ANZACS FORGOTTEN

Anzac day this weekend, when we will remember those young people who fought for our freedom in theatres of conflict far away. Those who returned set about with determinantion to create a Nation State with opportunity for all, in charge of its own destiny, without poverty, with free education and health care, healthy housing, effective transport, and an egalitarian heart. A heart to look after the vulverable and give support and encouragement to all citizens.
It is with great shame that I look at the current minority National Party in government with its support parties proposing to sell our military land, cut up parts of the conservation estate, lay off public service staff, destroy democratic representation in our largest city, remove protections from unhealthy food especially in schools, borrow billions of dollars to give tax cuts to the well off and all the rest of it.
The sale of military land will further increase the government debt as we will have to rent what we owned thus increasing expediture as well as the military's duty to the New Zealand public being placed at risk from interference. Laying people off will increase the cost to health as well as being less service for the public. Ecosystems will be lost and the climate suffer as trees are felled and carbon released from coal.
This is a very sad weekend to remember the ANZAC spirit and the determination to create a Nation that stood out from others for its strength to care for people, economy and environment

Mt Albert: There's only one issue

It is almost impossible to believe that a government would rip a
gigantic tear smack through the middle of Auckland by building an
enormous, six or eight lane motorway straight through the middle of a
settled residential area to complete the Waterview Connection.

Not when there is already a finished plan for a bloody tunnel to avoid
the fuss.

A tunnel: You don't have to demolish hundreds of homes if you build a
tunnel. You don't have to demolish parks where children play. You
don't have to divide settled, colourful communities in two.

And most of all: The Tunnel Is Ready To Go NOW. The motorway isn't.
The motorway holds things up for years and years. The planning
consents could take twenty years. While the consents hold things up,
the costs will blow out, and more right wing politicians will sit on
their thumbs in a panic about the cost.

Auckland is spewing traffic onto Mt Albert roads because of the work
the previous government did to get a decent connected motorway system
in Auckland. That system needs to be completed urgently. The Waterview
Connection is absolutely vital. And it is sorely needed as quickly as
possible.

National is against a quick completion. It put the tunnel on hold.

There is only one big issue at this election: the motorway on the
surface or the tunnel underneath.

National is reverting to form, holding up the tunnel: It is
truculently holding up development because the tunnel wasn't its own
idea.

National is wasting money by mistakenly thinking that delay saves
money. It doesn't. Costs go up while we wait, and the obstacles to
efficiently moving traffic round Auckland cost hundreds of millions of
dollars a year - plus there's the environmental cost of all the
exhaust spewing into the air from waiting cars.

National is arrogantly thinking of riding roughshod over what locals
want - they want a tunnel, by a 90% majority.

National is out of touch with the wishes and needs of the local
Auckland community.

ACT, Maori and Greens holding support

It is quite interesting how the ACT, Maori and Green parties are holding their support levels five months after the general election.

 

If this trend continues it could be a real sign that MMP is maturing and we are settling down to a pretty permanent five-party political system.

 

The Roy Morgan poll released today has ACT at 4 percent support (fractionally above its election result), the Maori Party at 4 percent (near double its election result) and the Greens on 9 percent (up from 6.7).

 

ProgBlog is not a particular fan of some of the policies of UnitedFuture or NZ First.

 

But the historical record is that NZ First's then five MPs played a critical role in enabling the establishment of the NZ Superannuation Fund in the 1999-2002 Parliament. In the 1996-1999 Parliament, NZ First forced the abolition of the anti-savings Super Surtax and it forced New Zealanders to confront the issue of our nation's weak personal savings culture (a prelude to KiwiSaver a decade later).

 

And UnitedFuture's then eight MPs saved MMP in the 2002-2005 Parliament

by offering critical confidence and supply to the Labour-Progressive coalition which was eight seats short of a majority.

 

Because of the way that "the daily news cycle" operates, with the emphasis on entertainment and therefore "conflict," there is no question that 99 per cent of voters in 1999 and in 2002 and in 2005 had no inkling of the positive roles played by either NZ First or UnitedFuture in promoting political stability and progressive policies. The Progressives suffered the same fate.

 

But it could be that in 2009, after five MMP elections, enough of the public have now cottoned on to the way proportional electoral systems work. If so, that suggests ACT, the Maori Party and the Greens can hope not to be penalised for being responsible positive governing parties.

 

Prime Minister John Key's MMP masterstroke of securing a policy cooperation deal with the Greens this week, meanwhile, helps explain why his party continues to sit at around 50 per cent support in the polls.

 

http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2009/4371/

 

 

 

 

Wasting taxpayers' money on meaningless law-making

According to a New Zealand Herald story today not even one of the 423 prisoners currently serving life sentences would have been caught earlier had the National/Maori/ACT coalition's Sentencing and Parole Reform ("3-Strike") legislation already been enacted in this country.

 

Department of Corrections' data indicates that none of the prisoners would have been "struck out" before the offence that earned them their life sentence. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10565592

 

National and its allies should concentrate on serious policies to raise our economic development instead of wasting taxpayers' money - and wasting Parliament's limited time - with expensive, meaninless stunts like the Sentencing and Parole non-reform.

 

Exporters and tourism earners are again being hit as the NZ Dollar continues on its roller coaster ride that makes business planning near to impossible - the Reserve Bank is stuck between a rock and a hard place as the flying Kiwi acts to tigthen aggregate monetary conditions even as we enter the sixth consecutive quarter of recession.

 

If the governing parties have nothing meaningful to say or do to try and secure that export-led recovery that we must eventually have and really want to respond to the public's desire for much tougher terms and conditions for prisoners - why don't they do something simple like make life mean life?

 

Make a life term mean the natural life of the prisoner, or set it at 100 years. So instead of the 15 years or so that you get inside for a double murder, make it 200 years. Instead of the 17 years or so that you get for the murder of a family of five - make it 500 years.

 

That would be tough, it would be popular, most people would think it fairer than the current system and, importantly, it would be simple to enact so allowing Parliament to get back to addressing what to do get the unemployed into work, to get those in work into acquiring new skills and to get our export performance up.

America the free

July 14 will be the 25th anniversary of the election of the 4th Labour Government, a government that had tense relations with the big nuclear military powers of America, the UK and France.

 

The main problem was New Zealand's decision to legally ban nuclear weapons and nuclear-armed military craft from entering New Zealand territory. A secondary problem was our opposition to nuclear testing in the South Pacific. A third problem, unstated, was that New Zealand had set a bad precedent - what if other democratic countries followed us and declared themselves nuclear-free?

 

So a quarter of a century ago New Zealand under a Labour government was suspended from the ANZUS military pact because of our bad behaviour.

 

The good news is that on Sunday it became clear that the U.S. is coming around to our way of thinking. The future of mankind is at stake, President Barack Obama said, "all nations must strive to rid the world of nuclear arms".

 

It has been many years since the substance of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty has been on the international agenda. The commitment of its signatories is to reduce toward zero stockpiles of these weapons of mass destruction. Disarmament is a key pillar of the Treaty which only four States have so far refused to sign (India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea).

 

As for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, there are 44 states that possess nuclear technology that need to both sign and ratify it before it can take effect and only 35 have done so. The hold up, until now, is due to these nine: the United States, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/05/world/AP-EU-Obama.html?ref=global-home

 

After a long break, we are in 2009 getting real leadership from the United States on a fundamental global human rights issue.

 

NZ Crown accounts strongest in the West

With the exception of Norway, New Zealand's Crown accounts continue to come in as the strongest in the Western World which is very good news because it acts to protect all New Zealanders in these incredibly stressed-out global economic times.

 

Treasury reports today that the government's operating balance before gains and losses was a surplus of $49 million in the eight months to the end of February 2009 and the Crown's net financial asset position was positive $7.7 billion - equivalent to +4.3 per cent of NZ's GDP.

 

http://www.treasury.govt.nz/government/financialstatements/monthend/pdfs/fsgnz-8mths-feb09.pdf

 

In the USA, government net debt stands at over 50 per cent of US GDP, whereas NZ's government has no net debt - at 28 February our government's financial assets were valued at more than its financial liabilities to the tune of the equivalent of +4.3 per cent of NZ GDP.

 

http://www.oecd.org/document/61/0,3343,en_2649_34573_2483901_1_1_1_1,00.html

 

NZ's current position is not only exceptionally strong compared with the U.S., the UK or the Eurozone countries, but it is the strongest set of Crown books in NZ since records began in 1972 (when net Crown debt was around -5 per cent of GDP and compared with -52.6 per cent of GDP in 1992).

 

http://www.treasury.govt.nz/government/data

 

The National Government has inherited the best possible position to respond to the very challenging international economic conditions - their responsibility is to keep the Crown accounts strong and to ensure that every cent of new expenditure adds to the economy's strength while assisting those hurt by unemployment to find new employment - hopefully in export-orientated businesses ready to make the most of the next international upturn.

 

And if the Democrats' complex, non-transparent and expensive spending plans turn to custard...

The new United States Administration's economic policies are the source of a great deal of heated debate in America.

 

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize in Economics holder who was in New Zealand last year outlining the high risks of the former Administration's massive borrowing programme to fund the ill-fated Iraq invasion, describes President Obama's latest programme to salvage America's ailing banking system as clever, complex and nontransparent - a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose. Joseph Stiglitz: Ersatz Capitalism

 

Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute for International Economics who is without doubt one of the world's most informed people about Japan's "lost decade" when its banking system over-borrowed and got over-exposed to over-rated assets before siezing up in the 1990s, outlines a number of parallels between the U.S. today and Japan in the 1990s, as wonders whether there will be a need for a "Plan B" in a year or two. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-29/does-obama-have-a-plan-b/full/

Salman Khan tries to explain in very simple terms how the U.S. Federal Government's toxic debt management plan amounts to a massive gift to the banks - but his presentation leaves you wondering if the massive taxpayer generosity will deliver economic benefits to the wider economy or will in fact just delay, and exaggerate, the large underying economic and social adjustment Americans face. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-arbfLTCtI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.irvinehousingblog.com%2Fblog%2Fcomments%2Ffear-is-gripping-the-market%2F&feature=player_embedded

Hopefully the sceptics are wrong.

But there was a strange statement issued today by Reserve Bank Governor Bollard. He noted retail banks are raising their longer term mortgage lending rates Long-term interest rates out of line with RBNZ expectations Rising retail mortage rates are, Dr Bollard said, "inconsistent with the monetary policy outlook," - a strange statement because it only highlights how little influence our central bank has on long term interest rates in New Zealand and how dependent on off-shore lenders our retail banks are to be able to offer fixed term mortgages in the first place.

Maybe the rise in longer term retail mortgage rates is a sign of underlying investor confidence that America's plans are working and the global economy will recover. Perhaps, on the other hand, rising long term interest rates is just a sign of on-going stress in international debt markets, a sign of market scepticism in U.S. policies which manifests itself in higher charges by lenders to borrowers (which is bad news for the highly indebted of this world, like us Kiwis).

Only time will tell, but in the meantime the National Government's borrowing to fund today's $1 billion personal tax cut package looks like an unnecessary risk in these very troubled times. Finance Minister Bill English's statement doesn't mention where the funding for the package comes from http://beehive.govt.nz/release/government+delivers+april+1+tax+cuts+sme+changes and the decision to cut back on employer contributions to KiwiSaver (exactly what this indebted country needs more than ever), meanwhile, merely gets a footnote.