The Truck Strikes

One of the many perks of being in Government is the ability to demonstrate your competence directly to voters. Rather than merely asking voters to trust them, incumbent Governments can point to successful policies as proof they deserve their jobs. It was this principle that guided Labour’s strategy of “getting on with the business of government” earlier in the year, and the raft of new policies such as KiwiRail that came with it. For the last 8 years Labour has made good use of the advantages of incumbency. Through solid handling of the Government, a number of their ministers have made very good reputations for themselves as a safe pair of hands, people voters can trust to lead the nation. Through capable handling of a number of departments, Justice Minister Annette King’s name has become almost synonymous with competency. Such an impressive track record makes Labour’s recent blunders all the more surprising.

The last few weeks should have been a great time for Labour. Nicky Hager made his traditional election year return to the headlines by breaking the story that National’s “positive, ambitious campaign” was being managed by Crosby Textor, an Australian public relations company famous for the use of gutter politics. The revelation that Lynton Crosby, a man once described as “The Karl Rove of Australian Politics” was behind the likeable centrist image John Key has been showing voters is a big blow to Key’s credibility. Not only that, but Hager’s story raised the possibility that Hager still has access to secret National communications. After the damage Hager did at the last elections with such information, the prospect of a repeat is a terrifying one for National. On top of this, the multinational banking company Merrill Lynch, which John Key used to work for, was busted with inside information that National was planning to open up competition on ACC, which would hand an estimated 200 million dollar profit to the insurance industry, but runs the risk of driving up premiums. This runs in the face of public comments Key had previously made. Labour spun it as yet another example of Key telling the public one thing while telling big business another. For Labour, it couldn’t have been a better week.

That is until the Truckers went on strike.

In an extraordinary display of political blindness, Annette King blindsided the Road Transport Forum with the news that Road User Charges for diesel vehicles would be increased, violating a promise from King’s department that the RTF would be given a one month notification period if any increases were to be made. The RTF responded by organising nationwide protests that brought rush hour traffic in the major centres to a standstill. For a Labour Government, traditionally the ally of the Union’s and their working class members, such a public falling out is a huge black eye. Even worse is the public perception that Annette King mishandled the issue, a huge blow to her credibility on top of the outrage earlier in the year when she appeared to blame a string of high profile murders on the full moon. The protests left the Government with egg on its face, and at a time when petrol prices are squeezing the wallets of voters, any misstep on transport is an open invitation to National to uncork one of its favourite attack lines: That the Government is out of touch with the hardships everyday New Zealander’s are facing. Why else would they raise the cost of driving at a time when so many voters are struggling to fill up their tanks?

Labour’s election year strategy has essentially been to consistently attack Key in the hope of damaging voter’s trust in him, while trying to remind voters how trust worthy they are through smooth governing and big policies. As it stands now, both parts of the plan are absolute disasters. The repeated smears against Key, on everything from misfiled election enrolments, to his years in the currency trading business, are having no effect on Key’s approval ratings. Despite all her efforts to run a tight ship, Clark’s Government has been marred by scandal after scandal, many of which have tarnished reputations her ministers have spent years cultivating. Trevor Mallard was disgraced b y his punch up in parliament and the Erin Leigh scandal. Annette King spent most of late last year being made to look like a fool in parliament by Bill English, as she defended the disastrous Electoral Finance Act, and has done nothing to turn her luck around this year. National seems only to have to sit back and watch Labour implode.

At a time when Labour needs to be doing it all can to convince voters they can be trusted with Government, they seem unable to do the jobs they were voted into.

Obama’s trust gamble.

Note: Another article written on the bus, so excuse grammer errors etc. Just an excercise in writing on the US elections, since I’ll be covering it them more indepth for Canta this year.

 

 

It would be easy, as many of Barack Obama’s Republican Opponents seem to have done, given Obama’s inexperience on the national level, to think of him as a lucky beginner, being given an easy ride to the nomination thanks to his charisma and a helpful political climate. The Republicans have been name dropping Jimmy Carter a lot, hoping to remind voters of what happened last time they elected a Democrat without the will to make the tough choices a president needs to make.

Yet in the last few weeks, Obama has shown himself not only to be a steely willed political operator, but a down-right ruthless candidate. Rather than the inexperienced junior senator he is often thought of as, Obama is showing signs he is an old style Chicago politician, possessing the tact, wits and balls to take on the fearsome Republican machine, and win.

The last few weeks have been marked by a number of risky decisions from Obama that have the potential to either win him the election, or undermine the strong messaging that has served him so well in the campaign so far.

The major two, the decision not to join John McCain for ten Town Hall debates, a venue in which McCain is far stronger and more experienced than Obama, and Obama’s decision to forsake Public financing. Both decisions fly in the face of earlier promises Obama had made. These broken promises have been jumped on by the Republican attack machine as a chance to undermine the branding of Obama as a new style of politician. How can Obama herald change in Washington when it’s business as usual for breaking promises?
These attacks are, barring some other Reverend Wright style scandal, the best avenue of attack John McCain and the Republicans have against Obama. If they can paint him as just another politician now, early in the campaign at a time when Obama is trying to introduce himself to a national audience as the candidate for change he was in the primaries, they can significantly undercut his appeal. Damaging the unique appeal Obama has as an agent of change is important as it will limit Obama’s appeal to independents, and possibly the “Reagan Democrat” voters who voted for Clinton in the primaries and are unsure about Obama.

Weakening Obama’s appeal to independents and unconvinced Democrat’s is important for McCain, as the Republican base vote is smaller now than it’s been in years. Due in part to unhappiness with President Bush (whose getting Nixon level approval ratings at the moment) and the aforementioned unhappiness with the nation’s direction, the numbers of voters who identify themselves as Republican is disastrously low (as low as 28 percent in some polls, compared with as high as 55% Democrat).

In terms of electoral map, current polling show McCain has very little chance of flipping any of the states (totalling 252 electoral votes, 270 are needed to win) that Kerry won in 2004, while Obama has 12 possible Bush states he could flip in November (some, like Ohio and Florida could win him the election on their own if he wins them while keeping the Kerry states). So McCain finds himself playing defence this election, not being able to afford to loose any of his states. To make sure Obama cannot win any of the vital battleground states, McCain needs to make sure that voters in those states don’t think of Obama as the messianic agent of change he was perceived as in the primaries. He also needs to steal a fair amount of the democrat base, as well as maintaining almost all the Republicans and getting a majority of the independent vote. It’s a hard ask, and that’s why anything Obama does, like publically breaking promises, that could damage his appeal as a new style politician need to be jumped on.

So why on earth would Obama endanger his successful brand, so vital to maintaining his appeal to the independents he will need to flip Bush states, just to avoid town hall debates and being publically funded?
Because the Chicago politician in Obama wants to make sure that when McCain pulls a knife, Obama can pull a gun.

In 2004, despite facing the Bush-Cheney fundraising monster, John Kerry decided to go in for public funding, limiting himself to an 85 million dollar spending cap. Kerry himself has said that this was the biggest mistake he made in the entire 2004 campaign. Bush also took public fundraising, yet parallel campaigns financed by Republican donors were able to spend extra money on Bush’s behalf, attacking Kerry and damaging his public persona. The most famous example of these attack groups was the “Swift Boat Veteran’s For Truth Group” which spent millions of dollars on TV ads lying about Kerry’s service in Vietnam. This led to the new political euphemism of “swift boating” as unfounded and untrue attacks on an opponent.
Yet despite their untruth, the swift boat attacks worked, Kerry just didn’t have the funds to respond properly to them, and as many as 25% of voters told pollsters that the swift boat ads affected they way they thought of Kerry, which in turn effected the way they voted. It didn’t matter that the adds weren’t true. Kerry maintains that if he was able to spend as much money as Bush’s parallel campaigns did, he would have been able to properly respond to the attacks.

It was these parallel campaigns that Obama cited as the reason for his decision not to take public financing. If Obama is to be believed, he faces a republican attack machine ready to assassinate his character with the same reckless disregard for truth that they showed against Kerry. If Obama limits himself to public financing, he and his supporters will be unable to defend themselves against the vicious Republican smears. So you see, he has to break his promise, because the Republican’s can’t be trusted.

The problem is, that excuse is bunk. John McCain, for all his economic similarities to Bush, has shown a remarkable dedication to running a campaign unmarred by the tactics Bush and Rove became infamous for.

Some say this was because he himself was a victim of Rove’s smears in his campaign against Bush in the 2000 Republican, where negative push polling accused him of fathering an illegitimate black child, when in reality his family had simply adopted an Indonesian child. For whatever reason, McCain has been far more restrained in his authorisation of parallel attack campaigns than bush ever was, even going as far as to reprimand one such campaign earlier in the year .It does have to be noted McCain isn’t dedicated to the extent it will cost him the election, he has hinted if he absolutely has to avoid defeat, he might give parallel campaigns a bit of a longer leash in going after Obama. Yet compared to Bush, McCain has shown remarkable and admirable restraint.

Even more import is the fact that many of the republican attack groups Obama is telling voters are behind his decision to break his promise on public financing simply do not exist yet. At the same stage in the 2004 campaign, the Swift Boat campaign was already well underway, and there were numerous groups pouring money into getting Bush elected. Politico has a great article up, linked at the bottom of this post, about the dearth of such groups this time, many of whom fear the wrath of McCain if they do go too far in attacking Obama. So Obama’s stated reason for breaking his promise is false. So what then was the real reason?

The real reason is that the Obama campaign is a fundraising titanic, shattering fundraising records during the Primaries, and if it can unite Clinton donors behind it in the general election, it will eclipse the McCain campaign in terms of money, especially if McCain limits himself to the 85 million dollar spending limit of public financing. Despite the HUGE fundraising advantage the RNC has over the DNC (nearly 60 Million to 4 million dollars on hand at the start of the campaign) Obama’s potential fundraising advantage in November could mean he is able to outspend McCain by as many as three times.

This will be incredibly important in flipping states, as it will mean Obama can build organisations, advertise and campaign in states that McCain simply cannot afford to defend without moving vital resources from places like Florida and Ohio. States like Texas and Alaska (the formerly especially if Obama picks Bill Richardson as his VP) are traditionally strong Republic States the Democrats have a serious chance of competing in at this election.

The prospect of this is even more terrifying for the Republicans given the Obama campaigns plans to help out local politicians in states like this, especially those running for the Senate. If Obama’s volunteer base is also convincing voters to vote Democrat not just for President but for Senate in places like Texas, McCain faces the prospect that even if he can squeak out a victory in November, the Democrats will have such a strong hold on Congress and The Senate that any major policies he wants to push through will be neutered by a Democrat controlled legislature. And if Obama wins and the Democrat’s take the legislature the Republicans face losing all political power, leaving Obama free to push through anything he wants.

It is the prospect of such a potentially game changing financial advantage that Obama was really after when he turned down public financing. Why would he give up such an opportunity? Because he gave his word?
John Stewart earlier in the year said of the job of president that “If it goes well, they might carve your face into a mountain”. The message was, this job is not a joke, if you’re in the election, you’re in it to win. It’s a message that The Democratic Party has for too long failed to take to heart.

There is a time to make promises, and if there is ever a time to break them, it’s when given the opportunity to change the face of American Government and become the most powerful man on Earth. For Barack Obama, who has spent his entire adult life in pursuit of things like Universal HealthCare, the chance to do real good in Government is more important than keeping one promise.

The idea that it’s what you do in Government, not how you get there, seems more reminiscent of Richard Nixon than the inspirational figure Obama has painted himself as. Yet there was another Democrat president who believed in such an idea. A man who was willing even to get the mob to swing a state for him, to get the power to do things like end the Jim Crow Society and close the Missile Gap: John F Kennedy.

In all the comparisons to Kennedy that Obama gets, far too few remember than more than far before Kennedy was a symbol of hope to America, he was a hardnosed politician who knew you do what it takes to win. For all the criticism I’ve levelled at the New Zealand National party for sitting on Policy, you have to admire them for not taking any major risks, why would they want to throw away to treasury benches just to appease ideas of informed Democratic Choice. It’s the same principal with Obama. If you want to lead a country, especially one with interests as diverse and varied as America, you better damn sure be able to make hard choices.
What has been so interesting has been watching the Republican response to Obama’s decision not to take Public Financing.

The attacks, smartly enough, have been aimed at portraying him as an unscrupulous politician masquerading as Mr Smith. X said “he’s never made the chard choices that don’t benefit his political career”.  He couldn’t be more wrong, but risking his brand to go for the game changing financial advantage, Obama has shown he is indeed willing to take risks to get the job done.

Most frustratingly for the Republicans, has been the public response to Obama’s decision. For such a risky move, it hasn’t really damaged him in the polls. The website Real Clear Politics, which averages the poll results from various national polls, have Obama with over a 6 point lead at the moment. Polls taken after Obama risky decision and the ensuring attacks on his brand as the change candidate in key states such as Florida show Obama having taken no hit from his decision. While it has led to a somewhat harsher view of him in the media, the damage to his poll ratings seems to have been so miniscule it will not matter in the overall election. At this stage (and only at this stage, things like this do have a tendency to come back to haunt people at the worst possible time) Obama’s risky decision seems to have paid off.

But why? If the reason Obama gave for taken Public financing are not true, if the Republicans at this stage do not have the giant attack machine aimed squarely at his character, why does the public seem to accept that they do? In other words, If Obama’s reasoning does not reflect the truth of the situation, why do the public seem to believe it does?

The answer is that once again Obama has shown himself to have an incredibly astute understanding of branding, and how to manipulate the public’s perceptions of politicians.

The Republican brand has been described, even by its own party strategists as “toxic”. For too long, the negative, untrue and unfair political tactics of Karl Rover and his ilk have defined the campaigning style of the Republican Party. From Watergate, To Willie Horton, to Swift Boats, To Scooter Libby, to the Obama is a Muslim emails, the public firmly perceives that a republican attack machine exists. By repeatedly going negative, the Republican’s have branded themselves as the party of negative campaigning. That the public is so willing to believe they would do it again this election, even with a candidate who abhors such tactics, speaks to the damage done to the Republican Brand by people like Karl Rove. It’s gotten to the point where any legitimate criticism of Obama can be spun into the negative campaigning the Republican Party is now sadly known for.

In Barack Obama, The Republican’s now face an opponent blessed with charisma, devoted followers, a background political climate heavily favouring him, a media narrative that suits him, and a brand that can survive a little dishonesty. Worse than that they face an opponent who is willing to do whatever it takes to win, and is aiming for a victory that will leave him free to push through any agenda he likes.
And they face him at a time when the public believes they are not to be trusted.

Election 2008 is looking more and more like Obama’s to loose.

And so far, he has shown no signs he is stupid enough to do so.

The great search continues….

Someone searched “Don Brash Testicles” again.

And I’m still not sure why…

John Key Interview Part 2

Here’s part 2, question 5 is especially interesting.

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1.A lot of people draw parallels between you and David Cameron, the leader of the British conservative party, in that your both relatively young, both quite moderate, and have both embraced newer styles of campaigning such as your you tube journals and face book. You are both even criticised the same way by political opponents. Given the conservative parties recent electoral success in Britain and your own parties hefty lead in the polls, what do you think it is that has made the two of you so appealing? Are there any major ways in which you differ? 

 

There are clearly similarities between us, as you point out.  We take a less ideological view to things, we are interested in what works, we are forward thinking, and we are ambitious.  I have met Mr Cameron, and we developed a strong personal relationship fairly quickly, which I think reflects those simiIarities. 

 

 

2. How do you respond to criticism you’ve been “given a free ride” by the media? Paul Henry of the Breakfast program in particular is often cited as someone going far to easy on you.

 

I don’t agree I get a free ride from the media, and that’s certainly not been my experience.

 

3.You’ve mentioned that reform to the Resource Management Act is needed. Why do you think that is, and what form will the reforms take?

 

Fixing this vital legislation is part of National’s plan to lift New Zealand’s living standards.

 

Our issues with the RMA are about process and timeliness rather than outcomes.  We want to streamline and simplify the law to get less costly and more timely decisions.

 

National will give the RMA greater central direction.  It doesn’t make sense to have our 86 Councils constantly reinventing the wheel, so we propose setting up to 20 national environmental goals to clearly guide decision-makers on what needs to be achieved.

 

Specific changes to the RMA we intend making include limiting the definition of the environment to avoid vexatious arguments, reducing the number of consent categories to simplify the law, allow direct referral of major applications to the Environment Court, and removing the Ministerial veto power that created such a furore over the Whangamata Marina. National is also exploring ideas that will simplify the processing of consents. 

 

But we need to be careful in reforming the RMA that we do not throw out the baby with the bathwater.  There are some important principles that underpin the Act that National stands by including the concept of sustainability and an integrated approach to resource decision-making.

 

4.If elected will National be making any changes to the benefit system? If so what will these changes look like?

 

Welfare policy will be announced in due course.

 

5.Michael Cullen said recently in an interview with me that he expects National will “-bid whatever policies Labour delivers on the personal tax front”. He expects however that National will finance these bigger cuts by borrowing money, thus putting the Government into debt. Is this true?  Cullen also called such a policy “reckless”. How do you respond to this?

 

National will not borrow for tax cuts. National believes tax cuts are important for improving our economic competitiveness with other countries, and putting the right incentives in place for kiwis to get ahead.  National believes that long term intergenerational assets should be funded from debt.

 

6.Earlier this year you criticised Labour for their repeated personal attacks on you. Obviously personal attacks are a frequent part of politics, you yourself went on Breakfast and told Michael Cullen to “stop being so precious” when he was offended you bought his wife up in a debate in the house. You’ve also frequently called the Labour Government corrupt. Is your criticism of Labour’s attacks on you a sign that you yourself will no longer be using personal attacks like these?

 

I don’t agree that I engage in personal attacks on people.  Labour has been prepared to rort the electoral system, firstly by unlawfully spending public money on the pledge card at the last election and then last year ramming the draconian and anti-democratic electoral finance law through Parliament.

 

 Further proof that Labour is prepared to rort the system using this law was revealed when Labour Party president Mike Williams described Labour’s plan to use taxpayer-funded government leaflets as Labour Party campaign material as a “damn good idea”.  Labour were also the first party that the election authorities found earlier this year to have broken the Electoral Finance Act – their own law. That says it all about the Labour Government’s contempt for the law and their desperation in election year.

 

I have criticised Labour’s attacks on me not because I’m worried, but because Labour are clearly distracted by low-grade personal attacks on me rather than confronting the real issues facing New Zealanders – such as the rising cost of living, the thousands leaving for destinations offshore, sky-high interest and mortgage rates, and an education sector that is failing many of our children.

 

7.The return of Roger Douglas has been one of the major stories in politics this year, as well as your statement that “If ACT are hell-bent on following a radical right-wing agenda and won’t fit in with a moderate pragmatic agenda, then we can’t work with them.” I was hoping you could clarify what your position on ACT is. Is it that there is absolutely no way you will work with them after the election or is it just a case of “If they go too right wing, we can’t work with them”?  What if you were in a position where you needed ACT to form a government, would you then have to renege on what you said earlier?

 

I have never ruled out the possibility of working with Act after the election. What I’m not interested in is the radical right wing agenda Roger Douglas recently outlined.

 

8.Labour especially has raised the prospect of Douglas gaining a cabinet position in a National led Government. Is there any chance of this?

 

No, on the basis of Roger Douglas’ radical right wing agenda.

 

9.I just recently interviewed Nándor Tánczos and he said that he thought that decriminalisation of Cannabis was inevitable, due to the large numbers of young people who have tried the drug, and realised that nothing terrible happens to them when they use it. Do you agree with this? Do you support eventual decriminalisation of Cannabis?

 

I do not support the decriminalisation of cannabis, and I don’t agree that it causes no harm.

 

10.In terms of foreign policy, if National wins the election, what changes can we expect to be made?

 

Last year National released a foreign affairs, defence and trade discussion paper signposting where we are going in these areas.  There is now broad, bipartisan agreement on foreign policy that reflects New Zealand’s more independent assessment of its external environment.

 

We have already signalled our intentions in some areas.  For example, there will be no change to the anti-nuclear legislation.  National believes that after three decades of debate, the basis for an enduring consensus in foreign affairs, defence, and trade has arisen.

 

Two ideas underpin the proposals in the paper – New Zealand must concentrate on its essential interests in these areas, and we must focus more than ever on our core strengths and capabilities.

 

The paper can be found at: http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?articleId=11110

 

11.One aspect of the National Party that has attracted heated criticism is the use of anonymous trusts for fund raising, such as the Waitemata Trust, which donated $424,100, the largest single donation received by your party, in 2007. The use of trusts has been legislated against in the Electoral Finance Act, as many believe them to be undemocratic, as they allow donations to be made in secret from the public, while politicians can still know who is donating. Do you support the abolition of such trusts? If not, why not?

 

The Electoral Finance Act, while a draconian piece of legislation, does not legislate against trust. The law controls the level of anonymous donations and requires disclosure of who gave to trusts.  Whether trusts continue or not is not the issue.  The issue is the level of disclosure, and let me state clearly that we intend to operate within the law – unlike Labour which was the first political party found to have broken the Electoral Finance Act this year with its taxpayer-funded booklet “We’re Making a Difference”. 

 

12.National is on record heavily opposing the EFA. What would happen to that legislation if National wins in 2008?

 

We would repeal the anti-democratic Electoral Finance Act, which Labour passed solely to screw the scrum in election year to get itself a 4th term. National would work on changes to electoral finance rules in a consultative way with all interested parties rather than the way Labour did, which was to ram it through with no agreement from the main opposition party and in the face of extensive and widespread public protest.

 

13.Final question, anything you haven’t told anyone else in the media, so I can say Canta heard it first?

 

I’m tend to be superstitious and I’ve always been that way ever since my days working in the financial markets.

________________

Interview With John Key pt 1

Question One: Since you’ve become leader National has moved to the centre a lot, so for students voting at the end of the year, what differences are still left between National and Labour?

A: Well firstly I think it’s where we want to take the country. It’s ultimately about the plan we have for the future. That is unquestionably to lift after tax wages and the opportunities for New Zealanders. That is because we are much more concerned, I’m not sure the current Government is concerned at all, about the brain drain. You know, we had 79,000 people leaving last year. 29% of all people that have been to university and graduated now live overseas. Now look of course Young Kiwi’s will always go and experiment overseas, but increasingly they aren’t coming back here, they’re coming back to Australia. So we think the driving force around that is wage rates, they’re under paid effectively. So we’re going to have a program of personal tax cuts, we believe in them, we think that put the right incentives in the economy. They’ll be right across the income sprectum, where Labour has indicated today that theirs will be at the lower end. For students who will typically over time be much higher income earners it’s likely to be a very big differential under us and Labour.

Secondly, It comes down to where we think the investment should take place. The differences is that we’ve announced we’re going to put 1 and a half billion dollars into ultra fast, fibre to the home broadband. That’ll be part of a 4 billion dollar investment to really wire New Zealand up, and future proof New Zealand. The Government, to contrast that, is out buying 19th century technology with the trains, so there’s a sort of difference.

Thirdly I think if you go back to our basic values, we are much more trusting of the private sector. We think the State has an important role to play but it’s not all encompassing. So theres a difference there.
I think finally I’m just younger. I come from a younger generation, I have I think a much more optimistic view of where New Zealand can fit into a global environment, and that will be about a package that supports small business and people’s opportunity’s to grow, and I think they will ultimately be very internet based. So I think a lot of the graduates that come from here, of course some of them are going to be doctors, well ok not Doctors from Canterbury, but engineers or whatever, but many will go into setting up a business and I think the internet will play a big part in that.

Q: I asked that same question to Michael Cullen and he talked about the interest free student loan policy, and you might be surprised by this, but he wasn’t exactly complementary of you. One of the things he said was attacking you for not always supporting the policy. He quoted you as saying “The policy isn’t for National because we have standards”. I was hoping you could elaborate on why that policy has been adopted, given that when it was announced in 2005, National was so against it.

A: Well we were against it in 2005. The reason for that actually if you take a step back was, I actually still believe, and this is actually factually correct, if you do an analysis of our student deductability, which is essentially our deuctability for interest and a combination of tax cuts, actually the vast majority of students were better off. Some students weren’t, if they had a large student loan and a low income then they wern’t, but the vast majority of them were better off.

We were always worried, and continue to be a little bit worried that zero interest loans will send the wrong message to students,  to take on too much debt. It’s not that they shouldn’t take on debt, I personally think the economic payback for an education is so overwhelming compelling that they should do that, but it’s easy when you’re younger to sort of lay the thought process about what it might mean when you have to go and pay it back. Well that has implications for later life.

So yeah, we we’re opposed to it, but the policy didn’t cost us the 200 million that Michael Cullen told us it would, it actually cost us 3 billion, and that value is reflected when you look at the fair value of the loans in the book. So half a million New Zealander’s now have a loan, they’ve built that into their life style, if we put interest back on the loans, we’ll have to add 3 billion dollars worth of interest back on, and I don’t think in all reality, in all good conscience we can do that. We can’t have a situation where every time we have a new Government we start playing political ping pong with student interest, so we’ve said “look, we accept we lost the election, that’s a policy that’s in place, and we’ll keep it”. We even added to it buy saying if you repay over and above the mandatory requirement then you’ll get a ten percent write off.

Question 3: Cool, now student debt just recently hit 10 billion dollars, Labour’s been heavily criticised by the NZUSA, the student lobby group for failing to deliver on it’s 2005 election promise of getting 50% of all students onto a student allowance by the end of their third term, we’re currently at around 35%. What’s Nationals policy, well ok not policy, but general view on how many people we should have on student allowances?

A: Well yeah we’re still working our way through that at the moment, but we recognise the two components, which are the $150 that people can actually borrow for their loan, and its a little out of synch with the realities of what students face in terms of costs. For many of them just finding a flat is not very far away from $150, let alone being able to afford to eat, which is a very nice thing to be able to do, and I think that’s got to be accommodated for, so I think you can anticipate some changes there, though it will let you add to the debt, but never the less.

Secondly I think there needs to be an acknowledgment that the current allowances are at best, marginal. Quite honestly expecting people to be entirely dependent on their parents at ages 25 or below is probably a stretch for a lot of people. Also the income thresholds are quite low, eligibility cuts out very low. So we’re looking at all of those things, and you can expect us to do something in those areas.

Q: Now The Government’s emissions trading schemes been in the news for running into…

A: It’s hit a brick wall.

Q: Ha, yes, theres talk of the Greens pulling their support for it. Now where does National stand on this. Obviously you guys are sort of thought of as the party of big business, and business is very worried about the issue of leakage, where if you put this system in, you end up sending jobs and profits overseas. Where is National on this?

A: Yeah, well we like emissions trading as a mechanism, we think its the mechanism of choice, if you look at Australians, the Europeans, they are all headed in that direction. We think it’s probably the most coherent way of pricing the true environmental costs of climate change. So overtime when your a signatory of Kyoto you’ve got binding liabilities and they do need to be paid for, and we do think that ultimately business and consumers need to recognise that there’s not just a production cost there’s an environmental cost and someone needs to pick up the tab for that either tax payers or consumers. So we do like that system, our argument has always been about what we want the design of that system to look like and obviously we are worried about relativity to our other trading partners. It’s not hugely logical from our perspective to say look if a large company, let’s take Bluescope, New Zealand Steel in Auckland, simply to pick itself up and go to Australia or to China simply because we’re pricing CO2 emissions. The reality is that doesn’t help the planet, and it hurts the New Zealand Economy.

So out mantra if you like has been look the way we’ll tackle climate change is we’ll balance our environmental responsibilities with our economic opportunities, and we haven’t argued that we’ll be a world leader. We’ve argued that we’ll do out bit for climate change, that we think New Zealand should take it seriously, but it’s a balanced approach. Labour has taken the view that they want to be a world leader, Helen Clark actually got a gong from the United Nations for it, for being carbon neutral. But the rhetoric just doesn’t back up the record.

Our view is this, if the model is not sustainable then politicians bottle, and that’s what Helen Clark is doing, and actually it’s a bit worse than that. They’ve had the wrong structure. If you look at Forestry as a good example, one of the big drivers of why our emissions profile is rising is because deforestation has occurred at such a fast rate.

So from our perspective we’re saying look let’s take a balanced approach, let’s get the right incentives in place. Let’s take this thing seriously but let’s make sure it’s balanced. We’ll support an emissions trading scheme that balances those objectives, but we won’t support something that’s out of whack.

Q: Now the other issue that comes up about the trading scheme are the exemptions. Agriculture has an emission to, I think…

A: 2013

Q: And Transport has one until 2011. Do you support exemptions like that?

A: Well I think just in terms of liquid fuel transport, I think it probably makes sense to delay it, since the rising price of oil is probably choking off demand anyway. But what I think is much more challenging is that at the moment The Government is in full scale retreat, and it’s making political decisions not sound economic ones necessarily, in so much that there’s a select committee process which is occurring. Our view of it has been, rather than these ad hoc changes, lets continue to work through the select committee process. What the Government did this week was say there’s an exemption on transport until 2011, with mention of energy which is still theoretically to come in 2010. For big emitters, no reduction in their free units until 2018, well what does that mean for agriculture which starts in 2011, but has a linear reduction now for the next 12 years? Ultimately what does it mean for forestry?

To put it bluntly, it’s a bit of a bastardised way to develop an emissions trading scheme. We think you’ve got to go back and say, what are we trying to achieve, how does this look relative to our trading partners, what is logical and most importantly what is fair? I’d rather see a coherent holistic approach, and that’s how we are going to work through it.

Q: On the issue of living standards, how would National go about raising living standards, especially in comparison with Australia?

A: Obviously firstly tax cuts will help, no questions. They are just a direct thing. You can see that in Australia, I think there was something in the paper today saying Kevin Rudd’s new budget, which is due May 13 and effectively that will deliver about $47 dollars a week to the average family, based on what Michael Cullen looks like he’s going to deliver, it might be about $25 a week over three years, so you can see how that gap will blow out. Without knowing the numbers we anticipate we’ll be able to do more.

Secondly you’ve got to get in there and drive productivity, and that is yep investment in broadband or energy and others. Secondly it’s got to be around the planning and regulatory environment. We think the RMA (Resource Management ACT) has been a real hand break to development in the economy, and we’re going to reform that, it’s quite a high priority.

There are other aspects of general bureaucracy and administration that are too heavy. Even if we look at something like the Tertiary Education Commission. It started life as light handed regulation for universities, but now the reality is that the regulatory requirements on the University of Canterbury are the same as the worst performing polytechnic or private training establishment in the country. And I’d strongly suggest that that’s not right. It’s overly bureaucratic for Canterbury and it’s money that could be better spend on other aspects of tertiary education.  So you’re going to rebalance that.

Q: Cool, now we’ve just recently had a gay pride week feature for Canta, and I wanted to ask about the Civil Union Bill. When it was in Parliament  you voted against it. I was just wondering why that was, and given how that legislation has turned out, do you think it was the right decision.

A: Yeah look I’ve taken the view in my electorate, I mean I represent what’s a pretty conservative electorate and I’ve taken the view that I’m going to vote on conscience issues in a way that best reflects my electorate.  In a sense I think that’s probably right, I think people have different ways of doing it, I mean it is my conscience, but it should really be the conscience of the people I represent.

I’m not overly bothered with it though, or tempted to change civil unions. I was never a great believer in the argument that it would undermine marriage, I think that’s a nonsense argument. I don’t care, I’ve got some quite good friends who are gay and have a civil union and it has absolutely no impact on my 25 year marriage to my wife. Being away from home every night might, but certainly not our friends having a civil union. Personally I’m not overly fussed by it.

Q: I’ve done a series of article on the whole Save Happy Valley-Solid energy Conflict, and one of the people I ended up talking to, a good friend of yours, Nicky Hager

A: [Laughs] Yeah sure

Q: And he’s quite a firm believer that we need stronger regulation of private investigator’s. I was wondering what you thought of that? Obviously we’ve seen some quite high profile examples of worrying activity by private investigators.

A: That stuff with Solid Energy, yeah.

Q: Well, not just Solid Energy, Diane Foreman for example was alleging PI’s broke into her office and things like that.
A:

Yeah, I think the industry has been moving to try and to regulate it’s self in a way. I mean there’s clearly a role for Private Investigators for a variety of reasons, both commercial and other reasons.

I tend to be on the other side of that, we’ve had them going through my rubbish and I have other reasons to believe they’ve been doing all sorts of things with regard to my background. And hey that’s fine, I’ve got nothing to hide, they’re welcome to have a look.

I think though clearly you have to be careful with it. Paid informants is not a good look for a State Owned Enterprise and Don Eldar has reflected that, and I think he’s asked those people to cease and desist from that kind of activity. Of course there’s always two sides to every story, but I won’t go into the great merits of all that.

But yeah it’s an industry where some standards have to be maintained, or we end up with the grubbiest of all worlds.

Roger Douglas Interview

Interview with Roger Douglas

Question One: You have just recently returned to the ACT Party. Why now? What made you come back?

A: Well, I look at New Zealand right now, and I think we’re coming to a crossroads. I think that if we look at how we’re doing right now, in comparison to Australia and other countries, we’re simply not doing as well as we should be. I  personally think that ACT’s the only party that can make a difference. We can make a change of Government with National, but the only way to really change the policies, to change the direction of the country, is with ACT. And I wanted to play a part in that.

Question Two: You mentioned National there, now obviously ACT is running at about 1 to 2 percent in the current polls. Do you think with the way National has become more centrist, especially under John Key, it leaves more room open for ACT?

A: Well it certainly leaves more room open for us, and I think it’s possible for ACT to get 6 percent plus, if we can get 6 percent or more, then we can change the way things are operating in New Zealand. With 6 or 7 we can expect two or three cabinet positions and help to make a difference.
Question Three: for readers who might not know them, what are the specific policy differences between National and ACT?

A: Well I think the differences between ACT and all the other political parties is that most of the other political parties want to deliver services through monopoly supply. In other words they want to deliver education, other government services through monopolies, deliver health care that way, they want to deliver welfare that way. Through big monopoly organisation. Now anyone who thinks about the economy, they don’t actually have to be an economist to understand that monopolies are essentially bad. It’s a moral thing, they don’t have the care for the customer. Now what ACT believes is that the customer should have choice, they should be bale to make decisions in an open market place. The truth is that private organisations in an open market place have to deliver what the customer wants. If they don’t deliver what the customer wants, they go broke.

Question 4: You are famous for pioneering the Free Market Reforms of the 1980’s, which were continued under National Finance Minister Ruth Richardson in the 1990’s. Now since Labour took over….

A: [Interupts] We’ve gone down hill…

Question: Ha ha, well I guess you figured out where I was heading with that question…

A: Well if you think about it, when we came into Government in 1984, New Zealand was in crisis, we were pretty much broke. When we left government in 1989 we were leading Australia in a whole bunch of indicators, our inflation was lower, our balance of payments were better, the interest on our debts were lower, our debts were lower. Between 1995 and 2000 our growth was higher than Australia. Nine years of this Labour Government and we’re 300 dollars a week behind Australia. The problem with that is that all of our young people are leaving New Zealand. One in every three students who graduates will be out of this country in 5 years time. You know why? Because there isn’t an opportunity here for them.

Now what ACT will be doing is putting forward policies to close than income gap, and we’ll be the only part frankly that can do that. Our policy will be around the point of how do we beat Australia by 2020, how do we ensure that young New Zealanders stay in New Zealand, and can lead satisfying and well paid lives here in New Zealand, rather than having to go to Australia or somewhere else.

Question: Student Debt just recently hit 10 billion dollars. What can ACT do to help the student debt problem? There’s suggestions from people like The Greens that increasing availability of student allowances is a good way to do that. Do you agree?

Answer: Well it takes a little long to explain, maybe I’ll send you some of my thinking on it. But at the end of the day, I’m in favour of a very simple proposition. I think if we had a flat 15% tax rate, that would go a long way towards keeping graduates here, and they wouldn’t have to be so worried about debt. But when they have to go out and go into the market place, and they’re paying the highest tax rate when their earning 1.4 times the average wage, and their paying the top tax rate, well that’s ridiculous when the rest of the OECD you have to earn about 5.6 times the average wage.

To me, the best way to help with student debt is not to treat the symptoms, and that’s what most other parties are doing, treating symptoms rather than solving long term problems. I’d rather look at long term solutions.

Nandor Interview part one

Nandor Tanczos is a long standing member of the Green Party, and New Zealand’s first ever Rastafarian MP. In the first of a two part interview, Hayden Munro sat down to talk to him about the talk he gave at UC, The Emissions Trading Scheme, and the end of industrial civilisation.

Q: You’re in town for a talk you are giving called ‘Sustainability: At the Tipping Point’. For those reading this that won’t be able to attend, could you just go over what’s going to be in that talk?
A: Sure, well basically what I’m doing is looking at some of the physical realities we face: climate change, peak oil, metals depletion, the combined effects of all this to things like food security.  What I’m interested in really is not these kinds of realities but what are the implications of this? In terms of politics, in terms of culture, what is industrial civilisation going to look like over the next century? Is it going to survive it at all?
There are a lot of people now starting to talk about climate change, I mean it’s become main stream to talk about the environment, but the responses are extremely shallow and superficial. You know the sort of “we can make money from carbon trading” response. What I’m interested in is what does all this mean for us, on a deeper level? I’m interested in starting some discussion around those issues.
Q. Do you think industrial society will survive the next century?

A. No.
I think we are in the twilight years of industrial society.
I mean bits and pieces of it may linger potentially. Elements of our culture will continue to linger, but become increasingly difficult to maintain. I think the impact of climate change, peak oil and the political instability that will come with those things will spell the end of our civilisation.
Q. On a Government level, what can we do to respond to that?
A. Well the first difficulty is that Governments are almost universally compromised by corporate agendas. Governments are almost universally in service to corporations, and they’re also compromised by their own feelings of smug self importance, and that makes it really difficult for them to respond in a meaningful way.
There are really useful things Governments could do; they don’t appear to be doing them, but there are useful things they could do. I think one of the things I’m saying is that the real solutions are coming out of the community; they’re coming out of the communities that are saying “we need to take this seriously, and do the best to ensure ourselves food security, energy security and the basics of life, and at the same time rebuild a life worth living.”
Now Governments can do a lot to facilitate those developments as well. Again they don’t often do that, but that’s where it’s really important to have good people in Government, in local authority, and in corporations. And of course I think that as an MP for the Green Party supporting the Green Party is an important way to ensure that happens, because it’s about having people who see the need to facilitate that community development.
Q. You touched on carbon trading a little there. That’s something that’s been in the news a lot recently, with many people saying the bottom is falling out on the Government’s carbon trading scheme, since it puts New Zealand industry at a disadvantage against foreign corporations who don’t have to follow the scheme. Is there any way around that issue? You said corporations wield a lot of power, and you’re really asking them to take a big financial hit with this scheme.

A.
Yeah but we’re not really are we?
I mean, our biggest green house gas emitter is agriculture, entirely exempted from the scheme, then subsidised at the tax payers expense until 2025. Our biggest growing emitter is transport, and now there’s growing political pressure to exempt transport from paying for their carbon.
It seems basic to me that you have to internalise the cost of carbon, and other kinds of environmental services. If we continue to allow business to get a free ride from using and depleting the environment, then why on earth would they change? Why would they? It doesn’t cost them anything. Ok, occasionally you might get the odd person who feels really strongly about the issues and they might make some changes in their corporation, and that’s great. I’m not belittling the importance of ethical values in business. But the business sector as a whole? By law they’re charged to make a profit, they respond to monetary or regulatory signals only.  So you’ve either got to regulate them or charge them for their carbon. How on earth are they going to change?
This international drive to say “well we’re going to be the last to charge for carbon so our competitors don’t get an advantage” well that’s all very well. But let’s look at the reality of climate change: most researchers say that a two degree centigrade rise in temperature is the most we can afford before we face catastrophic climate change. That means we HAVE to stabilise atmospheric carbon dioxide at about 44 parts per million. Some researchers say there is no way, even with aggressive mitigation strategies that we can do that. It’s increasingly looking like we won’t even stop at 550 parts per million. Even if we took aggressive action right now, we will not escape the impact of climate change. The question we have before us, the only question we have before us, is how bad are we going to allow it to get?
Now, to my mind that’s all bullshit, this “we don’t want to give our competitors an advantage” stuff. We

don’t have time to fuck around. It’s as simple as that.

Q. On a political level though, as annoying as that can be, the issue around climate change isn’t settled for everyone. Not everyone accepts the validity of the argument for climate change. A great example of this is ACT on Campus, who actually protested at Earth Hour, because they think the whole thing is bullshit. They were handing out pamphlets with stuff like “It’s cyclical warming” etc. So in a political climate where not everyone accepts the validity of climate change, doesn’t that make it so much harder to convince big companies that changes need to be made, and that they should make the sacrifice?

A. Well I mean clearly you can’t make people deal with evidence rationally. I mean you can’t force people to be convinced by evidence, and there are some people who still deny that human induced climate change is a reality. That’s in spite of the, ok maybe you can’t call it a consensus, but the overwhelming majority of climate scientists who say it is a reality.

Just on an aside, the idea that it’s all a fake and that somehow there’s this global conspiracy of scientists to fake climate change because it’s good for their research money? Ok so the entire fossil fuels industry is being [laughs] unfairly treated by the global scientists because there’s more money to come from Governments than oil companies for research?  Yeah it’s a little stretch; it stretches my credulity a little.

But you’re quite right, the fact that there’s this denial of climate change, and of course there will be because it’s not in some peoples short term economic interests to do anything about it, it does make it more difficult. But my sense is that most ordinary people agree that climate change is happening, and they take it seriously and they want to do something about it. The response to my talk, which is a pretty hard out talk about the implications of climate change, has been very positive. My sense is that people want to talk about it, because they’re sick of hearing bullshit. “Oh we’re going to be carbon neutral” says the Government, while they do nothing about it. I think increasingly people do want to see some action.

Even businesses want to see action, because what they want is certainty, and they want the government to get real about it, stop talking bullshit and do something about it. So I think there is a growing appetite that gives them some results and security around it. I think the worst thing for business is when it’s like “are we or aren’t we?” because then they can’t make strategic investment decisions. When the Government is saying “ok we’ll put a levy on sheep farms…oh wait no we’re not because there’s a farmer backlash against that” then saying “ok, we’ll crack down on carbon emissions… oh wait no we won’t because there’s a transport backlash”. While things are like that, business can’t plan anything because they don’t know what’s going on.

So does the fact that people still deny human induced climate change is a reality make things politically harder? Maybe a little bit, but no more than you’d expect. I guess for me this is where it comes down to actually having some political leadership. If we had political leadership that was actually courageous and prepared to do something and back the nice fuzzy words that have been thrown around, the people would respect that.
The reality is that if businesses only survive because of an enormous environmental subsidy, including the fact they contribute to climate change, then actually, their day is over.

Q: On the subject of political leadership, what do you think of the response to climate change from National and Labour?

A.    It’s…..um…..flatulent really. Labour says “oh, we’re going to be carbon neutral” but they have no policies to get us there, in fact they have policies that take us in the other direction. National puts in some targets.

Q. Yeah “50 by 50” their saying..

A: Yeah, but again it’s a nice aspiration but where are the policies to get us there? I’ve yet to see any of the big parties suggest anything that would make a real impact. In a way our biggest issue is that our biggest emitter, our biggest single emitter, neither of them will touch farming. And our biggest growing emitter, neither of them will touch transport nor break our addiction to fossil fuels and our love affair with the private car. So they can say what they like, but I’ve yet to see either of them do anything about it.

Ok….someone’s going to have to explain this to me.

As part of the many cool features of a wordpress blog, there is a section that tells me the various search engine terms people have used that bring up my blog. Now these are generally what you would expect: “Michael Cullen and Tax Cuts” “Abortion Law” “Hayden Munro”(people are looking for me by name now, scary). The other day however, there was a search term so odd, so strange I’m going to have to ask whoever it was for an explanation, if just to satisfy my own curiosity.

So for my sainity: Please, who in their right mind put “Don Brash Testicles” into google?

What were you looking for???

The internet is a scary scary place.

ETS

That sound you just heard was the bottom falling out of New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme.

The last nail in the scheme’s coffin was the announcement this past week that that the transport industry, New Zealand’s fastest growing emitter of carbon, would be excluded from the scheme until January 1st 2011. Add this to the exemption given to agriculture that means they will not be included in the scheme until well after 2020, and New Zealand now has an emission trading scheme that is essentially impotent.
So how exactly did a scheme that’s mere announcement helped Helen Clark win a UN award for “blazing new trails for sustainability and the fight against climate change” end up as such a joke?

There are those, many of them wounded Green supporters (the party has threatened to vote against the now neutered scheme), who would argue that the scheme was never really taken seriously by Labour. It was announced in the lead up to the 2005 election as a vote winner, nothing more. At the time, climate change was on everybody’s mind, An Inconvenient Truth was a big hit, and Labour was running against a former banker who was anything but environmentally friendly.

According to critics of the scheme, Labour was always planning to renege on their promises of making New Zealand one of the first carbon neutral states in the world. The political risks of truly implementing as visionary and courageous a scheme as Labour had told us theirs was to be were never ones Labour was willing to take.

When it comes to curbing Carbon emissions, it’s very easy to talk a big game. Promises to help the world “‘kick the carbon habit’”, as Clark put it, are winners with the voters. An issue as scary as human induced climate change is the sort of thing Government’s like to promise voters they can fix. Being seen to have solutions for big problems is part of selling yourself to voters, and in many peoples eyes, climate change is one of the biggest problems there is.

However actually implementing policy that is going to help reduce the damage done by climate change is a whole other story. Major action requires major sacrifices, it requires lowering the amount of oil we use, it requires the dairying industry to say goodbye to the record profits it currently enjoys, it even requires the average citizen the pay more at the pump. You try selling those sacrifices to a public already hurting economically, and tell me how it goes.

Even worse than those sacrifices, is the issue of business leakage. If New Zealand were to force our businesses to pay for the carbon they use, it obviously increases the operating cost for New Zealand companies. This has a two pronged effect: firstly it makes New Zealand a significantly less attractive place to do business, weakening foreign investment and potentially pushing many of our firms overseas (a political hot button after the Fisher and Paykel plant closures).

Secondly, it gives an unfair price advantage to foreign importers, as locally produced products will have to rise in price to cover the increased cost of carbon. This means not only does the New Zealand consumer face higher prices, our employers could go out of business as they loose market share to cheaper foreign goods.

Of course the reality that Labour is ignoring here is that if serious changes aren’t made, the consequences of climate change for New Zealand, both economically and politically, will be far worse than anything the trading scheme could cause.

Labour argues that by the time the exemptions run out, foreign countries will have emissions trading schemes of their own, meaning the problem of leakage will no longer be an issue. According to them, exemptions are just a way of ensuring we have a slow and sensible response to climate change.

The problem is, Labour didn’t promise “slow and sensible” they promised we would be one of the first carbon neutral countries on Earth. By failing to deliver on this promise, Labour has backed itself into a corner. Either the promise was a lie to win votes, or Labour is a sincere believer in the scheme, yet was willing to compromise it’s beliefs so as not to piss off the business community. When it comes to climate change, Labour are either liars, or people who can’t get the job done.

What a great message to be sending voters in election year.

Ouch, my pride

So I read this today, from another excellent blog, http://www.medialawjournal.co.nz/?p=103 and I have to give credit to Michael Cullen for his AMAZING dodge of the question on student allowances. What a hearty and long winded way of saying “No, piss off”.

This guys one of my bad ass politicians for a reason people.