Major external risks faced by nations include warfare, global pandemics and international economic collapse – all events we have witnessed over the last few years. But sometimes, serious threats come from within.
Just such a threat was revealed last week by the Prime Minister who explained that the country is being blackmailed by eco terrorists who are threatening to kill New Zealand children.
Their indefensible action began last November, when letters containing baby formula laced with lethal doses of 1080 poison were sent to the chief executives of Fonterra and Federated Farmers. 1080, a pesticide containing the salt form of the naturally occurring toxin fluoroacetate, is widely used by the Department of Conservation to control animal pests that infect dairy herds with bovine tuberculosis and destroy native vegetation and wildlife.
The anonymous letters stated that infant formula would be contaminated with 1080 if the government does not ban all further use of the poison in New Zealand by the end of March.
The decision to not announce the threat to the public at that time was based on Police advice. The letters gave a timeframe for action, and since no contamination was planned until after the March 30 deadline, there was an opportunity for the government to develop a test for 1080 and then to batch test all infant formula stocks for the poison.
According to an update to Parliament last week, by the Minister for Food Safety, Jo Goodhew, “The ability for anybody to deliberately contaminate infant and other formula during manufacturing is very low. New Zealand manufacturers maintain high levels of security as a normal routine. Security and vigilance have now been significantly increased since this threat was received. The increased vigilance has been a team effort, with producers, manufacturers, transporters, and retailers all stepping up physical security measures and surveillance to protect these products. We have also developed an accredited 1080 testing programme for New Zealand milk and milk products and have tested 45,000 samples from all New Zealand formula producers, dating back to September last year. The testing will be ongoing, and the new testing is on top of our normal testing, auditing, and verification system. These measures give us the utmost confidence that there is no 1080 in infant or other formula.”
Security has also been ramped up at supermarkets as a result of the threat, through additional CCTV cameras and signage. Some have assigned staff to be ‘milk monitors’, to watch over the stock of infant formula and pass out official advice. In other outlets, all infant formula has been removed from shelves and can only be purchased from customer service counters.
The Government also tightened up controls on 1080 last week, making it the most highly regulated poison in New Zealand. Through new regulations introduced under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, it is now unlawful for anybody – including research laboratories – to possess 1080 without the prior approval of the Environmental Protection Authority. This will enable the Authority to better track the importation, distribution and use of high purity 1080, and to ensure it is always securely contained.
In response to the threat, the Police launched Operation Concord with over 30 dedicated staff. In addition to investigating who is behind the threat, the Police are ensuring all retail outlets selling baby formula have implemented the new safety regulations.
The Prime Minister has revealed that, “These threats to food internationally are not uncommon and it’s reasonably common for no public statements to be made.” He explained that a decision had originally been made to advise the public of the threat this week – once comprehensive product testing to ensure the safety of all infant formula had taken place – ahead of the end of month blackmailer’s deadline. But with over 1,000 people being aware of what was going on, a leak occurred, forcing the Police and the government to make the announcement last week.
The Prime Minister said that while the government had done all that it could to ensure infant formula is safe, “It is now just a matter of making sure people are careful when they pick up the can at the point of purchase”. He warned consumers to remain vigilant for signs of tampering and to report any such discoveries to the Police.
The Prime Minister also stated there would be no negotiation with eco-terrorists, explaining that the government would continue to support the use of 1080 by the Department of Conservation – in the absence of more effective alternatives to protect native species and reduce the risk of bovine tuberculosis in the national cattle herd.
He also said that the Government had to take the threat seriously even though it was likely to be a hoax, and that there would be no capitulation: “If you capitulated on the back of a threat like this, then when would it ever stop? Ultimately the next issue would be they don’t like the GCSB or they don’t like something else the Government does.”
While our trading partners are reported to have dealt with the news of the 1080 threat in a constructive manner, with limited adverse repercussions, the whole event does serve to remind us, not only how dependent New Zealand is on dairy exports – which make up around a quarter of all export earnings – but also, how interconnected and fragile our economy is.
In 2008 we witnessed first hand the interdependence of the world’s economies, when the global financial crisis brought most countries to their knees. The fact that many nations have still not recovered was reinforced last week by the European Central Bank’s decision to resume quantitative easing. The Bank has committed to buying €60 billion-worth of sovereign assets each month until September 2016, ploughing around €1 trillion into the Eurozone economy.
In New Zealand the global crisis was preceded by a domestic recession caused by the poor economic management of the last Labour Government, which had increased taxes and government spending to the point where the economy had stalled. However, through a change in government and the implementation of prudent financial management, this country weathered the storm better than most.
The New Zealand government agency responsible for protecting the country’s financial stability and supervising the banking system is the Reserve Bank. Since the global financial crisis, central banks have been working together, through the Swiss based Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, on strategies to protect economies from future shocks.
The Committee itself was established by the governors of the world’s leading central banks in response to the financial market crisis in the seventies. As a forum for cooperation on banking supervisory matters, it aims to enhance financial stability by improving the quality of banking supervision worldwide. Through sharing information and by setting minimum standards for the regulation and supervision of banks, they aim to identify current or emerging risks for the global financial system.
In particular the Committee has recommended that higher minimum capital standards should be set for commercial banks, and they have identified loans held by property investors, as a matter needing further attention since international evidence shows default rates and losses during sharp housing market downturns tend to be higher for residential investment loans than for loans to owner occupiers.
The Basel Committee divides assets into five main classes: equity, sovereign, bank, corporate, and retail. At the present time all residential mortgages sit within the retail asset class, whether they are for investment properties or a family home.
In order to account for the difference in behaviour exhibited by property investors under financial pressure, compared to owner occupiers, the Basel Committee has recommended that a new asset class be set up for property investors, with a new capital requirement aimed at providing additional protection to the banking system in the event of a major housing correction.
The Reserve Bank has long considered that New Zealand’s housing market poses a risk to financial stability. With lending on housing making up around a half of all bank loans, they believe that any instability in the housing market could undermine the stability of the wider banking system and the economy as a whole.
Given the over-heated property market in the country’s main population centre of Auckland, where the risk of a housing correction is climbing, the Reserve Bank is now pushing ahead with the new requirements for property investors.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator, investment analyst Frank Newman, explains:
“In effect the Reserve Bank will have its hands on six credit taps which it will adjust to influence the amount of credit flowing through into the economy. The new property investor tap will control the amount of credit available to property investors and therefore a substantial chunk of the demand in the property market. If the Bank wanted to rein in the property market it would turn down the flow of credit by requiring trading banks to hold more capital reserves viz-a-viz their lending to investors.
“Although the property inflation problem is essentially an Auckland one, the Reserve Bank is taking a more macro view. It says, ‘This is not about the state of the property market or penalising borrowers or regions. It is about helping to maintain the stability of our financial system by ensuring that banks classify their lending correctly and hold the appropriate level of capital backing for their loans’.”
The planned introduction of this new asset class by the Reserve Bank later this year follows on from their tightening of controls on high loan-to-value ratio residential mortgage lending in 2013. Those changes restricted the share of mortgages, where the borrower has less than a 20 percent deposit, to no more than ten percent of the dollar value of a bank’s new residential mortgage lending – with some exceptions including for those building new homes and those accessing Welcome Home Loans.
The problem of the overheated property market in Auckland has been caused by an unfortunate mix of poor decision-making by local government, badly designed central government legislation, and an increase in immigration.
In reality, the planning departments of many local authorities have been taken over by environmentalists who believe the world is running out of land and that urban dwellers must be contained to protect the planet. But with New Zealand’s ‘built’ environment covering less than one percent of the country’s total land area, their viewpoint is simply not credible.
The problem has been exacerbated by the bureaucratic local authority planning process, which has enabled long term plans to become ‘captured’ by deep-pocketed environmental lobby groups, determined to impose their ‘smart growth’ policies onto the country, and restrict housing supply.
In addition, changes to the Local Government Act introduced by the Labour Government, which enabled councils to impose expensive levies on housing developers, substantially increased the cost of building. Resource Management Act requirements also imposed costs and created delays, resulting in many planned new homes not being built at all.
The consequence of all of this is that in some parts of the country the supply of new homes has not kept pace with demand. In Auckland, only 7,700 homes were built last year, well short of the 13,000 needed to meet the region’s growing population. This is in spite of the government’s new housing accord, which is attempting to fast-track the planning process.
The reality is that until housing supply meets demand, in some parts of the country house prices will continue to rise. That will ensure the Reserve Bank presses ahead with its plan to establish the new residential investor property class, recommended by the Basel Committee, to better protect the economy in the event that there is a future housing market correction.
THIS WEEK’S POLL ASKS:
Do you agree with the Prime Minister that there should be no negotiation with eco-terrorists?
*Poll comments are posted below.
*All NZCPR poll results can be seen in the Archive.
THIS WEEK’S POLL COMMENTS
| Bloody oath. | Clark |
| All though I disagree with how these people have gone about bringing the 1080 debarcle to everyones attention 1080 is killing everything in our NZ native bush, Fantails, Tuis, Bellbirds, Kiwis, Geckos, Deer, Pigs, and also what it was first intended to kill possums, rats and mice. It even kills trout, fresh water koura and everything else that calls the NZ native bush home. All animals die in such a horrible way that it should have the SPCA up in arms for cruelty towards animals. | Wayne |
| In response the amount of 1080 used should be doubled. | Ray |
| Terrorist in any form are not up for negotiation There are not enough people in power that are prepared to make the hard calls. The law makers are too soft. | Ken |
| Yes, no more refugees, asylum seekers and a 10 year moratorium on immigration. | Robert |
| As with kidnappers seeking ransom monies, so with threats like this one involving 1080, it’s very simple. No negotiation! | Bruce |
| I hope the offender is discovered, to be associated with an extreme environmental group and/or Green party; that will damage their creditability and with their co-governance in chaos, hopefully the Green party will disappear from the parliamentary scene next election. | Monica |
| The Government should look for alternatives to using 1080 because what is NOT being reported are the number of people whose health has been affected and the number of domestic and farm animals which have died because of the use of 1080. Why not take another approach like using people currently receiving unemployment benefits to manually destroy unwanted pests rather than using blankets of 1080? | Delwyn |
| There should be no negotiation whatsoever with any Terrorists. Eco or otherwise. The answer to terrorists is to eliminate them by whatever means we have at our disposal. If this means using nuclear devices so be it irrespective of any casualties. | Brian |
| Dont let these nutcases take us over. Stand firm. | Robert |
| There are avenues for protest. Such a threat is sick. | Peter |
| Too much encouragement for continuing demands otherwise. | Jim |
| Yes agree no negotiations with this or any other terrorist organisation purely for the betterment of civilisation. | Audrey |
| When would it ever end and what would be next? | John |
| They must Ban 1080. Then there is no threat. | Clive |
| This is an incredibly overblown opinion: this completely insignificant issue is once again used by the ultra right to blame and scandalise all honest and reliable conservationists: SHAME ON YOU! | Dawar |
| The use of 1080 is essential to keep our native birds safe from possums, stoats and rats. | Tony |
| Only the Greens and the less informed would say no to that statement. | Tony |
| Why would any sane persom negotiate with any sort of terrorist? | Mary |
| Definitely no negotiation with eco- terrorists or terrorists of any kind. Any compromise between good and bad, right and wrong, food and poison, only death can profit!!! | Don |
| Absolutely! | Ken |
| Yes they hold a country to ransom and we are to small a country to survive it in most cases. | Colin |
| JUST SHOWS WHAT A HALF-WIT, FED BULLSHIT FROM THE GREENIES, CAN DO TO DAMAGE OUR ECONOMY. GOD, I HOPE THEY CATCH THE HALF-WIT AND SHOVE SOME 1080 DOWN HIS/HER THROAT. | PETER |
| Why agree with eco-terrorists. As a people if you dont agree with them the would kill you any way. | Robert |
| They are trying to blackmail our leaders to stop killing animals with 1080 poison and if they don’t stop they are going to kill babies? Yeah right. | Claire |
| If I had my way when they catch these people give them 1080 & see how they like that. | Geoff |
| This is one of the few issues that I actually agree with HoneKey. Its a pity he hasn’t taken the same approach towards the Waitangi Tribunal, Maori Mafia and the rest of the gravy-trainers who “terrorise” the tax dollars of hard working New Zealanders. | Steve |
| …………. and much less publicity for terrorist activity. | Stewart |
| It’s not a good idea to open the floodgates to every wierdo who thinks they speak for everyone. | Stewart |
| Once we start to negotiate the ball starts to roll and before we know it what started as negotiations becomes ‘doing as requested’ | Randi |
| Terrorists are terrorists eco or not they are still disrupting and / or endangering life – no negotiation. Track them, catch them and lock them up. | Dave |
| Negotiate once and the flood gates will open. We should never negotiate with terrorists | Colin |
| Yes, no compromise with terrorists of any description! | Scott |
| No negotiation, just the death penalty. | Des |
| Absolutely. No negotiating!!! A pork lubricated bullet would solve most of the Muslim terrorist problems worldwide!!!!! | Davem |
| Because of the fiscal impact that these threats pose to the fragile economic stability of our country, such acts should be seen for what they are – Treason. Those responsible must be brought to Justice and the full penalty for Treason must be imposed as a deterrent. There is far too much at stake for every sane thinking NZ citizen. | Alan |
| Yes, I agree with Key but haven’t we missed the ELEPHANT in the room? 1080 is OK in our forests and waterways but not in our infant formula. WTF? | Murray |
| Eco-terrorists are insane to consider this act – they are saboteurs of our economy and when caught should be locked up for life or put on some remote island in the deep south. | Brian |
| 100% | Colin |
| It is not possible. | David |
| NO NO NO. | Bill |
| Lives should not be put at risk over differing opinions, where will it stop. let us have a country wide referendum and make the result binding. | George |
| The only why to go. | Les |
| Are you real about our wonderful financial situation is seventy billion loan to five million people not fourteen million for every man woman and child. | John |
| If we negotiate with them it gives them a voice. They are beneath contempt and should be treated such. | Donald |
| Definitely do not negotiate with them. Identify them, then lock them up permanently without all the mod cons prisons have to make life better ‘inside’ than outside. And certainly, no early release for good behaviour! | Diana |
| Where would it stop if we negotiat ed with these terrorists? | Jim |
| No negotiation with any kind of terrorist. A head shot is to good for them. Make them suffer in public so the next one thinking about being a terrorist knows what is waiting for them. No pardon for those low lifes. | Johan |
| I’m unsure. There are past records of negotiations with terrorists & the outcome was beneficial to those the terrorists had in their control. | Isabel |
| On the same score, isn’t it time a more significant alternative to 1080 was more vigorously explored. Spreading poison bait to combat an animal pest is not the best. | Roy |
| These crackpots are gutless individuals who cannot use the normally acceptable methods of making a protest. It is a moot point of whether they need psychiatric help or jail time. | Peter |
| Absolutely. Any apparent weakness will only be exploited by future terrorists. | Laurie |
| Catch them and shoot them. | Mark |
| I do agree that there should be no negotiation with eco-terrorists. However, the topic that has led to extreme reaction should be examined thoroughly.. | Allan |
| If caught they should be given extremely long prison sentences to discourage others. | Tony |
| Maybe we have to get stocks back so these clowns when caught can be made public traitors. | Elizabeth |
| Shoot the bastards. | Brian |
| Just common sense! | Bob |
| In some circumstances negotiations are necessary, but not in this. It is pure and absolute blackmail. If whoever is responsible is every caught, an endless jail term should be imposed. | Ron |
| Any perpetrators should be publicly flogged. | Frank |
| Once you start, where do you stop. Everyone wanting attention will threaten in order to get what they want. | Sue |
| As with all these terrorists, give them an inch and they will take a mile and others will join them. It’s also similar, although in a vastly larger scale with spoiling a child and the problems that creates for later life. Ground rules are need in all aspects. | Chris |
| This also needs to apply to local governments, eg councils, and to the environment court. | Peter |
| They should be found and dealt with severely. | Carolyn |
| I vote’ no’ in the expectation that this may help identify who is behind this problem. Maybe? | Tim |
| Never negotiate. It only encourages them to carry out more terrorist activities. | Vern |
| The increased security is a absolute joke any terrorist of any kind can simply turn up in new Zealand buy some camping gear spend some time in the forest the stuff is laying all over the forest floor, blend it up & voila. Its like leaving loaded guns in the desert for ISIS. We drop enough 1080 to kill 20 million people every year. Our 1080 programme is new Zealand secret shame & will one day ruin our economy when found by just the shear weight of use in our exports. | Tracy |
| There should be no negotiation with any sort of terrorists. | David |
| Their power comes from being able to scare the population so if we stand up against them and show no fear they will be defeated. | RAY |
| As the PM says, otherwise, where would it stop? | Peter |
| Negotiation is publicity = win for the terrorists. | Geoffrey |
| Let our politicians do their jobs without being diverted by terroists, sending a message to terroists that they are not worthy of dialogue. | Sue |
| This is the consequence of the government not listening to genuine concerns of people not wanting poison in their environment why not instead put out of work people into the direct eradication of the problem and making a new export industry out of rabbit and possum fur while trapping other pests. 1080 is just another load on our health pollution problems. | Peter |
| ..and also all the Pharm companies who feed the population with massive toxins…the system stink… | Chris |
| And the government is the biggest eco-terrorist as it spreads tons and tons of this deadly, kill everything, poison around. It is destroying the ecosystem. Read “The Third Wave”. | Larry |
| Absolutely – there should be no negotiation with terrorists. They should be caught and face the full force of the law. What they are threatening is despicable. | James |
| Eco-terrorists should be locked up and the keys thrown away. | Brian |
| The government has done a credible job in dealing with this threat by dangerous nutters. When they are caught, they should be dealt with harshly as a deterrent to others. | Peter |
| As John Key has said, this threat is probably a hoax but given its nature the government could not take the risk. | Karen |
| It is such a despicable act by these extremists, that they should be punished with life in prison. | Graeme |