Category: imported_guest
Race-based policy has been a feature of governance in New Zealand as long as the nation has had a government, and race-based affirmative action has been with us since the 1980s. Where is this heading and can anything be done to stop it? This column seeks to describe what the likely costs will be: when historical redress is agreed to and paid; when co-management agreements are set up with all tribal entities; and when all tribes have social service agencies operating, including Whanau Ora. I also suggest what could be done to reverse the process.
Alabama became the first state to adopt a tough law protecting private property and due process by prohibiting any government involvement with or participation in a controversial United Nations scheme known as Agenda 21. Activists from across the political spectrum celebrated the measure’s approval as a significant victory against the UN “sustainability” plot, expressing hope that similar sovereignty-preserving measures would be adopted in other states as the nationwide battle heats up.
Communities throughout New Zealand are feeling under siege from regional councils, district councils, and external lobby groups who are not part of their living, working communities. Spatial planning has spawned an avalanche of costly, staff driven micro management initiatives, for significant natural areas (SNAs), landscape, amenity, and biodiversity, affecting rural private property. Planning maps now identify everything from a blade of grass to a dog kennel.
On the face of it, the euromess is an old story. Populist governments and rampant bureaucrats are expensive indulgences at the best of times. With the global economic hangover we call the global financial crisis, to spend too much and save too little is downright dangerous, and not just for your own taxpayers.
It was a good day for New Zealand. Justice Hansen sentencing the Urewera four was having none of what he called their “utterly implausible” excuses. Well done, police and prosecutors. So called “peace activists” will not rest easier. Their cover ispermanently blown by the terrorism evidence even though it could not be used. They know the police know who they are and what they mean by “peace”.
Over the days since the Minister of Finance presented his fourth Budget, there has been extensive debate about the details of the Budget’s growth projections (will New Zealand achieve growth of 3.4% in the year to March 2014?), about whether the government’s accounts will be in surplus of 0.1% of GDP by 2014/15, and about whether more should have been done to help low-income people.
You’ve got to hand it to the jocks in the financial markets. My German co-author, who knows a bit about such things, tells me there’s already a spread trade going in credit default swaps (CDS). I won’t bore you with the details, but the trade amounts to an indirect bet, based on French sovereign debt, that Francois Hollande will be gone in 5 years time. Either that, or he’ll retreat into the safety of the pack.
The NZ Herald recently ran a poll asking whether National was right to use its veto to override Labour MP Sue Moroney's private member's bill to extend Paid Parental Leave (PPL) from 14 weeks to 6 months. After 16,000 votes were submitted, sixty percent of respondents had answered yes.
One unchanging political reality is that review panels are set up to get the outcomes of the interested party. I suggest that the current constitutional advisory panel has been carefully set up with focussed terms of reference, and carefully vetted panel members, to achieve the Maori Party goal of ensuring that the review gives effect to the treaty, and entrenching separate Maori seats.
During the last hundred years central government taxes per capita rose 20 times faster than consumer prices (from around $660 in 1910 to $13,198 in 2010 in year ended March 2011 dollars, as in the chart below). Meanwhile real GDP per capita only rose roughly 4-fold. The fact that taxes rose roughly 5 times faster than incomes as measured by GDP is reflected in the rise in taxes as a percentage of GDP from 6.3 percent of GDP in 1910 to around 30.8 percent in 2010.
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