Facing Up To Reality

Five Reasons The Election Should Be Delayed

David Farrar
Kiwiblog

With the decision that Auckland remains in Level 2 for a further 12 days, it really is a no brainer to delay the election. But not just because of the impact on campaigning. Here’s my five reasons why the election should be delayed (as 71 other countries have done).

1. We need Parliament in sessions scrutinising the Government

There has never been a more important time for Parliament to be meeting so Ministers can be questioned in the House, and Ministers and officials in select committees.

It is scrutiny of the Government’s performance that leads to improvements and changes. Take for example the revelation by Michael Morrah that two thirds of border and isolation workers had never been tested for Covid-19, let alone weekly as recommended. That totally changed the dynamics around border testing.

But the Government did not release this information voluntarily. Derek Cheng in the Herald reported media had been asking for this information every day for the last two weeks, and the Government had refused to supply it. Morrah managed to cobble the data together from other sources.

OIA requests don’t have to be answered for 20 or really 40 days. But oral questions in the House must be answered within five hours. Written questions within five days and select committees can question officials and Ministers on the spot.

We need Parliament to be sitting to make sure the Government is doing all it can to prevent further outbreaks. It is clear that without scrutiny, they don’t.

2. We need Ministers focusing on Covid-19

The Prime Minister is also the Labour Party Leader. I want her focused on the former role at the moment.

Has Jacinda Been Thinking? It Appears Not.

The Jacinda Tidal Wave Has Gone Out

Richard Prebble
NZ Herald  

This article first appeared in the NZ Herald on the 14th September.  Ironically, later in the day, Jacinda Ardern capitulated, and reverted to Labour's tax position as it was before Ardern took over the leadership of the Labour Party.   

The author's comments below on the command-and-control aspects of Labour's economic policies, and the apparition of Communist economics that they resemble remain an accurate description of Labour's position.  Ed.

What has happened to the Jacinda tidal wave? Jacinda who started the wave is the person who stopped it.

Labour's policy under Andrew Little was to have a tax review. Labour would take any recommendations to the voters at the next election. Kelvin Davies set out the policy on TV only to be publicly slapped down by Jacinda.  In a "captain's call" Jacinda changed the tax policy to say that a Labour victory was a mandate for Labour to introduce any new tax and at any rate that a nameless committee of "tax experts" recommended, just the family home is off limits.

Any tax? What about land tax? Yes. Tax on the family bach and boat? Yes. Water? Petrol? Nothing is off the table. Will the capital gains tax be 33 per cent? Maybe. The petrol tax 10 cents a litre? Probably. Water tax. Guess a figure. "Trust us" says Jacinda.

No party has ever asked for so much power.  It is too much power for any government to have.  What was Jacinda thinking?

The More Things Change . . .

Are You Ready For a Great Leap Forward?

It's election season in New Zealand.  As to be expected, it's the season when whacky ideas get airtime.

Here is a sample, a guest post, published by a local blogger.

Maybe instead of voting for the red or blue leader once every few years we should work back from what we value. From my experience, here in NZ we value things like preservation of the environment, more time for personal and creative pursuits, more time for family and friends, less time working, and generally improving the well-being of all citizens. In fact, those values may well be universal. . . . 

It seems as though this contributor wants more "leisure" time to do whatever might take his fancy.  He wants an escape from the drudgery of work.

 They’ve now developed technology that could produce a largely automated abundance of resources for everyone, reducing work time and increasing leisure time substantially, with countless other benefits as a by-product. Within an efficiently designed political, social, and economic framework, their technology could support a radical transformation to the way they make decisions, utilise discoveries, interact with one another, preserve their environment, accelerate progress, and live their lives.

The author bemoans the fact that not enough time and attention is being paid to creating this wunnerful world he envisions.

Backwards to the Future

Nutty, Venal Politicians

National elections in New Zealand give us dyspepsia.  So often political parties approach the electorate as if voters were totally corrupt and up for accepting bribes.  Consequently, elections bring out the worst in politicians, policy proposals, and the community.  

The radically left wing Labour Party wants to return to its ideological core: tax and spend, then tax and spend some more, and when it can tax the living no more, it would tax future generations by racking up fiscal debt.  It comes as no surprise, then, to have its present leader announce that Labour, if elected, would cancel the forthcoming tax cuts, so it can spend more tax payers' money on its constituency.  It then announced one of the more complex benefit schemes yet seen.

The present (National Party) Treasurer, Steven Joyce hit the nail right on its head:

Democratic Realities

Voters, Like Customers, are Always Right

One of the more interesting revelations to come out after Trump's election victory is the number of prominent Democrats taking extreme positions in vain attempts to prevent Tump's inauguration.  These folk are doing so against the backdrop of Trump's electoral victory.  

But sometimes the issue is just so big that radical action is called for.  Now this nativist rebellion is not coming from a bunch of far left, redneck Democrats.  This is not the Hollywood elites fantasizing about making the script of some C-Grade movie into a real-life documentary.  It is a reaction coming from what would normally be regarded as mainstream, responsible, constitutional, moderate Democrats.

Here is a tasting from the Democrats buffet table:

New Zealand's "Interesting" Election

Crypto-Anarchists and Easy Dupes

This election season in New Zealand has been historic, unlike any previous election.  It had been distorted by a multi-millionaire German seeking to take control of the national political process to benefit his own voluminous pockets and to keep himself from incarceration in the United States.  We have not seen the like in New Zealand since Baron d'Thierry came to Hokianga in late 1837 on the Nimrod attempting to start a French colonial outpost in the face of British interests.  Herr Kim Dotcom is a latter day Baron d'Thierry, equally megalomaniacal.

And then we have had the hard left joining Dotcom in a madcap party which has combined capitalists in their most greedy, exploitative, and egregious manifestation with weird Maori and hard-left radicals deeply into Marxist ideology.  The chutzpah of the constituent  elements of this new Potemkin party has been breathtaking.  Their followers consist of the duped, the desperate, and the gullible. 

And, not to be outdone, we have had the hacking of a privately owned website and the theft of thousands of e-mails and private communications, followed by a breathless book authored by New Zealand's leading conspiracist once again publishing stolen information.  The book, Dirty Politics has the author's normal new-maths fingerprints all over it.  In Nicky Hager's world two plus two makes seventy-five.

Most of the media have been agog and aghast, unable to calm their febrile pens and stuttering tongues for a moment so as to make sense of it all.  Except for one or two scribblers.  Fran O'Sullivan, writing just before the election, had this to say:

Slow Learners

Bribery and Electoral Suborning

Since we have entered an election year, political bribery is in full swing.  At his first major announcement, the Labour leader, David Cunliffe announced new government spending that will cost well over $1 billion dollars per year.  Will the electorate be seduced by this bribe?  We will have to wait and see. 

New Zealand is just emerging from a long, dogged recession.  In the early days of the Global Financial Crisis (which hit just after our recession began in earnest) we were at risk of having a run on our banks.  The country was in a dangerous position of rapidly rising fiscal deficits at a time when no-one was lending.  Credit had dried up.  How come?  Because the previous Labour government had spent all the fiscal surplus and had committed to spending way beyond that in various electoral bribes, middle class welfare and unaffordable programmes, so that our deficit was inevitably going to become a black necklace around the nation's throat. 

We can still hear the gleeful tones of the then Minister of Finance, Dr Michael Cullen as he taunted the Opposition with a peculiar channelling of Mother Hubbard  that the fiscal cupboard was now bare.  He had "spent it all", he chortled.

The Obamagaffe

Double Standards

We need a new term for the political science lexicon: Obamagaffe.  An Obamagaffe is when a politician verbally makes a substantial error and the Commentariat ignores it.  It's a useful concept. 

"Candidate X just said he would boil babies in hot oil to reduce inflation.  But this was an Obamagaffe, so no problem there."  An Obamagaffe is when commentators and media give the benefit of the doubt to the gaffer and does not take an error seriously.  The error is interpreted as a slip of the tongue, an exaggeration, hyperbole, a figure of speech, etc.  After all, to err is human, so it only makes the gaffer more likeable, provided, of course, it is a genuine Obamagaffe.

When Obama does not have his teleprompter as a prop he is well known for his vacuous, convoluted, aimless, long-winded responses.  Often times these are replete with Obamagaffes--errors of fact no-one--at least no-one of any "significance"--takes seriously.

Polling Propaganda

 When the Media Massages the Message

The state of polling operating in the US election is dismal indeed.  Why?  Because media need to generate headlines to sell papers or get viewers.  In election season poll results are essential to do that.  So sub-standard, crummy polls are the order of the day--where "pollsters" call up Aunt Fanny and talk to her Chihuahua, and then record the Chihuahua as a certain Democratic voter.

 Jay Severin, a political campaign operator for over twenty-five years, explains why this is the case:

Unworthy and Shameful

The Curse of Unethical Immoral Leaders

We don't know why this should be the case, but it does seem that left-wing governments and political parties have a perpetual nastiness about them. 

Over time this creates rising political risks since demonising your opponents means that all they have to do is show up to the electorate as reasonably normal people and in an instant two things happen.  The first is the credibility of the slanderous overkill party goes up in smoke.  The second is that the electorate find those so excessively slandered to be much better than expected.  He or she turn out to be a pleasant surprise. 

Obama and the Democrats in the United States appear to have fallen into this trap.

Unfit for Public Office

Cynical Manipulation

In the recent history of our country we have had more than our fair share of venal politicians who cynically and deliberately set out to mislead the electorate.  Such politicians view the people as ignorant sheep, easily gulled. They come out with slogans or sound-bites they know are deceptive and misleading.  However, they also know that their sound-bites will appeal to the ignorant sheep.  They use such tactics to manipulate the electorate to gain support--all the while knowing that, once in government, they will never have to carry out their stated intentions. 

Our current proportional representation encourages that kind of venality amongst politicians.  The Greens, for instance, are masters of the art.

Unrepresentative Parliaments

When The Tail Wags the Dog

The principle of proportional representation has inherent merit.  It reflects a principle of justice.  In a democracy, government should reflect the will of the people collectively expressed as much as possible.  The diversity of "wills" should be represented to some degree in the deliberative and legislative chambers.

The principle becomes somewhat more necessary and compelling in a state where there is a unicameral parliament--such as we have in New Zealand, and where the executive branch of government is an extension of Parliament.  Checks and balances are rather thin on the ground in Aotearoa.