The Giant Chasm

Unprofessional

It has long been hinted that New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern was a sandwich short of a picnic.  She talks a big game.  She has talked up all the wonderful things her administration was doing when it came to controlling the border.  Sadly, neither she nor her colleagues could hide forever the failures.  

Here is an excerpt from Stuff.

The Revelations About the Border Botch-ups

Given the importance of the borders, and making sure that those coming into the country don’t cause community transmission, the Government has been making promises for the last two months that every worker employed in relation to the border would be routinely tested. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Health, and the Director-General of Health have continued to reassure the public that such testing was being carried out.

The media have pressured the Government over these promises, with many journalists attempting to verify that routine testing was in fact taking place. Newshub’s Michael Morrah then broke the news ten days ago, that the system wasn’t working at all.  (Emphasis, ours.)

This news has been met with exasperation. The Herald’s Derek Cheng, who had been asking the government for details of the testing for three weeks without reply, said the revelation went against what the Government had been saying was necessary and being done. He pointed out that “A quick glance at Melbourne is all you need to see what’s at stake here.”

Elaborating further, Cheng explained that the lack of testing is an ongoing problem that the Government should have learnt from already. He points to controversies in June when “people staying in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities were meant to be tested on day three and on day 12 of their stay. It wasn’t happening, we later learned, because the ministry was still putting it in place. Daily health checks were also not done properly on two Covid-infected sisters, one of whom had symptoms”. He asks: “why is there – still – a giant chasm between what the Government says is happening and what the ministry is doing?”

Dumb Rules and Dumber Politicians

Worker Shortages and Dumb Rules 

Kneecapping Business


Mike Hosking
NZ Herald

I ask a simple question: Why is this Government so hell-bent on making doing business in this country so hard?

We could, of course, spend the whole morning discussing the plight of the farmer. Isolated as some sort of demonic operator, pillager of the earth. Instead of the backbone of the economy.  But this specific question is asked as a result of seeing Francie Perry on the news. Her plight is the plight of many like her. She grows strawberries, and like most others who grow stuff, she can't get people to pick the stuff she grows.

And the Government won't let her solve her problem. She employs 1200 people - but needs 140 or so from offshore and bureaucracy is killing her. Excuses and ideology are killing her and her business.

New Zealand's Own Version of Monty Python

Hard to Believe

Can it get any worse?  That's the question which is unsettling many politically aware New Zealanders.  And the answer to the question is, "of course it can get worse".

Here are some descriptions of Debacle Avenue, which runs off  Molesworth Street in New Zealand's capital city, Wellington.

Nightmare on Molesworth St: How Labour's Annus Horribilis Went Viral
Duncan Garner
Stuff

Where do I start? It should have been such a triumphant week for Labour. It was all lined up. Incumbency means advantage Labour. Platform set. Pause. Touch lives. Engage the voters.  All Grant Robertson had to do was choose the colour of the new tie and how close that barber should go on the sides.

It should have been a triumphant week for Grant Robertson - all he had to do was choose the colour of the new tie and how close that barber should go on the sides. It didn't turn out that way.  And with National leaving the books in a healthy state, due to their prudent decisions in the lean times, only Grant the lucky finance minister was left.

How could dishing out $25.6b in new spending across four years blow up in his face?

The Case of Karel Sroubek

Stranger Than Fiction

In New Zealand we have a really, really strange issue at hand.  A Czech national, a convicted criminal, Karel Sroubek is doing time as a guest of one of her Majesty Jacinda's prisons.  He has applied for citizenship, which seems reasonable.  Why shouldn't New Zealand make all involuntary guests of the government permanent citizens as a matter of natural justice?  Why not?  What could possibly be wrong with that?

Sroubek's lawyers have argued that there are some unsavory characters back in Czechoslovakia who want to see him sent back from NZ to his native land so they can show him a bit of rough justice, Czech-style.  Therefore compassion, human decency, and human rights legislation require that NZ give permanent citizenship to the convicted criminal.

Now right up to this point there is nothing unusual or sensational in the case.  Non-resident convicts often apply for asylum.  The vast majority, however, are shipped back home when the term of their accommodation in her Majesty's prisons is served.  But in this case, out of the blue as it were, the Minister of Immigration hastily reviewed Sroubek's case and granted him permanent citizenship in New Zealand.

Occam's Razor teaches us that the simplest explanation is usually the most plausible reason for human events.  So, for some time we have thought that the most plausible cause for the Minister's extraordinary "generosity" to a convicted drug manufacturer and smuggler was that Sroubek had bribed the Minister.  It represents a simple explanation.  But now we are not so sure.  It is possible that there is a simpler explanation still: namely, that the Minister in question, Iain Lees-Galloway lacks any reasonable sense of fiduciary duty, or a duty of care.  An impolite way of expressing this would be to entertain the notion that the Minister is dumber than a sackful of hammers.

Meanwhile, as the mess gets even messier her Majesty Jacinda becomes implicated by association.

Taxpayers' Money is Always Cheap

Pike River Re-entry Plan Now Costs $36 Million

A $7 Million Plan's Costs Explode


John Roughan
Editorial writer and columnist, NZ Herald


Andrew Little used to be secretary of the union that included journalists and though I wasn't a member I happened to see him holding meetings in our newsroom sometimes and I was impressed. He didn't rant and rage, he was quietly firm and dogged and seemed above all, sensible. So I have been surprised at some of his decisions in politics.

The first was back when he was Leader of the Opposition and he stood down his social welfare spokeswoman because her mother was being prosecuted for continuing to draw a benefit after entering a de facto relationship.

Some time later a National minister was similarly embarrassed by a family member in some way and John Key was fielding questions in Parliament from the Opposition who thought the minister should be told to stand aside. Eventually someone on the Labour side invoked their leader's decision. Key looked at the questioner and gently replied, "I thought that was the wrong call".

The camera switched back to the Opposition benches and you could see in the faces of the members around Little, including the poor woman concerned, that they realised Key was right. Government is about hard calls. Often that means making the right decision knowing it will invite cheap shots from opponents, press and the public.

The decision to go back into Pike River mine was reportedly Little's alone.

A Modern Version of the Goon Show

The Syndrome of Embarrassing Advocates

You have to spare a thought for our hapless Foreign Minister, Winston Peters.  Winnie (a nickname referring to his excessive love of horse racing) has for some strange reason singled out Russia as a country with which New Zealand very definitely needs to have a Free Trade Agreement.

This febrile enthusiasm for closer ties to Russia begs all sorts of questions, the most pressing of which is, Why?  What are we missing?  Given Peters past murky behaviour over money our suspicions cannot be anything but quickened by his strange crusade.  Unfortunately for Peters his public encomiums of Russia have been unfortunately timed.  Within a day or so, we awoke to find the UK has essentially cut diplomatic ties with Russia, expelling a phalanx of spies from the country.  This was followed by condemnations from the NATO powers: the US, Germany and France.  It seems Russia has been acting more like a rogue state.  It has committed murder and attempted murder of former Russian residents and a policeman, upon UK soil.  There are murmurings that this is just the tip of a bloody iceberg.

How will Peters respond?  Who can predict the mind of this rather strange man?

Two Views of Human Nature

Keeping the Faith

When it comes to human nature, the Scriptures are blunt.  No gilding of lilies here.  Jeremiah says,

The heart is deceitful above all things,
    and desperately sick;
    who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart
    and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways,
    according to the fruit of his deeds.”
[Jeremiah 17:9-10]

At root, humanity is so bad, the deceit so deep rooted, that the truth within a man's heart cannot be discovered, let alone mined.   The intentions, the motivations, the principles, the emotions at play are all so complex and interwoven and confused that man is beyond understanding.

Thus runs the Bible's indictment of us all.

Not so, says the modern politician.  Humans are basically honest and decent folk. Oh, well, that settles that, then.

Whilst this optimistic view of mankind is everywhere, nowhere is it more dangerous than in the corridors and offices of political power.  It leads politicians to ignore the goals and motivations of human behaviour; instead, politicians they can benefit society hugely simply by passing rules (which all citizens will hasten to obey and comply with because they are honest and decent folk.)  The passing of the law is all the that is required for a righteous outcome.

Recently this has been grandly displayed in New Zealand with the left-wing Labour Party gaining power.

Government Spending Hard and Real

That Did Not Take Long

We are watching a political debate occurring in the New Zealand parliament over government spending and the fiscal deficit.  It becomes clearer by the day that the present government, led by the socialist Labour Party, either lied deliberately or ignorantly dissembled over its spending plans. 

The former Minister of Finance, Steven Joyce has been vindicated by the latest wave of forecasts coming from the major trading banks.  Joyce had claimed during the election that Labour's economic plan had a hole--a bunch of spending was not taken into account.  But the Labour Finance Spokesman, Grant Robertson solemnly promised that Labour's figures and projections were accurate, credible, and reliable.  The Commentariat cheered Robertson, and mocked Joyce--who was accused of lying and deliberately misleading the voters.

Now, just little more than a month after the election, Robertson, now Minister of Finance, is rapidly revising his figures and projections.  Funny that.  He--and his party--are exposed either as incompetents or frauds--or both.  Joyce has been vindicated.

Economists See Government Debt Rising Billions More Than Labour's Plan

Hamish Rutherford
Stuff

Finance Minister Grant Robertson maintains the Government still plans to cut New Zealand's debt levels, as economists warn billions more will be borrowed over the coming years.  In Opposition Labour laid out a fiscal plan which would borrow around $11 billion more than National had proposed, but still cut debt as a share of the total economic output from 24 per cent to 20 per cent by 2022.

The plan formed a major point of contention during the election campaign, as National finance spokesman Steven Joyce was widely mocked for his claim that Robertson's plan had a major "fiscal hole".

"Truly, You Have a Dizzying Intellect"

US Intelligence Officials

What would have caused it?  Hubris?  Ignorance? Myopia?  Deep state conspiracies?  Gross incompetence?  It beggars belief that highly classified intelligence originating out of the UK covering the Manchester terrorist attack would end up in media briefings in the United States within twenty-four hours.

Oliver J J Lane from BreitbartLondon filed the following report:

The United Kingdom has now stopped passing intelligence gathered as part of the investigation into the Manchester bombing to the United States according to claims made by the British state broadcaster BBC.

We need to exercise some degree of caution when a news report is being sourced from the BBC--hardly an organ of independent news probity these days--but the story has not been contradicted on either side of the Atlantic.

Ten Percent Reduction Not A Bad Start

Statutes Repeal Bill

The following Media Release has been put out by the NZ Government:

Regulatory Reform Minister Steven Joyce and Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform, David Seymour have today introduced a bill which will get rid of 124 redundant laws from New Zealand’s legislation.

The Statutes Repeal Bill will remove 124 pieces of legislation, and parts of eight other Acts.

“Originally we had 120 laws slated for removal. That number has now increased to 124. Overall, through this bill the number of public Acts on the New Zealand law books will reduce by more than 10 per cent,” Mr Joyce says.

“An Exposure Draft was released for an eight week public consultation period, during that time 16 submissions were received proposing that various pieces of legislation were added or removed from the Bill.”

The four additional Acts found suitable for repeal include Finance Act 1991, New Zealand Stock Exchange Restructuring Act 2002, Statutes Amendment Act 1943, and Statutes Amendment Act 1944.

When Less is a Whole Lot More

Why the Spanish May be Better Off Without a Government

The state’s most important economic role is to get out of the way

James Bartholomew
The Spectator

On 26 October last year, the Spanish government shut up shop in preparation for a general election. This duly took place in December but then a strange thing happened: after all the build-up, the arguments, the posters and the television coverage, the result was… nothing. The various parties were so balanced, so mutually distrustful and ill-assorted that no government could be formed. Since last October, therefore, there has been no government in Spain.

One can imagine that the average political correspondent would think this a terrible problem, maybe even a crisis. The Financial Times has referred to Spain ‘enduring’ months of ‘political uncertainty’. This is assumed to be a matter requiring furrowed brows and grave tones. But the economy seems to be taking a different view of the matter. It is bowling along more breezily than in a long time. The growth rate during the final quarter of last year was an annualised 2.9 per cent, which, in these days of dismal Euro-growth, is a star performance — easily beating the pants off Italy, France and even Germany.

The improvement has continued this year. Unemployment has fallen month after month and is now down to 20.4 per cent which, though awful, is an improvement on a year ago when it was 23.2 per cent. That is a much better showing than in most EU countries.

Letter From the UK (About the Unexpected Consequences of Greenist Subsidies)

Green Levy Target Dumped as Massive Overspend on Green Energy Looms

BreitbartLondon
by Donna Rachel Edmunds

UK Chancellor George Osborne is expected to scrap green tax targets in the summer budget to be announced Wednesday. The move is designed to bring down the cost of renewable energy as subsidies spiral out of control.

Conservative Members of Parliament have said that the budget should serve as a wake up call and prompt a full-scale review of renewables subsidies.

In May, Breitbart London reported on findings by the Renewable Energy Foundation showing that Britain was on track to massively overshoot its renewable energy targets by £1.5 billion a year by 2020, fully 34 percent over budget.  The overspend was caused primarily by former Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary Ed Davey, who displayed an almost religious zeal for renewable technologies, going against the wishes of locals and the advice of numerous bodies, including English Heritage, to grant permission for a number of renewables projects.

Dr John Constable, director of REF, said of the findings: “The renewables sector overheating created by Mr Davey when he was in charge of DECC has left the new Secretary of State, Amber Rudd, with considerable budget and planning difficulties.”  He advised Mrs Rudd to “cool the industry down immediately” by advising local authorities and the Planning Inspectorate that harm to the local environment should now outweigh contributions towards a renewables target which has essentially already been met.  The government has closed the subsidy scheme a year early in a bid to limit the number of projects and therefore the burden on the public purse, but the REF advised that some already in the pipeline ought also to be scrapped.

Risible--But They Still Know Best

Zero Risk and Fourteen Tonnes of Trout

And now, a story which will resonate with all readers from around the world who have experienced the scintillating skills of bureaucrats at the top of their game.  

New Zealand is one of the last countries in the world to deploy the poison 1080 in an effort to control noxious pests (possums, stoats, weasels, rats--and so forth).  Whenever it is deployed in a vast industrial scale there are worries about it getting into the food chain.

At such times, not infrequently, the local bureaucrats and government functionaries get caught like the hapless possum in car headlights.  Then they proceed to talk out of both sides of their mouths so volubly that one suspects they have two, even three, tongues.  Here is the latest show from the travelling circus, coming to a neighbourhood near you:

The Department of Conservation ["DoC"] is warning anglers not to eat trout in areas where 1080 poison has been dropped - a reversal of its position seven months ago.  The caution comes just days before the trout fishing season opens on October 1. [NZ Herald]

So, what confronts us ordinary rubes here is a position reversal--a well known move favoured by bureaucrats under pressure.  What's the problem?