Wednesday 30 November 2022

Has Labour Become A Co-Governed Party?

The Power Of Two: It is possible that, formally or informally, the Labour caucus arrived at its own version of co-governance. What the Māori caucus decide upon as its priorities are not to be overridden or gainsaid by the broader Labour caucus’s Pakeha majority. An arrangement of this sort would certainly explain how Three Waters became such immoveable items on Labour’s legislative agenda.

THE MORE THE VOTERS DISCOVER about Labour’s Three Waters, the less they like it. No matter, this Government has clearly decided that, if it is to be destroyed, then Three Waters is the hill upon which it will die. That being the case – and the still-unfolding Entrenchment Crisis leaves little room for doubt – then the only real question to be answered is: Why? What is it about the Three Waters project that renders it impervious to rational reconsideration?

When a group of people refuse to accept they have made a poor choice – even as it threatens to destroy them – then it is a reasonably safe bet that they are in the grip of dangerously delusional thinking. Cult-like thinking, some might even suggest. But is it credible to suggest that a mainstream political party could fall victim to delusional thinking on such a scale? Is Labour really crazy enough to put its long-term survival at risk?

It is certainly possible. And those in need of convincing have only to consider the destructive impact of Brexit upon the British Conservative Party, and Donald Trump’s malign influence over the United States’ Republican Party. If a majority of Tory MPs could be persuaded that leaving the EU was a good idea; and House Republicans that the 2020 Presidential Election was actually won by the incumbent; then the idea that Labour is hellbent on trashing New Zealand’s unwritten constitution suddenly doesn’t sound crazy at all.

The British Tories were tortured by the fear that remaining in the EU was tantamount to conceding that the days of global hegemony and imperial splendour were finally beyond recall. For the Americans, the fear was remarkably similar: that their fate would be the same as the Brits’; being edged off the world stage by larger emerging powers. Brexit offered the opportunity to “Take Back Control”. Trump promised to “Make America Great Again”. Big ideas. Crazy lies.

What idea is big enough to derange the Labour Party into courting electoral suicide? The answer would appear to involve a radical revision of New Zealand history. Something along the lines of the colonisation of Aotearoa being a heinous historical crime. In this narrative, the colonial state is identified as the institution most responsible for the criminal dispossession of Aotearoa’s indigenous Māori population. Labour’s big idea is to facilitate a revolutionary reconstitution of the New Zealand state.

Now, where would Labour get an idea like that? Putting to one side Labour’s Māori caucus, whose interest in such an historical project is entirely understandable, how could Labour’s Pakeha MPs have picked up such a self-destructive notion? Well, the university graduates in Labour’s caucus (which is to say nearly all of them) are highly likely to have come across arguments for “decolonisation” at some point in their studies. The lawyers among them would certainly have encountered and absorbed “the principles of the Treaty”. So, too, would those coming to the Labour Party from the state sector.

It would be interesting to know exactly how many members of Labour’s caucus have, at some point in their past, attended a “Treaty Workshop”. Over the course of the past 40 years these have become virtually compulsory for members of the professional and managerial middle-class. The version of New Zealand history conveyed to those attending these workshops is remarkably consistent: colonisers = baddies; the heroic Māori who resisted the colonisers’ ruthless predations = goodies. Only by giving full effect to te Tiriti o Waitangi can the wrongs of the past be righted: only then will equity and justice prevail.

Many of those attending Treaty workshops will have been invited to “check their privilege” and “confront their racism”. This can be a harrowing experience for many Pakeha, leaving them with a strong inclination to keep silent and step aside whenever those on the receiving end of “white privilege” are encouraged to step forward and speak out. In the most extreme cases, Pakeha are actively discouraged from sharing their opinions, lest their higher education and superior facility with the English language overawe and “silence” those denied such privileges.

When Labour’s Māori caucus (the largest ever after the 2020 general election) sought to take full advantage of the party’s absolute parliamentary majority to advance their Treaty-centric agenda, it is entirely possible they found themselves pushing on an open door.

It is even possible that, formally or informally, the Labour caucus arrived at its own version of co-governance.* What the Māori caucus decided upon as its priorities were not to be overridden or gainsaid by the broader Labour caucus’s Pakeha majority. An arrangement of this sort would certainly explain how the Māori Health Authority and Three Waters became such immoveable items on Labour’s legislative agenda, and why the rising unpopularity of Nanaia Mahuta’s Three Waters project has, so far, proved unable to shift the Prime Minister and her Cabinet from their position of unwavering support.

Labour’s been here before. In the 1980s, the “big idea” that seized the imagination of most of the Labour caucus was what was then called “free-market economics”. By the end of the Fourth Labour Government’s second term it was clear that the consequences of the Rogernomics “revolution” were going to be electorally fatal. Desperate to negotiate an economic policy U-turn, the Labour Party discovered that the Labour Government was, like Margaret Thatcher, “not for turning”. Indeed, many MPs proudly declared that they would rather lose their seats than repudiate the economic reforms they had helped to introduce.

In 1990, Rogernomics was the hill Labour decided to die on. And die it did – at least as a recognisably social-democratic party. The party’s left-wing departed with Jim Anderton to form NewLabour and the Alliance, leaving behind a curious mixture of neo- and social-liberals. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that Labour’s Māori caucus has found the party’s Pakeha majority so easy to cajole into backing what, from its perspective, is an entirely legitimate constitutional agenda. Led by Nanaia Mahuta and Willie Jackson, the Māori caucus has taken full advantage of the fact that their Pakeha colleagues’ lack of constitutional conviction has never been a match for their own passionate intensity.

Three Waters may be the hill Labour dies on, but when the victors survey the field of battle, the only corpses they’ll find will be Pakeha. Each one clutching the “Big Idea” for which their party has paid the ultimate price.

* Acknowledgement is due, here, to NZ Herald journalist Fran O'Sullivan, who first raised the possibility of Labour having become a co-governed party. - C.T.


This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 29 November 2022.

35 comments:

Kiwi Dave said...

Since the consequence of resisting the Maori caucus’s demands could be the permanent loss of the Maori seats and an irrevocable party split, the Labour Party is caught between a rock and a hard place. Perhaps with other co-governance arrangements already in place, plus acquiescent media, one more co-governance arrangement must have seemed achievable.

On a side issue, Trump’s foreign policy actions seem to me much less aggressive than his predecessors.

Max Ritchie said...

The Tories at least had the excuse of a referendum. NZ Labour and the US Republicans seem to have a death wish. The NZ electorate will be happy to oblige; the Republicans may yet come to their senses.

Gary Peters said...

The only way this stupidity will be halted is if independent commenters such as yourself accurately portray issues as they are today and reinstate history, the real history not the fabricated crap we are being fed by those with a hidden agenda.

And talking of a hidden agenda, had ardern had the courage of her convictions, he puapua and co-governance would have been front and centre of the 2020 election campaign so the electorate could have given her a mandate, one which she may have actually gained due to the covid narrative still being in it's concealed stage.

The fact that labour kept these plans under the covers shows that they are well aware that New Zealand does not want this. This alone clearly demonstrates that this government is acting dishonestly

John Drinnan said...

The Brtexit angl4 is an appeasing stretch. There was a referendum But otherwise typically solid. Thanks

Brendan McNeill said...

“..the Māori caucus has taken full advantage of the fact that their Pakeha colleagues’ lack of constitutional conviction has never been a match for their own passionate intensity.”

Chris Trotter (30/11/22)

"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

W B Yeats (Circa 1920)

Anonymous said...

Thank-you Chris for raising discussion of the sham historical analysis of Maori / Liberal academia which is steadily destroying this government and sadly the whole Labour Party with it

The poison permeating New Zealand’s body politic is based in contrived truths bigotry and outright lies perpetrated by greedy Maori elites and academics and their gaggle of spineless pakeha acolytes

The fact that Aderns good government and the Labour Party. has been used as a stalking horse by this group of despicable scoundrels is a tragedy for the party and of course for New Zealand democracy itself

John Hurley said...

Finland's indigenous Sámi politicians clear new human rights law hurdle
The most controversial part of the new Act deals with who can be considered Sámi, and therefore get their name on the electoral roll for voting or standing as a candidate in the Sámi Parliament elections.

At present, a Finnish court is the ultimate arbiter on this, but the United Nations, the Finnish Non-Discrimination Ombudsman and the Council of Europe as well as human rights organisations had all strongly urged Helsinki to amend the law so the Sámi Parliament, and therefore the Sámi people, have the final say on who is a Sámi.

The Act has been loudly opposed by the Centre Party, one of the five parties in Finland's ruling coalition government, although Sanna Marin and other senior ministers have belatedly supported the Act in recent weeks, framing it as a human rights issue.

The rhetoric around the new Act became so heated, in particular from some Centre Party MPs and their supporters, that the Sámi Parliament had to issue a statement condemning an increase in hate speech directed towards Sami people.
https://www.euronews.com/2022/11/29/finlands-indigenous-sami-politicians-clear-new-human-rights-law-hurdle

John Hurley said...

The British Tories were tortured by the fear that remaining in the EU was tantamount to conceding that the days of global hegemony and imperial splendour were finally beyond recall. For the Americans, the fear was remarkably similar: that their fate would be the same as the Brits’; being edged off the world stage by larger emerging powers. Brexit offered the opportunity to “Take Back Control”. Trump promised to “Make America Great Again”. Big ideas. Crazy lies.
......
Trump and Brexit can be statistically linked to the salience of immigration at the national level (identity threat).
Who seriously believes you can just replace one group with another or declare "they are us" (problem solved).
Nowhere in history has there been a smooth replacement of one ethnic group by another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckdzejrc0z8&t=2697s

"that racist John Hurley" said...

Well, the university graduates in Labour’s caucus (which is to say nearly all of them) are highly likely to have come across arguments for “decolonisation” at some point in their studies.
........
Brave New World must have started as post-colonialism became popular.
In 1984 David Lange Lange stated in a letter to KR Bolton (which I read out of curiosity) "apartheid is of special concern to NZ where we are attempting to make a truly multi-racial society". This shows the levels the Labour Party where prepared to go to: human instinct is base. Human instinct serves no other purpose than to get in the way of a better "more inclusive" human society. The lion will lie with the lamb etc?

David George said...

Thank you, good essay and comments.

One aspect barely discussed is the introduction of spiritual/metaphysical/religious belief and practice into this and other legislation. The "group of despicable scoundrels" (thank you Anon), despite their probable general antipathy towards religion are hell bent on awarding legal status, if not ultimate primacy, to ideas of Maori spiritual belief.

They must never be questioned and therefore carry very real risk of blatant misuse by said scoundrels for political and economic advantage. How to explain the spineless acquiescence, or willful blindness, of our leaders? Would they be at all compliant with calls for, say, Christian primacy over our nation's natural resources, our commons?

Perhaps it's part of a more general trend to denigrate Western culture, it's religion, it's heroes and it's history.

Rod Dreher: “We in the West are ruled by people who hate its traditions, hate its ancestral religion, hate its history, and hate many of the people who live within it.”

Sir Roger Scruton:

"Oikophobia is an educated derision that has been directed towards historical loyalties by our intellectual elites, who have tended to dismiss all the ordinary forms of patriotism and local attachment as forms of racism, imperialism or xenophobia of which it accuses the world. I do not mean fear of home, however, but the repudiation of home—the turning away from the claims and attachments that identify an inherited first-person plural.

Oikophobia is a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes […] But oikophobia is also a stage to which some people—intellectuals especially— tend to become arrested."

The Barron said...

I note your comments regarding the “Treaty Workshop”. a one who has developed and presented such workshops, I should urge against essentialism. These have varied over time and orientation. The late Moana Jackson was undoubtedly the Godfather of the workshop. His softly spoken and inclusive delivery was rich with personal living history intersecting with concepts of national and international law and colonial constructs. While Chris suggests consistent "colonisers = baddies; the heroic Māori who resisted the colonisers’ ruthless predations = goodies" this played no part in Jackson's workshops.

It is conceded that the early 1990s was a time when Maori had grown in the knowledge of colonial history and Pakeha lagged in the same knowledge. Some of these early workshops reflected the shock value and the frustration of this discrepancy of understanding. These evolved towards the Jackson model, primarily because it was more effective.

The workshops I was involved with were co-created by Maori and Pakeha. While it covered the history of colonial NZ to the Waitangi Tribunal I am unaware of any claims of historical bias, and delivery was at times in front of published historians. However, the workshopping primarily about forward looking and what is required in decision-making. We showed examples where Maori needs and ontology was overlooked. Examined the decision making process and how it would be enhanced by ensuring Maori input at that level. We showed that a colonial mono-cultural approach empowered only one group, but by expanding the input to include that of Maori we develop more multicultural and inclusive model. Also, how this flexibility would benefit Pakeha.

An example of this is where bereavement leave is set alongside tangihanga. The Hura kōhatu is the unveiling ceremony that often occurs a year after the passing. By recognizing that duties to the bereaved are not all in the immediate time of the funeral it allows for the similar unveiling in Pasifika and others with shared cultural practice. As a result of the recognition of later duties to the bereaved we had benefited those that have to travel to Europe of America to sort wills and other things out. A simple thing that has been overlooked in a monocultural model that expands the the rights and needs of all. A very NZ solution that has been looked overseas at by Celtic and other cultures.

Another example was in organizing a conference. An attempt at moving towards the Treaty it had been proposed that there would be two key note speakers, one Pakeha and one Maori. We workshopped this suggestion. The organization had a Maori wing. We discussed what would be the situation if two outstanding Maori speakers were available one year. What if the Maori wing had a Native American, indigenous Australian or other speaker they thought would add value. After a while there is a realization that, while well meaning, the earlier proposal was tokenistic and problematic. Most workshops landed on the idea that there would be two speakers, one nominated by the general body (which included Maori input) and one nominated by the Maori wing. The lesson being that to get it right, the treaty inspired process is one of structural decision making and empowerment.

to be continued.

The Barron said...

Part Two

It is difficult to align my experience of attending, developing and presenting Treaty workshops with Chris' -

"Many of those attending Treaty workshops will have been invited to “check their privilege” and “confront their racism”. This can be a harrowing experience for many Pakeha, leaving them with a strong inclination to keep silent and step aside whenever those on the receiving end of “white privilege” are encouraged to step forward and speak out. In the most extreme cases, Pakeha are actively discouraged from sharing their opinions, lest their higher education and superior facility with the English language overawe and “silence” those denied such privileges."

This seems straight out of the extreme right of the Republican Party fearmongering on Critical Race Theory. The Treaty Workshops simply do not operate this way. I have never seen any individual or sector singled out or blamed for the sin of the father. Indeed, right through until we finish with shared waiata the aim is always to bring the group together. This includes not simply Maori and Pakeha, but Pasifika and new migrant societies.

If Labour MPs have undergone Treaty workshops, I would suggest that those would be models of inclusion. The indoctrination workshop described are a Stasi fantasy.

Odysseus said...

Co-governance is not compatible with equal suffrage or democracy more widely. It violates New
Zealand's binding obligations under international human rights law which we have ratified long ago. Labour has received no mandate to introduce it. They have become a rogue government. The Governor-General should remove them.

Anonymous said...

The Baron. Thanks for your insights. I'm wondering how long since you were involved with the workshops? Things started out like you explained but I can assure you from experience there is a feeling at workshops now of casting shame on colonialists/white people. Even the practice of getting all participants to do a pepeha to introduce themselves by explaining their mountain, their river, their iwi is ridiculous. It feels like one is a child again and having to pretend to love Jesus. Why do we have to pretend to be Maori just so we can do our jobs???
This Maori indoctrination has infiltrated all government and local government, all education institutes including most necessarily primary schools and pre-schools. I know a teacher who says that at her Primary school the only songs sung are Maori ones.
One minority people can never subsume another in harmony (e.g. South Africa) and it is mega-stupidity to try.
MC

Alan said...

Someone once said: 'It is not the lofty white sails that move the ship, but the unseen wind..'

They could have added: 'and the dark currents beneath..'

Politics unfortunately seems to attract, too often, people who see it as a personal career rather than a mission towards a better future for all, and the Labour Party, once a home for folk whose driving passions were the soaring sails that drove the ship, is no more. It is now crewed by moral cowards in the British Blairite tradition, shameless mediocrities inhabiting a once great, but now purposeless and decaying vessel.

We really cannot change people who see no problem with advancing issues with blatant deceit and lies as co-governance interpretations of the Treaty of Waitangi involve. The consequence of that nonsense is now a shameful Government intent to graft a deeply unpopular,and flawed,'3 Waters' governance onto the whole country.

Nor is that the end. it is only the beginning. The flow-through will be a deeply riven undemocratic society, be in no doubt. Root and branch this lot must go.

Alan

The Barron said...

It was only 3 Yeats ago I finished delivering workshops, and I understand the material developed is still the basis for those delivered now.

I think we need to be open for experience. The Eurocentric world view is already established, opening to an understanding of te ao Maori is often needed. The pepeha is about making connections and commonality. It demonstrates a sociocentric ontology in contrast to a western egocentric cultural basis.. It has value for some workshops in helping understand different social values and what we have in common.

Descriptions such as indoctrination don't fit. Increased bicultural or multicultural understanding does not deter from the western cultural domination. Indeed, what the workshops are about is incorporating and including a wider cultural view as we develop what we see as modern New Zealand.

John Hurley said...

In this video economist and champion of the open society George Megalogenis argues that Australia's economy boomed while it remained open (gold rushes) and stagnated while closed.
He isn't sure about Australia's carrying capacity, but he warns that taking that route is a dangerous way to go as it will require (I forget the word) a restructuring[?] of society.
In other words a [country/state?] has to (finally) confront "who is us".
On Q&A wealthy Grimes and Spoonley (Oscar Knightly) say "whatever happens we will get through; we will find a way".
This from the people who are met at the airport by Corporate Cabs; whereas Big G still working at 72 and worries about his blood pressure as his license is coming due for renewal while he has debt to pay.
Ha-Joon Chang points out that an Indian bus driver earns a tiny fraction (1:50) of what a Swedish bus driver earns. Progressives don't accept population to resources as an argument (that only applies to animals). Eric Crampton sees Ha-Joon Changs argument as being in favour of migration.
So you have a meritocratic society where the weakest get crushed, and the bottom line is numbers of workers.
In that situation people naturally seek out belonging. Unfortunately, the peasants won't win; the vested interests will. The Thais will cower and hide their resentment of the farlang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60q2yIfXtig&t=6s

Gary Peters said...

Perhaps the baron needs to broaden his conversation circle.

This is from the BFD today, unedited.

"Had the first of three mandatory staff educations days this week. The message was as expected. Colonisation is to blame for every Maori health issue and "it cannot continue". (I thought the new Health Service Te Whatu Ora is supposed to fix that). People who bash their children even to the point of death are not to blame - it is colonisation (yeah right). Not enough land has been given back yet (but no mention of the fact they are about to own all the water). They had their culture ripped away from them (sure thing /sarc). Pakeha must learn about their culture so they can understand what they have done and their obligations under the treaty (I didn't sign it and don't have any)."

David George said...

Is the willingness of the government (and associated agencies) to embrace and enforce the deeply flawed co governance ideology courage or cowardice? Perhaps it's both at the same time - just like a gang member, terrified of standing up to his allies but ruthlessly brave and intractably "staunch" against those outside.

"the modern state has been captured by insider patronage networks that are mob-like in their behaviour and effect. The resulting erosion of trust among the public has seen the government devolve into what might be called ‘amoral institutionalism’. And we can feel the tremors of that each time we go to the shops or read stories about Covid-19.

The ruling progressive mob doesn’t use familial connections as its baseline for admission, but rather institutional affiliations, long periods of ideological training and other loyalty-assurance mechanisms to keep the patronage networks aligned. At the centre is a true power elite presiding over these networks and forming the ideological centre of gravity holding the mob system together".

"most of the people involved in the progressive mob network dominating Western society likely don’t believe that this is what they are. But it also isn’t necessary for them to see that they are part of a mob, as long as they behave as though it is."
https://thebfd.co.nz/2022/12/01/the-new-king-of-twitter/

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Trump and Brexit can be statistically linked to the salience of immigration at the national level (identity threat).
Who seriously believes you can just replace one group with another or declare "they are us" (problem solved)."

Interesting, considering that the strongest brexit votes came from places that never saw a migrant from one year to the next, except some temporary apple pickers perhaps. As it is, it's turned out to be an outright economic disaster, and all the hypocrites who pushed it have managed to insulate themselves from the results by getting Irish citizenship or shifting their businesses elsewhere. Whereas small business people who can't do that are suffering. Using brexit to stop migration has turned out to be similar to destroying your house to get rid of termites.

greywarbler said...

The nuclear issue brought NZ to the world political stage as the brave little country that could. While we were absorbing all the 'fallout' from that we had a different domestic fallout, killing off our country's heart-policies that we had been brought up to believe were entrenched in our culture. We have been crippled since and can only manage to stand up and wave our crutches angrily or sadly. To march chanting 'What do we want,,,We want it now' we know is a farce, and going to the central government site in Wellington, it's just a roundhouse and not our real, meaningful Beehive that we knew.

greywarbler said...

John Hurley at 11.41
Your comments always seem to have a negative feel . Puty. If we could have carried on trying to be multi racial for a good reason of harmony and co-operation and respect which I think was what we needed, then we'd be 70% happy now instead of the other way. But Labour fell for the wealth aspect of the country, and bringing in loads of poor people with ambitions from countries with tough attitudes to others prepared to squeeze advantage to the nth degree, which their rich often do to their own people using their poverty against them. And to top it off the wealthy of all races have been encouraged to come here and pick our plums with their minds and purses, truly multi-racial Labour and National have together wrecked our potential ability to be the well-functioning multi-racial society envisaged. We were on our way till the greedy and lazy middle class looked to neoliberalism and free markets and investment finance from the internationally advantaged as an easy way to advance their NZ and wipe the floor with the most of us.

DS said...

Co-governance is not compatible with equal suffrage or democracy more widely. It violates New Zealand's binding obligations under international human rights law which we have ratified long ago. Labour has received no mandate to introduce it. They have become a rogue government. The Governor-General should remove them.

FFS.

International agreements are only binding insofar as they have been incorporated into domestic law, and, well, Parliament is Supreme (I also think you'll find a major issue here was the Key Government signing onto a certain International Declaration).

Governments do all sorts of things they never promised all the time (see 1984 and 1990), and the correct way of dealing with it is via election. Not by calling for the Governor-General to launch a coup d'etat.

LARRY MITCHELL said...

A pyrrhic victory awaits and this suits the wild-eyed socialist extremists.

This apology for a government will end up ... "in flames" with a landslide electoral defeat. There is no equivalent response that can be reasonably advanced, they are not for turning.

"Let's all die on own selected hills as we are so certain of our moral superiority, we will brook no contrary opinions and we will never admit to error."

This sums up the vaulting arrogance of Ardern's government.

Their self-righteous polemic leaves no opening for democratic debate.

So save your breath.

The Barron said...

Well Gazza, I looked at the BFD to understand your post. It seems an outlet for anonymous marginal right-wing views.

I would hope that people would relate their own experience and context rather than unverifiable heresy. The 'mandatory staff education ' described is at best fantasy at worst the interpretation of an embittered person.

Andrew Nichols said...

All this fear....As a pakeha I see all the hooha over co governance as what Maori might reasonably have felt over the 19th Century watching their governance disintegrate to be replaced by settler governance. What is it that exactly scares you about Maori values in the water space? Water fit fir consumption? Clean enougb for fish to survive in? We dont get sick swimming in it? Its a human right?

David George said...

Jacinda and Hipkins' BS busted.

Their claim that the entrenchment clause Labour voted for was “not necessarily something I would be aware of” has been destroyed by none other than PM (puppet meister) Mahuta.

"Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta confirmed, through a spokesperson, the change to the bill was discussed with the Labour caucus – a meeting of all its MPs – in advance of the House sitting."
And "Green Party local government spokesperson Eugenie Sage said her party had made it clear it wanted a 60% majority in an earlier select committee report, and had discussed it with Mahuta."
“There was also correspondence with the minister, but ... I’m not going to go into any more detail on what our discussions with the minister’s office were,” Sage said.

“We had made our position clear to the Government before the SOP was tabled, that we were seeking this. Quite clear ... it should not have been a surprise.”

David George said...

Sorry, I forgot to include the link to the above story:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/130623964/jacinda-ardern-attended-labour-caucus-meeting-where-controversial-three-waters-entrenchment-clause-was-discussed

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Come to think of it, come to think of it, is it worse when unelected judges dictate policy – which it could be argued as the job – or when unelected Treasury officials deliberately set out to cause a recession, which none of them will suffer from.

Dave said...

I would not assume Labour's behavior to be irrational.

What if Labour consciously or otherwise believes that the Maori vote will be sealed for them in perpetuity, bringing them back into power for many terms after National attempts to repeal their newly acquired rights and privileges?

David George said...

Perhaps you've simply not been paying attention Andrew Nichols, the issues with the three waters have been extensively covered here and elsewhere. It's clandestine, undemocratic introduction, the outright lies (34,000 Kiwis a year sick from drinking municipal water?) used as justification, the racist basis for it's governance, the lack of local, or any, democratic oversight of it's management and so on. Ignorance over it's financing is probably more excusable. It has been poorly covered.

The intention is to fund it with an incredible $297,000,000,000 loan (equivalent to almost our nation's entire GDP, or turnover, for 2020) on the open debt market at a debt to profit ratio of 9 or 10 times EBITD. So that implies an annual nett (ex. interest etc.) profit of almost $30 billion dollars - more than half of that, depending on prevailing rates, will disappear in interest payments alone!. And that's not even including running costs or any debt repayment or depreciation of assets. Some perspective - the total spend by all local councils for all general public services in 2020 was $4.3 billion.

So where's all this money going to come from? There's only one place it can come from - Kiwi households and businesses. You OK with that?

What past Maori may or may not have "felt" has nothing to do with it, we are responsible for thinking about and discussing and working out what is best for us all now and in the future as best we can. This plan is deeply flawed in every possible way.


David George said...

Some excellent work unraveling the three waters financing and it's implications here:

https://cranmer.substack.com/p/three-waters-and-the-debt-that-will

Also of likely interest on the broader issues:

https://cranmer.substack.com/p/three-waters-and-he-puapua

https://cranmer.substack.com/p/the-unbridled-power-of-te-mana-o

https://cranmer.substack.com/p/the-three-waters-select-committee

Gary Peters said...

Dave, if that is labour's plan they will soon find that "feeding" that particular beast has an exponential growth factor built in.

Like a drug addict, it will require more and more until either supplies run out or they self destruct.

Gary Peters said...

Guerilla Surgeon refers to "unelected Treasury officials".

You are drawing a very long bow if you truly think this government has assiduously followed sound Treasury advice. From what has been published there are numerous times when Treasury advice has been either ignored or cherry picked in order to follow ideology.

https://www.politik.co.nz/the-government-ignores-treasurys-advice-and-goes-its-own-way-on-property-prices/

https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/politics/lack-of-evidence-govt-ignored-initial-treasury-warnings-over-ute-tax/

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/02/revealed-government-ignored-treasury-advice-on-9-9m-westland-milk-provincial-growth-fund-loan.html

Plenty more of you have the time.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

I should have – obviously not awake – been referring to reserve bank officials who have decided to bring about a recession. Not the Treasury – my bad. That being said, neither organisation that has a particularly stellar record in doing what they are supposed to do. So I'm not surprised that their advice is ignored from time to time.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/thomas-coughlan-treasurys-been-getting-it-wrong-on-house-prices-it-should-be-forced-to-explain-why/B5YC73XRHUWS2G3B3D2WBKUHAM/
https://www.nzinitiative.org.nz/reports-and-media/opinion/the-rot-at-treasury-started-years-ago/
https://www.globalgovernmentforum.com/nz-treasury-errors-led-to-budget-leak-inquiry-finds/
https://www.odt.co.nz/business/treasury-forecasters-get-it-wrong-again

Plenty more of these if you care to look.