New Zealand

An article about the sad state of Canadian politics has echoes of what it is like in New Zealand, where our politicians stand for nothing and are really just shades of tan.

Canadian politics have become almost sad, in that we have leaders elected who stand for nothing and make policy decisions based on what the latest polls tell them is fashionable or expedient. Electoralist politics of the worst kind are guiding Canada’s political landscape and what is perhaps even most disturbing is that Canadians are not standing up to rein in such porous behaviour. Where is the outrage? Where are the calls for elections or votes of non-confidence? Where are the protests that millions of taxpayers’ dollars are being wasted as governments try to protect themselves?

The answer is fairly simple – Canadians are not electing leaders based on a sense of inspiration or a sincere desire to follow, but rather, are often left to choose the lesser of the evils.

It is nothing new that political parties use polling data to guide policy, but what is abundantly clear from recent history is that those parties do not stand for very much or present a fulsome vision of how the country or their respective provinces should be led. Political scientists teach what ideological tenets inform the initial formations of our current political party system and the way a Conservative, Liberal, New Democrat or other ought to think. The problem is, in the real world, they rarely make policy according to the historical ideological basis for their party’s existence.

It doesn’t take much to change a few party names and the situation seems identical.

Federally, the Conservative government has shades of the right, but has grown the size of government, has constantly intervened in the economy, and spends far too much money – all of which are no no’s according to a basic Conservative ideology. The federal NDP seem to stand for not being Conservative or Liberal but certainly do not resemble the traditional NDP ideological stances of the past. The newly-branded Justin Trudeau Liberals have presented no concrete policy ideas whatsoever, and Trudeau’s leadership seems to be based more on a famous last name and boyish good looks than the prospect of strong leadership. Other examples at the sub-federal level tell a similar story, with Redford’s PC’s behaving more like Liberals and Ontario’s Liberals behaving more like an NDP government.

Throughout the Canadian political spectrum, there is a crisis of leadership and the proof for this is best found through the sheer number of scandals plaguing the country’s political leaders right now. Whether you identify yourself as a Liberal, Conservative, or a member of the Rhino Party, you do so because a party is expected to stand for a specific set of values that guide how they lead and make policy. In the absence of great leadership, Canadians have been settling and it is time to stand up and say enough. Scandals, boondoggles, and cover ups should not be tolerated and as Canadians we need to ask ourselves why they are and just what we are going to do about it.

The Australian Financial Review (subscriber content) has passed comment on the state of the NZ economy and recent budget compared with Australia.

Like all established media, the Financial Review has to cut costs. The Sydney subs desk, traditionally part of the fabric of the newsroom, has been shut and articles such as this are now subbed by a Fairfax Media team in Auckland.

While still getting up to speed, the Kiwi team is well drilled, eager and costs a lot less than if hired under Australian pay rates and dollar. Such supply chain changes are happening across the Tasman also with call centres and information technology, driven by 40 per cent or so cost differences.

The flip side of Australia’s high cost base is its relative prosperity. Over the past two centuries, Aussies have rarely been this much more prosperous than Kiwis, thanks to the mother of all resources booms in Western Australia and Queensland.

Yet a side trip to Wellington confirmed that this trans-Tasman disparity has likely peaked. Australia’s resources boom luck is ending and we’re about to pay for its mismanagement. While New Zealand’s bad luck is about to turn for the better, it also will reap the benefits of its more disciplined policy-making.

Australia enjoyed a minerals boom, we endure the Green party spiking any such development.

New Zealand didn’t have a mining boom to shield it from a global financial crisis recession. The February 2011, the Christchurch earthquake flattened much of the country’s second biggest city. Then came a drought. Elected in late 2008 at the start of this bad luck, John Key’s National government also had to deal with the legacy of nearly a decade of a back-sliding and big spending Labour government.

Key and Finance Minister Bill English let the budget cushion the early bad luck. The deficit blew out to more than 9 per cent of gross domestic product.

The government faced a dreadful set of circumstances when they took office.

Yet, while Wayne Swan’s sixth budget left Australia exiting its mining boom with a fiscal mess, English’s fifth budget a few days later confirmed that New Zealand will be back in surplus in a couple of years. Based on spending restraint, there’s been none of Swan’s shameless accounting trickery. And English has delivered genuine tax reform: a 15 per cent GST, a 33 per cent top marginal income tax rate and a 28 per cent corporate rate.

New Zealand is now likely to grow just as fast as Australia over the next few years. While Australia faces an income crunch, the NZ Treasury forecasts that Kiwi household incomes will rise nearly 20 per cent over the next four years.

What also immediately stands out is Wellington’s grown-up and stable government, even a minority one enforced by New Zealand’s proportional electoral system. There is none of the political madness, dysfunction and class warfare rhetoric that has come from Rudd-Gillard Labor over the past six years.

A former investment banker and a former South Island farmer, respectively, Key and English are more substantial and less tribal than Julia Gillard and Swan. They stress business-friendly growth and dismiss the idea that more government spending means better public services.

It is a model that Tony Abbott, himself the husband of a New Zealander, would be advised to follow. English draws a clear distinction between the crash-through New Zealand reform era of Labour finance minister Roger Douglas and National successor Ruth Richardson. That was followed by nearly two decades of policy drift and retreat under governments of both stripes. Now it’s all about incremental but continual policy reform that cannot so easily be later undone.

Politically, it’s working. Halfway through their second term, the polls give Key’s Nationals 49.1 per cent of the vote, compared to 43.1 per cent for Labour and the Greens. Fifty nine per cent of New Zealanders think the country is heading in the right direction.

It sounds like the Aussies are a wee bit jealous of the state of our economy.

And now the luck. While Australia’s mining boom has been based on China’s infrastructure spurt, New Zealand is at the start of a massive dairy boom driven by middle class Chinese demand for protein. New Zealand excels at turning water into powdered milk protein. Australia’s terms of trade are now sliding from 140-year highs. But, as New Zealand’s terms of trade rise, it faces a challenge well known this side of the ditch: a strengthening exchange rate.

Stuff has an online poll up that shows overwhelming support for Labour’s Leader – not.

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This guy will for sure be head hunted to replace Winston Peters as leader of NZ First.

Former Fonterra chairman Sir Henry van der Heyden has apologised to “China and its people and Government ” for warning New Zealand businesses not to trust the Chinese.

Van der Heyden broke at lunchtime from his final board meeting as a Fonterra director to issue his public apology over comments made at a Tauranga business women’s conference.  Read more »

After their manufactured manufacturing crisis, it comes as no surprise that yet another of Labour’s media stunts is backfiring.

In the same way you don’t hear Labour banging on about ‘the manufacturing crisis’ any more, you don’t hear David Shearer banging on about the number of Kiwis going to Australia anymore

And why is that?

In the year to the end of April New Zealand has seen a net migration gain of almost 4800 people, a two-year high, as more people arrive to live here long term than leave the country permanently.  Read more »

A Guest post from Reclaiming the Left. His last post is here.

Is patriotism dead?

One of the things I like about attending local Labour events is the patriotic rhetoric. There are still grassroots campaigners who really do believe in New Zealand. They are like a breath of fresh air, because you hardly ever hear similar rhetoric in the mainstream media.

As an avowed leftist, one of the things I despise about neo-liberals and their like is their rejection of patriotism. Neo-liberals have given us the global free market. They have given us outsourcing. They, in what I regard as the greatest war crime of the past 20 years, gave us the massive mercenary forces that supported the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Every time I think the right has some good ideas (and they do), they ruin it with their successive reification of money and rejection of the nation. The right unleashed Rod Deane on the New Zealand Defence Force, and his business “acumen” stripped it of funding and devastated its morale. No neoliberal can ever understand an army.  Read more »

Bill English has released details showing that the IMF thinks we are on the right track…the converse of course is that the Green led Labour coalition wouldn’t be.

Farrar will no doubt have a throughly researched piece straight off the desk of Bill English.

The International Monetary Fund has confirmed that the Government’s economic plan strikes the right balance between supporting growth and limiting public debt, Finance Minister Bill English says.

In its final staff report issued this morning, the IMF endorses New Zealand’s balanced and pragmatic economic management.   Read more »

The left wing here likes to bag New Zealand, but how do the Aussies see us…well, a little differently than you would imagine.

Larry Pickering makes some astute observations as Australia heads into election season.

New Zealand was on the brink of recession prior to the Conservative government of John Key taking the reins in 2008. This small economy of 4.4 million people is now preparing for a series of record surpluses… and without the help of a mining industry.

Helen Clarke’s [sic] Labour Government left the country facing severe recession with a bloated Public Service sector and disastrous losses due to her takeover of the NZ rail system.

Abbott could do worse than take a look across the Tasman when attempting to repair the damage left by the union government of Julia Gillard and the incompetency of Kevin Rudd.

Are unions really the problem? They seem to be in Australia, having never really really dealt with them like we did in the 90s.  Read more »

John Banks was interviewed on Q+A about charter schools. It seems they are on track:

Act Party leader John Banks says there won’t be any changes to legislation around the controversial partnership schools despite opposition parties continuing their objections to elements of the bill such as allowing unqualified teachers.

The Education Amendment Bill, which would establish charter schools, known as partnership schools, was expected to pass in Parliament with the support of National, Act and the Maori Party.

Mr Banks told TVNZ’s Q+A programme today it was not insignificant the Maori Party would want to support the bill.

“Because every second young Maori leaves school after 12 years of schooling without NCEA level 2, no numeracy or literacy.”

He said the Maori Party had not asked for any changes to the bill in exchange for their support of it.  Read more »

Good grief the Poms are thick. They are running around saying that a dead and rotting Orca is a sea monster of some sort.

A video of a mysterious carcass washed up on a New Zealand beach has gone viral. Experts have suggested that the carcass is that of a killer whale but this has failed to quash “sea monster” speculation.

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