political office the minimum requirements must surely include some rationale for your candidacy. You want to do the job because you see a job needing doing. You need to have something sensible to say about topical issues and some guide to what you expect to do in office.
     If you don’t have these minimum contributions to debate, then your candidacy is pointless.

Victoria Crone does not have these minimum contributions to debate. At her launch, she was wholly unable to articulate an actual concrete position on anything, saying in answer to questions on specifics she had "just announced yesterday" so "I'm not getting into policy." That would all come “later.” Translation: “I’ve given it no thought. But I am sort of interested.” [Listen here to her being interviewed, if you're at all interested.]

And on her website, where you might expect at least some answers to some of the big issues? Pagani visited Victoria Crone’s website  to see what she plans for Auckland, "only to find my low expectations wildly overestimated."

There’s about as much substance here as Kanye West’s run for president. She wants to ‘Create Win-Win Situations’, ‘Empower People’ and ‘Lead From A Place of strength’; as if she’s running against a candidate who wants to lose, take power away from you, and be a weak leader.
    Beneath the blandly moronic motivational platitudes  - “I believe anything is possible! (insert emoji) - she lists ‘Issues’: B is for ‘Housing', C is for ‘Transport’. Maybe they’ve changed Sesame Street since I was young.
    These summaries reveal a candidate unprepared for office, lacking vision, and free from any meaningful communication of useful ideas…
    Take ‘A' for 'Fiscal Management’. Correctly observing that many billions of dollars are needed to meet Auckland’s infrastructure needs, while funding sources like rates and debt are constrained, she offers: "few alternative sources of funding have been secured. This is a major problem for our city to solve, amidst perceptions of wastage in council spending.” Yes it’s a problem, so, what would you do, candidate? Reject new spending plans? Borrow more? Are you ruling out rate increases? Will you raise rates just a teeny bit? New taxes? Tolls? Privatising infrastructure?
    Not even a hint of an idea, let alone a fresh one. That’s what makes the platitudes a problem. If you can't answer these most basic of questions about your political principles, you have no place pretending you could lead a major city

It’s a fair point—except to say that every Mayor in Auckland in Auckland in the modern era has achieved the mayoral chains not because they’ve articulated anything at all about their political principles. They’ve simply said they won’t be the last blowhard who held office.

• Christine Fletcher took office promising not be Les Mills, and she succeeded.
• John Banks then took office promising not be Christine Fletcher—but was found to be far too much like John Banks, and so was turfed out.
• So Dick Hubbard campaigned on the basis of not being John Banks, only for the public to realise that he really was a real Dick Hubbard.
• At which point John Banks won by promising to be neither Dick Hubbard nor the previous John Banks (this was now the new-improved “transmogrified” John Banks), which turned our much as anyone could have predicted.
• Swiftly realising he wasn’t anywhere as transmogrified as they’d hoped, folk then thought “anyone but Banks” and very quickly found themselves enthusiastically ticking Len Browns’s box. And we all know how that box-tickling turned out.

Which brings us back to A, B, C: Crone—who may or may not have a political principle in her body, but who assuredly has a war chest big enough to tell the city she’s not Len Brown (or Phil Goff), which may be all much of this city really wants to hear before they put pen to voting paper.

Mind you, it would be good to hear at least one candidate of any “side” make the firm, cast-iron promise that they intend to either lower rates below the absurdly high level they are now, or even just to cap them in money terms.

The closest any candidate does come to saying that is Affordable Auckland mayoral candidate Stephen Berry, who apart from also being neither Brown nor Goff al agrees that Voters Deserve Specifics on Rates. But all he can come up with as a pledge is to “keep rates increases below inflation” – which, given their explosive increase in recent years, is like a strangler promising only to suffocate you more slowly.

And even Phil Goff can almost match that, telling Morning Report, "There is a limit to rate increases, and I think we've reached that limit."

To be fair, and unlike Berry, Goff provides few concrete examples of how rates increases might in any way be "limited." But slow suffocation is not any kind of promise on which to hang your mayoral hat.

Auckland: The mongrel now has momentum.

It won’t matter which mayor you vote in next year, the super-sized council is now off and running, and it will take a bigger man than Phil Goff or any of those other muppets mentioned to rein it in. The mongrel now has momentum.

Writing last week about Rodney Hide’s defence of his indefensible Auckland city mash-up, I suggested that rather than disestablishing eight sets of councils and their staff, his amalgamation instead built a whole new set of council parasites on top – with egos, power-trips and huge rates bills to match. It’s not a small, efficient organisation that he delivered, but a Frankenstein with an extra, larger head tuned solely towards absorbing more power.

There’s a few ways to think about the extra head.

A commenter at TradeMe picked up the theme, linking to a report last year:

Meanwhile, we hear Auckland City has more than 1500 people who are paid more than $100,000 per annum. In recent years I have lost a couple of corporate people to “jobs at the council.” I couldn’t believe what they were getting paid then and I can’t now. And these are not the top-drawer people; they are actually pretty average. 
    A quick glance at the annual reports of five of the companies listed on the NZX top 10 (Contact Energy, F&P Healthcare, Ryman, SkyCity and Sky TV) reveals they have just 1387 people who are paid more than $100,000 per annum between them – in total!

These people are there for life. They can’t afford to leave.

Here’s another way to think about it.

Meanwhile, the new building the super-sized council head now occupies –the former ASB building at 135 Albert St—is largely in addition to its portfolio before amalgamation. The building cost you and I over $100m to buy, and where before the building hosted investment companies managing hundreds of billions of dollars of assets out of, perhaps, half a floor, we now have council bigwigs occupying all 29 floors -- 2400 bigger-council staff in total eating their lunch there, with many of those 1500 highly-paid but pretty average people among them.

Here’s yet another way to think about the extra head.

Before amalgamation of Auckland’s borough councils in 1989, if you wanted a decision about your bins or your water or your house, you strolled along to your local borough council and chatted to someone at the counter who knew your house, knew your street, and could probably make a decision there and then,

After amalgamation of those borough councils, if you wanted a decision then you could certainly chat to someone, but the person making the decisions was upstairs, and very important, and you could only get to speak to them by appointment.

It’s even worse after Rodney Hide’s amalgamation of the city councils. If you want a decision now, you’re chatting to someone who’s several layers down the hierarchy, who’s never even seen your part of the city on a map, and the person making the decision is several floors up in a flash new building, and so, so important you’re only ever going to see the tailpipe of their council car taking them off to another important lunch.

Because this extra new layer has an ego the size of Len Brown’s rates demands.

And the problem will still exist whichever muppet Auckland voters make mayor next year.

Trading with Saudi Arabia

Moving on from hairpulling yesterday, I’m told that Mike Hosking opined on John Key visiting Saudi Arabia to sign a free trade deal, arguing he should be free to go, that it didn’t stop Phil Goff and Helen Clark signing deals with China – despite their own appalling human rights record and treatment of Tibet – and with Indonesia – despite their own appalling human rights record and penchant for executing folk for victimless crimes.

Hosking argues that trade engages only with the values of the market and should not therefore engage with moral matters.  What goes on in Saudi Arabia is none of our business, he says, and who is little New Zealand to say anything.

Let me engage with that error in a moment. Because David Slack is making what’s seen as the other argument, the argument for Key not going:

Seems fair enough, right? Much of what goes on in Saudi Arabia  is disgusting – executions, the subjugation of women,  an essentially medieval society -- and much of what they promote outside is even worse – especially their export of Sunni and Wahhabi terrorism.

But here’s something that’s strange. Many of the usual suspects noisily opposed to trade with Saudi Arabia because of their barbaric culture are just as noisily opposed to telling other cultures what to do. It’s not our place, they say. Yet they insist Key tell Saudi Arabia what to do.

So the usual apostles of moral equivalence become of a sudden the apostles of moral propriety.

And yet their new doctrine of moral non-equivalence has some strange omissions.

The same folk who oppose a free trade deal with Riyadh for being Islamofascist thugs who sponsor Sunni and Wahhabi terrorists and execute women are generally okay with Tehran having a nuclear bomb, despite Tehran being Islamofascist thugs who sponsor Shia terrorists and execute homosexuals. They'd be okay, I should think, with a free trade deal with Palestine, despite the ruling Hamas training up youngsters to be suicide bombers and executing people for “collaboration.”  And nothing about Indonesian executions this week, or Chinese human rights abuses in general, has raised calls for us not to trade with these places.

So what's the difference? They're not against fascist thugs - they're just against a certain type of fascist thug…  Just a wild stab in the dark here, but my guess is that the type of thug they’re okay with is anti-American, and the type of thug to whom they’re opposed is not.

That’s a very, very strange king of moral non-equivalence to harbour for apostles of moral equivalence.

As is, on a different front, that of Mike Hosking.

Hosking argues that trade does not engage with moral matters; that it engages only with the values of the market place. 

Read that again: trade does not engage with moral matters; it engages only with the values of the market place. 

This, ironically, is the very opposite argument to that made by the great nineteenth-century free traders, who argued that it is precisely the values of the marketplace that promotes the spread of moral matters.

Richard Cobden, for example, in 1846, advocated for free trade not just because it brings greater prosperity, which it does, but because it is the primary force in spreading peace and real freedom:

I have never taken a limited view of the object or scope of this great principle. I have never advocated this question very much as a trader.
    But I have been accused of looking too much to material interests. Nevertheless I can say that I have taken as large and great a view of the effects of this mighty principle as ever did any man who dreamt over it in his own study. I believe that the physical gain will be the smallest gain to humanity from the success of this principle.
    I look farther;  I see in the Free-Trade Principle that which shall act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe,—drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace.
    I have looked even farther. I have speculated, and probably dreamt, in the dim future—ay, a thousand years hence—I have speculated on what the effect of the triumph of this principle may be. I believe that the effect will be to change the face of the world, so as to introduce a system of government entirely distinct from that which now prevails.
    I believe that the desire and the motive for large and mighty empires; for gigantic armies and great navies—for those materials which are used for the destruction of life and the desolation of the rewards of labour—will die away; I believe that such things will cease to be necessary, or to be used, when man becomes one family, and freely exchanges the fruits of his labour with his brother man.
    I believe that, if we could be allowed to reappear on this sublunary scene, we should see, at a far distant period, the governing system of this world revert to something like the municipal system; and I believe that the speculative philosopher of a thousand years hence will date the greatest revolution that ever happened in the world’s history from the triumph of the principle which we have met here to advocate.

This is not mere cant. The spread of the Free-Trade Principle following the efforts of Cobden and his colleagues did change the face of the world: the prosperity of the industrial revolution was spread around the globe, and freedom with it; further, and despite occasional eruptions, the late nineteenth century was described as an oasis of peace midst a mountain of war: Wars, saying Cobden, being “another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce,” when what commerce most desperately needs is the spread of freedom and the maintenance of peace.

The great difficulty, in the nineteenth-century world -- as in Saudi Arabia today -- is pulling the aristocrats from the levers of power so that peace and real freedom can spread.

But unless you’re selling your enemies the rope with which to hang you, a free trade deal is a start.

Election Year. Time for Some Scapegoats

It must be election year.

It must be election year, because every political party has just started blowing an anti-immigration dog whistle.

It started with scare stories of “boat people,” “revealed” by a Sunday Star Slime as desperate for readers as David Cunliffe is for voters, and before we knew it the blame for the economic downturn, hospital waiting lists, souring race relations and the housing crisis were all being laid at the feet of those dirty migrants.

“Maori have a unique position in New Zealand and advancing their cultural and social needs must be put ahead of the needs of immigrants,” said Maori Party leader, Te Ururoa Flavell, responding to a poll showing Maori dislike Asian immigrants more than any other group of New Zealanders.

National's Immigration Minister Nikki Kaye just sent home to die a young Fijian man on dialysis, despite having a family here ready to donate a kidney and a community raising money for the transplant. “He was here unlawfully,” said an unregretful Kaye.

Mana’s John Minto suggests we yell 'Buggar off' (sic) to foreign investors and foreign workers. It’s about 'self-respect,' says the man once opposed to Racist Tours.

Labour’s Phil Goof has a member's bill to be debated in the coming weeks which would tighten the rules for foreigners buying farm land.

And now Labour leader David Cunliffe has taken his party’s hardest line yet against immigrants. The former Immigration Minister blames them for the house crisis, with the Greens’s Russel Norman quietly saying “me too.” Immigration levels are a 'bubble', Cunliffe told Radio NZ this morning, using words without any reference to their meaning.

How on earth can immigration be in a 'bubble'? A bubble is something that keeps inflating because it keeps inflating, attracting more and more buyers as prices climb due to new buyers. Bubbles are usually due to bad policy and cheap money – like the Tulip Bubble or the South Seas Bubble. Or the housing bubble.  This year’s immigration  is not a bubble, it’s a blip. It’s up because net immigration is higher now – higher mostly because fewer NZers are leaving for a now-limping Australia – which doesn’t make it unsustainably, uncomfortably or irrevocably high.

And it doesn’t make them to blame for our bad housing policies. Nor does it make them a source of our misery – migrants who, for the most part, are coming here not to bludge but to live, and produce and invest. Who might just help make us richer.

Migrants who, unlike Cunliffe, Kaye and their ilk, are not parasites, nor intending to be.

Here’s Christy Moore:

Phuck you, Phil

Phil Goff has pledged to deliver a Capital Gains Tax if elected in November,partly to fill the multi-billion dollar gap between his promises on spending and what he can steal from taxpayers,and partly to demonstrate to the world his abject ignorance of how the world works.

Goof reckons the tax will make housing affordable again--housing he reckons was made expensive by "speculators."

Phil, you are a moron.

Housing prices boomed under your party's watch because the Reserve Bank inflated the money supply by around ten percent per year, which spilled over into the housing market, and because planners used their powers under the
RMA to strangle land supply in NZ's cities.

And if he thinks a Capital Gains Tax would have stopped this -- if he thinks his new tax would somehow ha,he defied economic reality -- then I suggest he look at the experience of every Western country that had one, where in every place it did nothing of the sort.

Which is to say the tax would be wrong, immoral and iniquitous. So no wonder it's going to be flagship Labour policy this election.

Phil’s been reading Libz policy. Partially.

Good to see Labour leader Phil Goof adopting Libertarianz’ taxation policy by announcing he would like to make the first $5000 of everyone’s income tax-free “eventually.”

Sure, it’s not as good as the Libz policy itself, which is to axe the GST tax while making the first $10,000 of income wholly tax-free (raising this limit rapidly to $50,000). It’s nowhere near as good as that, but it’s a start.

And it’s not even as good as the calculations backing the Libz policy, since as Idiot/Savant points out, there’s a HUGE hole in Phil’s figures. A $1.2 billion hole, in fact—a shortfall that will require more than magic and political spin to make up.

Might I recommend then that instead of just dipping his toe in the Libz policy water, that Phil fleece the full Libz policy as a whole and Put the State Sector Through the Woodchipper, thereby saving tax victims from the enormous tax burden the sector imposes on every one of us.

It would at least serve to distinguish his party from the do-nothing dildoes presently in power.

Phil goofs

This morning Phil Goff gave his last set-piece speech for this year, and his first for next year’s election campaign.

Allow me to summarise:

Hi there, my name is Phil Goff.

NZ’s middle classes need my help…

…but if we get elected next year, I’m not going to cut their taxes.

New Zealanders need relief from rising prices…

…so we will “reform” Reserve Bank and monetary policy to allow price inflation to go higher.

It’s essential that “we get crown debt down…”

…so I give you my solemn promise we won’t cut spending.

An “active government with vision and a plan is needed…”

…but I give you my solemn promise we won’t raise spending.

National has been picking winners who weren’t, by  cutting taxes in “the wrong areas”…

…so instead we’re going to “actively manage the economy” by picking different winners, and throwing huge subsidies at them…

…and I give you my solemn promise we won’t raise spending.

In short, I’m going to give everyone a pony…

…but I give you my solemn promise we won’t raise spending.

And finally, I know people are tired of the politicking of MMP…

…so I’m not going to rule out going into coalition with Winston Peters.

My name is Phil Goff. You’ve been a great audience…

…and if you hear of any good barbecues over the summer…

NOT PJ: Haven’t the Vegas Idea

Bernard Darnton invents a government department that will make us all rich . . .

The banking crisis can be fixed by making banks less profitable and the value of their loans less certain.

This nonsense comes from Phil Goff Goof, who is supposed to be “on the right wing of the Labour Party” – suggesting, presumably, slightly more economic nous than the rest. Every major political party in New Zealand has policies to ignore property rights in our planning laws; for heavy progressive income taxes; for a national bank with state capital; for state ownership of roads, rail, and an airline; and for free education for children in public schools, giving them all at least five out of ten on the Communist Manifesto checklist: so “on the right wing of the Labour Party” is presumably a relative term. As is “slightly more economic nous than the rest.”

Goof Goff suggested that banks should be punished for charging “break fees” for switching from fixed rate mortgages to lower floating rates, following the Reserve Bank’s kamikaze interest rate policy. He believes that the Government should “make it clear” to banks that they “have got to come to the party.”

The phrase “make it clear” sounds like a request for a stiffly-worded letter. It sounds like a terse but rational appeal and that banks might have a choice. In truth, backed with absolute power, governments “make things clear” clear in the same way that Attila the Hun “made it clear” that he and his hundred thousand mounted archers would like to “come to the party” across the Rhine.

Fixed rate mortgages are a gamble. They’re your bet against the bank about which way the interest rate is going to go (and you’re betting against the house). You swap the possible benefit of a rate drop for the certainty that your repayments will never increase. If only some Government official with a magic wand – or a big stick – could let you have it both ways.

Much financial pain could be avoided if everyone who lost on their financial gambles was compensated. The Government urgently needs to create a Lotteries Ombudsman. Customers who, through no fault of their own, didn’t win Big Wednesday could line up outside the Office of the Lotteries Ombudsman on Thursday morning and have their numbers replaced with a winning array.

When someone is made redundant and then doesn’t win Powerball it can cause huge financial stress for a family. The Lotteries Commission makes huge surpluses and it’s inequitable that people have to choose their numbers before the results are drawn. Aston Martins for everyone!

Regulating banks to make them act against their best interests isn’t going to fix the credit crisis. As Don Brash noted recently, New Zealand has one of the least regulated banking systems in the civilised world and our banking system is one of those least affected by the current economic cyclone. Let’s try not to bugger that up.

One way not to bugger that up is for politicians to think before they speak. I know that the job of an opposition leader is to utter short words and try and get on the telly – and it probably plays well with Janice from Porirua – but suggesting quack remedies that will further debilitate the patient is a gaffe.

* * Read Bernard Barnton’s NOT PJ column every Thursday here at NOT PC * *