Fiduciary Failures

 Lords Over Serfs

One of the most offensive odiousnesses of modern politics is the way politicians morph into believing they are "to the manor born".  This can take many forms, such as what is now termed "troughing"--using extortions from the public via taxation to pay for personal expenses.    Another maddening form is extracting taxes to fund a grand gesture.


Most Unbelieving politicians have little or no sense that capital is scarce and very costly.  They falsely assume that money comes cheap--and, indeed, it would appear to, since the Inland Revenue Department painlessly, and without apparent cost, extracts billions of dollars from the income of private persons and businesses.  They fecklessly ignore that such extractions represent genuine cost to those that earned the money in the first place--every dollar extracted via the taxation system is covered in the costly grime of blood, sweat, and tears.  Moreover, the forced exaction of the state via taxation greatly increases the cost of every dollar left in the hands of the citizen.  If forty hours of labour are required to earn one hundred dollars, and the state exacts half in tax, the cost of earning what is left in the hands of the worker has just doubled.

What is required in politicians and government officials is a profound sense of trusteeship, or fiduciary duty.  Every dollar extracted in taxation is costly, very valuable and is to be used carefully and cautiously for the people as a whole.  Politicians and governors and officials are never any more than servants, bearing a fearsome responsibility, to be discharged faithfully back to the people.  Government is a stewardship, not a lordship.

How odious when politicians waste precious money on servicing their own sense of hubris and entitlement.  How unworthy of the office they hold.  One of the most offensive forms of theft is that of a servant.  When politicians waste the people's money--particularly on fripperies--they are guilty of just such an egregious form of theft.

Here is an example: Minister of Maori Affairs, Pita Sharples levered the government into wasting a precious $2million to build a plastic canoe to serve as a tourist attraction at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.  A grand gesture indeed. 

The $2 million Rugby World Cup waka could be sent to the scrapheap soon after it stars as a Government-backed tourist attraction during the tournament.  The giant 75m-long "Waka Maori" will promote culture for 11 days at a cost of $1.9 million to taxpayers and $100,000 to the Auckland iwi Ngati Whatua o Orakei.  Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples claims it will become a hit with tourists, but neither the Government nor the Auckland Council wants to keep it, so the iwi will become its owner after the rugby tournament.

Papers released to the Weekend Herald under the Official Information Act show Ngati Whatua o Orakei leaders are worried the waka could cause the tribe a heavy financial loss.

For the record, we have no objection to someone or group expending their own money to build a grand edifice.  What we object to is a politician doing it "on our dime" as the Americans would say.  Who is Sharples serving now: the people, whom he is supposed to serve with careful stewardship, or his own vainglory?  Quite rightly, Ngati Whatua--the tribe that will "inherit" the ongoing costs of this majestic white elephant--are smarting.

But the ongoing costs and unknown income prospects are causing anger in some quarters of the tribe. Tribal member Joe Pihema said that scrapped or not, the waka project had "failed the people". "The cost ... is not only the $135,000 a year for storage, but the lost opportunities to further our people through improved education, housing, cultural and health packages."  

Even those who believe ardently that Government exists to standover its citizens, extracting money from some to shower it upon others, are outraged.

Mana Party leader Hone Harawira said Dr Sharples' "major contribution" to the tournament amounted to a temporary "bauble". "The expenditure of $2 million on a plastic waka which will only be there for 11 days, cost $130,000 a year to store and $50,000 every time somebody wants to use it? "That's what I call a colossal waste of money." When the project was revealed in April, Labour MP Shane Jones likened the waka to plastic kitchenware, dubbing it the "tupperwaka" and a nauseating gift to a hapu.

Ah, but it does not really matter does it, when you are spending other people's money--and that money comes cheap?  What a stupendous invention the Inland Revenue Department is--the never-ceasing spiggot of free money.  Surely it must now be numbered amongst the wonders of the world.

How true and modern and relevant are the words of the ancient prophet.

This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots . . . he will take your daughters . . . . and he will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. . . . He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants.

Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.
I Samuel 8: 10-18

Of course our governments now extract far, far more than a mere ten percent.  We have indeed become enslaved in our own country.  We cry out to the Lord but He does not hear us, for the ways of Unbelief have seemed much wiser and better to us than His ways.  He has now left us to our desserts.  To add insult to this self-inflicted injury He gives us leaders who taunt us with their wasteful extravagant grandstanding, extracting our labour and our earnings only to mock us and demean us with their prideful gestures.  Truly they lord it over us.  That is ever the way of the world.

It is not to be tolerated amongst the people of God.  Our Lord has forbidden it.