You cannot, yet, be serious

"For three decades the Odysseus of New Zealand politics has navigated the turbulent seas of electoral fortune. ...

"The party has [lately] been on a recruitment drive. Is this time different; are we seeing a party in transition or the beginning of another operatic calamity? ...

"Movements like the New Zealand Party, Opportunities Party and United Future struggle once their leaders depart the stage. Building something enduring requires placing the interests of the organisation ahead of the self, and, well, people who start their own political entities are not team players. ...

"... [T]his is not a party with an ambition to form a government, merely to remain the party to decide who does. New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'New Zealand First is important, but it is not, yet, serious'

Suckers

"'We must never stop believing in a country called New Zealand' [says Winston Peters launching his campaign for another ministerial limousine]... 'Remember who you are New Zealand,' he blathers]...

"Classic Winston Peters nostalgia: 'Let's remember who we are' stuff wrapped up in patriotic packaging. 

"Those lines usually come out during speeches about immigration, Maori co-governance, 'wokeness,' or foreign influence. It's pure emotional rhetoric designed to stir up a sense of loss and cultural erosion while conveniently ignoring how his own policies have shifted with the wind over the years. 

"Personally I'm still waiting for the abolition of Maori seats that he promised was a bottom line in 2017. 

"Suckers."

~ Amy Jones

Michael laws sniffs a new trough

 

"With the [Winston First] party polling at a steady 11 or 12% and chasing its 1990s glory days, a cast of embittered political zombies has shuffled back onto the scene, looking to reanimate their dead careers.
    "On Friday, Peters dug up his old crony Michael Laws ... [who] has spent the better part of four decades finding new and creative ways to keep his snout firmly attached to the public trough. For a man who built a lucrative talkback brand railing against bureaucratic waste and privilege, Laws has spent almost his entire adult life being paid by your rates or your taxes.
    "He started as a parliamentary researcher in 1985. Then he became an MP. Then a city councillor. Then a mayor. Then a district health board member. Then a regional councillor.
    "When he wasn't pulling a government salary, he was a shock jock collecting listeners by throwing rhetorical hand grenades. Now that regional councils are being dissolved, Otago’s Laws needs a new gig. ...
    "Laws has always found safe harbour with Peters. Cleverly, they’ve both sussed that in the attention economy, you don't need a legacy delivery, just a stream of vitriolic grievances."

~ Andrea Vance from her column 'Welcome to the NZ First manosphere: now featuring the undead'

"Responsible"? They lie to you and assume you're too stupid to notice. [UPDATED]

UPDATE: Professor Robert MacCulloch: "It's a rigged budget ... so she can get a soundbite. ... Media got suckered." The promised return to surplus is a “phony” and “reverse-engineered” political exercise designed for election headlines rather than economic reality.

It's one of those rare occasions, this budget, when commentators have mostly taken the finance minister's own spin as a given and burrowed instead into the details. The result however is to ignore context, and to focus on the irrelevant to the exclusion of the important. That's why the finance minister is looking so goshdarned pleased: because her lies are going mostly unchallenged.

The finance minister tells you that this election-year budget contains "no sugar hits." That New Zealanders won't be bribed on election year with their own money.

That's a lie.

The small matter of a $450 million "emergency contingency fund" has been set aside "in a time-limited contingency" if the cork remains in the Straits of Hormuz -- betting, of course, as she does in her heroic forecasts, that the cork will at least be loosened, allowing a wee flutter when polls show it's needed. 

Yes folks, the true "emergency" being provisioned for is an election debacle. That's what the slush fund is for.

The finance minister also tells us repeatedly that she's being responsible.

That's why she's set aside "just over $1 billion" for unspecified "improvements" to KiwiRail. Which is of course a big win for Shane Jones and his friend Winston. This is their billion-dollar slush fund for the election, which is just over double the fund she's allowed for her own party.

Responsible?

It's also handing councils $400 million in “growth incentives” now while only walking slowly to bring council's rates under control. And this is only because the finance minister can't bring her own govt's costs sufficiently under control to allow the GST component of new housing to go to councils (the real growth incentive she was encouraged to enact).

Responsible?

As Michael Reddell observes (one of the few commentators to put his head under the bonnet with the proper focus, New Zealand remains among the advanced countries with the largest structural fiscal deficit -- which have got "materially worse" under this Government.

 

As the Taxpayers Union notes, "Despite branding this a 'responsible Budget,' Nicola Willis has today confirmed the Government will have borrowed more by 2029/30 than Treasury forecast just five months ago." Over a billion dollars more.

So have things got any better under this National finance minister rather than the last Labour liar? Has it hell.  Reddell again:

In the last full year Labour was responsible for core Crown operating expenses were 31.7% of GDP 

In 24/25 32.6% 

In 25/26 32.6% 

In 26/27 32.6%

Responsible, hell!

And of course, this Government went to the country promising "no new taxes." That's another long-term lie. 

The budget has announced three new taxes on banks and shareholders -- sorry, two "levies" and one "charge" -- that will of course immediately be passed on to customers -- "the Beehive can try to frame it as a levy on the big banks, but this new tax will be paid by savers and mortgage holders. It’s a sleight of hand."

So that's just yet more charges and "levies" to add to the other new taxes already whacking New Zealanders since the last election's promise of "no new taxes (Levy (n.) an officially imposed fee, tax, or penalty demanded by a government or organisation). The full list:

Road User Charges on Electric Vehicles (April 2024)
GST on Digital Platforms -- the "App" Tax (April 2024)
Trustee Tax Rate Increase to 39% (April 2024)

Offshore Online Casino Gambling Duty (July 2024) 

Increased ACC Levies on Electric Vehicles (2025)

Customs and Excise Goods Management Levies (April 2026)

Prudential Regulation Levy on Banks and Insurers (announced Budget 2026)

Company Shareholder Loan Integrity Rules (Budget 2026)

Thin-Capitalisation Changes for Foreign-Owned Banks (Budget 2026)

And finally, the promise of "returning to surplus" by 2029?

To use Michael Reddell's term, that's just vapourware:

Not only has the projected date for getting back to budget surplus (on the standard OBEGAL measure) kept being pushed back but the projected surpluses for 26/27 (the yearr today's Budget directly relates to) have worsened by more than 4% of GDP in 3 years (under both governments).

Responsible? They lie to you and assume you're too stupid to notice.

What's in a name? Are we really a "capitalist command economy"?

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

What do you call an economic system that's neither a free-market economy with a small state and light-handed regulation, nor a state-owned economy run by bureaucratic, politically-driven trading departments -- it's neither, sometimes both, but mostly a mongrel grab-bag of bits from small govt and large. They're wrestling with that question in the UK at the minute -- and we could just as easily ask the same question here:

The left call it neoliberal but neoliberals have had no meaningful influence on British governments for thirty years. The right call it socialist but neither the Tories nor Labour have shown much [recent] interest in seizing the means of production. 

Liberty Scott puts the question:

Of course the Greens, TPM and parts of Labour will say t[that New Zealand] is under the oppressive yoke of neo-liberalism, and their latest scapegoat "billionaires" and "foreign capital"; and, of course, people like me will rail against the "commie kids" on the left in Parliament and in local government, but [in truth] there's little real evidence of NZ embarking on [either] Douglas/Richardson Mk. 2 or becoming the DDR ....

It's not to say the Douglas/Richardson ... reforms have been unwound. New Zealand isn't returning to rampant protectionism, nor has Labour embarked on vast re-nationalisation ... ["but hold my beer!" says Winston], but what has happened is an accretion of central command and control.

This is one reason some pundits are beginning to realise that, beyond the usual vitriol, there's so little separating the two tired main parties that a Grand Coalition would at least be more honest than continuing their pretence of difference. They've both kept the institutional structure established by Douglas/Richardson, while quietly growing an activist state to increasingly dictate how (and by whom) it will be run -- "regulatory control of the private sector remain[ing] at the heart of what the Wellington bureaucracy advances to meet [their] social goals."

Some might call this Fascism, i.e., the pretence of private property with an activist state dictating terms. But we're not there yet.

Ludwig Von Mises, who'd seen and escaped from the Nazi's fascism, would probably have simply called it a Hampered Market:

The system of interventionism or of the hampered market economy differs from the German [i.e., the Nazi] pattern of socialism by the very fact that it is still a market economy. The authority interferes with the operation of the market economy, but does not want to eliminate the market altogether. It wants production and consumption to develop along lines different from those prescribed by an unhampered market, and it wants to achieve its aim by injecting into the working of the market orders, commands, and prohibitions.

BOTH MISES AND HIS student Ayn Rand were quick to point out that the Hampered Market, or what Rand was happy to dub the Mixed Economy, was of course a mongrel mixture on the way to something else -- that no matter how tired the state's representative might seem, it is still their coercion that is pulling the strings. Any analyis of the Mixed Economy must logically, she said, begin by identifying the two elements that are being mixed: A mixed economy, she identified "is an explosive, untenable mixture of two opposite elements,” freedom and statism, “which cannot remain stable, but must ultimately go one way or the other.”

A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls—with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship. A mixed economy has no principles to define its policies, its goals, its laws—no principles to limit the power of its government. The only principle of a mixed economy—which, necessarily, has to remain unnamed and unacknowledged—is that no one's interests are safe, everyone's interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it. ...

A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalised civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another's expense by an act of government—i.e., by force. In the absence of individual rights, in the absence of any moral or legal principles, a mixed economy's only hope to preserve its precarious semblance of order, to restrain the savage, desperately rapacious groups it itself has created, and to prevent the legalised plunder from running over into plain, unlegalised looting of all by all—is compromise; compromise on everything and in every realm—material, spiritual, intellectual—so that no group would step over the line by demanding too much and topple the whole rotted structure. ...

The only danger, to a mixed economy, is any not-to-be-compromised value, virtue, or idea. The only threat is any uncompromising person, group, or movement. The only enemy is integrity.

If there's one thing New Zealand's so-called opposing parties do agree on, beyond their love for the activist state, it's their hatred of the groups their erstwhile opponents appear to favour., their cronies or voting fodder But as Rand points out, 

If parasitism, favouritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

ECONOMICALLY, WE LIVE IN a Hampered Market. Politically, we live in a Mixed Economy. Realistically, we should be aware that neither can exist indefinitely. Things "must ultimately go one way or the other."

"Ironically, New Zealand First did not place New Zealand first."

 

"We are discussing the soon-to-be ratified NZ-India free trade agreement and the opposition by Messrs Jones and Peters. It’s proving a popular strategy, but it has been my observation, perhaps unfairly, that New Zealand First can sometimes be a little, shall we say, imprecise when it comes to their interpretation of the facts. ...

"[T]he treaty allows for 1000 software engineers, 1000 civil and mechanical engineers, 700 construction managers, 500 teachers and 1200 nurses. That’s 5000 in total. This isn’t 5000 a year. It is 5000 at any one time. And then they have to go home. ...

"[W]hat [else] do we get in this agreement? ... We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Not billions. And without dairy this isn’t a game-changer as the Prime Minister describes it but it is, for those industries affected, transformational.

"The other nonsense being peddled by NZ First is the obligation to invest US$20b into India; this is not what the document says. The wording is clear; we shall promote foreign direct investment '…from investors of New Zealand into India with the aim to increase investment by US 20 billion dollars within 15 years…'

"This is an aspiration, not a commitment. I suspect that this was included to give New Delhi cover to justify the internal political cost of reducing tariffs. ...

"It is significant that the Labour Party stepped up to support a treaty that was in the nation’s interest. They [belatedly] placed country ahead of party and for this Labour deserves our appreciation. Ironically, New Zealand First did not place New Zealand first. ...

"Like the trade deal with China, the initial document isn’t the final one. It opens a bilateral economic engagement that will improve the quality of life for residents of both countries.

"Luxon and his trade minister deserve respect and credit for this achievement."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'Reading the NZ-India free trade agreement made my stress levels rise'

Have political parties begun to get some rat cunning into how to best manipulate MMP to their advantage? [updated]

I don't want to be conspiratorial here .... but could it be that major political parties have begun to get some rat cunning into how to best manipulate MMP to their advantage.

Both Labour and National may have finally recognised that their odds of winning a full majority in an MMP election are about as likely as Winston Peters agreeing to selling off state assets. So is that why Luxon expressed mild but undefined interest this week in doing just that? Was it to give a hoped-for future coalition party a prop upon which to launch next year's election campaign?

It seems as likely a notion as that Labour and the Māori Party have recognised the huge advantage for them both to be gained by the 'overhang' that happens when a party has more electorate MPs than can be justified by their party vote—so they've done their best to bust their party vote while simultaneously raising the profile of those electorate MPs.

That's a risky game to play, of course, but there's no real risk to Labour. Is that why Willie Jackson is walking around looking so pleased with himself.

UPDATE: I hate to say I told you so. Here's Tākuta Ferris pontificating:

Here’s the truth under MMP:
   When Labour wins Māori seats, it does not create the political leverage of a OVERHANG! It simply reduces the number of MPs they bring in from their party vote. And in doing so, it hands the keys to the Beehive straight back to Luxon, Seymour and Winston.
   The only guaranteed mechanism that increases the potential to actually change who governs is an OVERHANG! Created when independent Māori MPs win electorate seats.

"The Broadcasting Standards Authority is a creature from the past which should not exist in a free and democratic society."

 

"In 1966 there was a watershed event. A National government, under Prime Minister Keith Holyoake, tried to stifle nascent private radio [by barring broadcasting by then pirate-radio Radio Hauraki]. It failed: the government monopoly was broken.

"The present National government can atone for its 1966 sin against freedom by joining its coalition partners to overcome the attempt by the Broadcasting Standards Authority to impose censorship on [Sean Plunket's] The Platform, an online media outlet. ...

"Today, a new type of freedom, the freedom to exchange information online without government censorship, is under challenge from a government agency. ... [T]his could be another watershed moment. National should join with ACT and New Zealand First, to abolish the Broadcasting Standards Authority. It is a creature from the past which should not exist in a free and democratic society.

"The Broadcasting Standards Authority’s actions have called public attention to the insidious role of the administrative state, the significant power of government agencies to write, interpret, and enforce their own regulations. Creative interpretation is little different to writing the regulations.

"Perhaps the Broadcasting Standards Authority has performed a service by demonstrating not only that it should be abolished, but also why other government agencies with similar powers should either be abolished or have their powers severely curtailed to restore democratic accountability."

~ Gary Judd from his post 'Are we experiencing another watershed event?'

Yes, this is pathetic.

The reason for the punishment. Threats not immediately obvious.

Yes, it's accurate to call Te Pāti Māori a racist party — both its constituencies and policies are race-based. Like Wee Willy Jackson, who spoke yesterday against them being banned for 21 days, they view everything through a lens focussed on race.

"The world is watching'" said Jackson, "and this type of punitive punishment will enshrine and entrench in world political commentators, and certainly the Māori Party, that this place is indeed racist and that there's no hope for this place. That's how bad that decision is."* TPM MPs and other were happy to pile on and magnify his point. "Everyone can see the racism," said Takuta Ferris. " It is hardly being hidden." "Racism-whistling," said Marama Davidson. "Racism," said Ms Hapi-Clarke. Racism, racism, racism.

Baloney.

It's just a Parliament trying to maintain the illusion that its members deserve any sort of respect. 

As Chloe Swarbrick pointed out, it's a place full of of humbug: Winston stood up and preached about "contempt" — TPM's "utter contempt for the whole institution." Yet "the last time ... that the Privileges Committee did not make a consensus-based decision," cited Swarbrick in her speech, "in fact it was—and here I am reading explicitly from the Privileges Committee report back then—'for the Member, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who knowingly provided false or misleading information on a pecuniary interest.'" MPs of course caring nothing for how much they lie to you, but who get upset (or pretend to) when they're seen to lie to each other.

But as for those wanting to punish these MPs by removing them from the House for an unprecedented period?

Don't be so bloody precious.

The Parliament needs some formality in order to function, to allow violently-opposed views to be heard and debated. But it also needs some theatre — and no-one could argue that Han-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke's defiant rip-up-and-haka conclusion to the Treaty Principles Bill wasn't great theatre.

And let's not get all uptight about the alleged "threats" against the ACT Party front bench. If threats alone were enough to ban an MP for three weeks then Julie Anne Genter might be permanently on leave.

It was National Party MPs who escalated all this by arguing for a 21-day ban. And let's not forget it was ACT Party MP Parmjeet Parmar who investigated imprisonment as a possible punishment. Imprisonment!

Was that racism? No, it was simply irresponsible. (And in Parmar's case, authoritarian.)

Yesterday the Māori Party co-leader was still berating the "coloniser government" for punishing them. Maybe they should take a leaf out of Sin Fein's book, who also refused to concede the legitimacy of their Parliament. But in the Westminster Parliament Sinn Fein take their stand seriously: their seven MPs refuse to front at all.

* * * * 

* To be fair, Jackson was a bit more subtle than that. "These people on the other side," he said, "they're not all Ku Klux Klan members .... Some of them are quite good."

"It's shades of Stalinist struggle sessions."

'Lanyard Man' (left) heckles politician (right)

"Whatever lanyard man said, whatever you think of Winston, positive or negatively, if you want to go back to the world where people didn't face pile-ons for their political views, then don't do it when someone has views you don't like. It's shades of Stalinist struggle sessions.
    "And yes, I know the hard-left absolutely thrives on doing this and you might have joy doing it back - but just don't. 

    "When I was a public servant [sic] it was perfectly okay to oppose the government you were serving, as long as it was not being critical of any of the work of your department or the Ministers you served. You could be critical of education policy, but be advising on local government and say nothing about the latter. The idea you could work for a private contractor and not be able to heckle (without being threatening) is absurd. 

    "Of course that contractor can have its own employment rules, and that's its choice, but let's not have a culture of digging into trenches and having the ends justify the means. That's not a thriving liberal democracy that makes it easy for people to change their minds, it's political tribalism." 

~ Liberty Scott on the social-media led pile-on to hunt down and have sacked a man heckling Winston Peters at Wellington Railway Station

REPOST: "What's a woman?"

I'm not sure it's really the government's job to define a gender. But since that's where we're going, here's a relevant re-post from a couple of years ago ...

"What is a woman?"

Trans issues, for some people, have become a sort of "litmus test." Part of the so-called "culture wars." Asking the question "what's a woman?" -- asking it even of Prime Ministers, as a "gotcha" -- has become something of a popular test, a method to confront others in that so-called "war."

Which makes the whole issue tiresome.

And largely obscures the real issues.

What is the real issue? Answer: that everyone is entitled to pursue their own happiness in their own way -- as long as they don't force that on others. Everything else comes from that — including questions about sports and toilets.

In some ways, anti trans-activists are opposed to people pursuing their individual happiness.

In the same way, pro trans-activists are in favour of forcing some people's choices on others.

Both buggers are confused.

Yes, there are some legitimate issues involved here. Medicine can now transform people in some pretty fantastic ways, in ways that help some people see themselves better. It might take some time to get used to that. Some time for both sides and for our human institutions to get used to it, and to all the implications of it. (Sometimes sports and bathroom use might get more complicated because of that.) That doesn't mean shouting at each other about it; it might instead mean thinking about these things a bit more deeply.

Radical, I know.

I'd suggest both sides might think about it a bit more. A lot more. 'Cos both sides, as currently structured, are wrong.

Yes, there is a reliable definition of a woman: a woman is an adult female human being. So far so simple. Without that definition, we'd have no ability to define a girl (young woman), or a lesbian (a woman sexually attracted to women). But let's understand what a definition is: it's not a closed set with firm boundaries. It's a description of what exists in the world, identifying and describing the particular units subsumed under a particular concept, under a given label. But things change. If new things are identified, or created, we can create and recognise new and wider (or narrower) concepts, new labels, and new definitions. So much, so uncomplicated. (Or so you would think.)

Point being that definition comes after existence. Not before. So the definition (adult human female) doesn't thereby determine what that adult should do. Or become. In this context, individual adults themselves come first.

Let's recognise that each person, each adult, is an individual — an individual entitled to pursue their own happiness in their own way. [" ...full respect for the life project of others," as Javier Milei said in his inauguration speech.] Furthermore, let's acknowledge that modern life offers them more choices in that pursuit than ever before. That they might sometimes be mistaken, especially about something as deeply-seated as their sexuality, and they may even need guidance. And they might be wrong. But it is their right to choose — a right however that gives them no special right to force their choices on others.

Maybe we just try respecting each other. How about that, eh? 

How about we all try to act as adults.

John Bolton's Advice for Winston Peters

Winston Peters is in Washington DC today.

His best advice would be to not leave his hotel room at all.  To ring in sick. To bust out on room service.

His best advice is to not be noticed.

It's when you're noticed that Washington' Toddler-in Chief starts paying you attention. And that hasn't gone well for any (former) ally.

Nonetheless, as he already has meetings booked with the Trump Administration, Trump's former Secretary of State John Bolton has some advice for him that might be useful.

Perhaps one of you could pass it on.

I think people should understand that Trump is really an aberration in American political life.

Obviously he's president,  so it makes a a big difference. But he has no philosophy, he has no National Security Grand Strategy, he doesn't do policy as we conventionally understand that term. With him everything is transactional, episodic, ad hoc, annd seen through the prism of what benefits Donald Trump.

He has said many times he sees foreign policy as as being equivalent to the relations between the heads of two governments. So if he has a good relationship with Vladimir Putin he thinks the US has good relations with Russia.

Now, I'm not dismissing the role of personal relations in international affairs.  It obviously has a place. But that's not how Putin sees things. He has a pretty clear-eyed view of what he thinks Russia's national interest is, and he thinks he can manipulate Donald Trump. Trump thinks they're friends; Putin sees Trump as an easy mark. Trump just doesn't get it.

Now conversely, if Trump has bad relations with with a foreign head of state then he thinks the US has bad relations with the country. And unfortunately for Ukraine,  because of the famous 'perfect phone call' between Trump and Zelenskyy in the summer of 2019 that led to Trump's first impeachment, I think he he's never had a good relationship with Zelenskyy, notwithstanding Zelenskyy's extensive efforts to try and overcome it.

And I think that is part of what we've seen play out over the past several weeks.

So it is a fact that that Trump has basically reversed the US position, saying even before negotiations began there will not be a full restoration of sovereignty and territorial integrity no NATO membership, no NATO security guarantees, no US security guarantees — you know, these are all Kremlin positions.

The only unhappiness in Moscow these days is that they didn't ask for more. ...

I do think that the debacle in the Oval Office was a manifestation that Trump just doesn't like Zelenskyy, and now I think we're seeing an effort by Secretary of State Rubio and National Security adviser Waltz to try and bridge this over and get things back on an even keel.

Why Trump Misunderstands Putin & Ukraine
As I say, he thinks he's friends with Putin so your friends always tell you the truth, right. Just like he said in Helsinki that he
believed Putin and disagreed with American Intelligence on Russia's role in the 2016 election. Stunning to Americans that he would say that but you know do you trust your friends or do you trust the 'Deep State.' That's the Trump mentality.

I just think that it's important to to try and work with Trump on that understanding: that it's entirely personal. 

That he doesn't conceptualise foreign policy.

There's no strategy behind it.

His supporters say, you know, he plays this complex game of three-dimensional chess. No he doesn't. He plays regular chess one move at a time.

You know, there are theories that he was recruited by the Russians years ago. I don't see any evidence of it. I think his behaviour is explainable unfortunately in simpler ways. ... he operates on a day-to-day basis; there's no bigger picture; there's no hidden agenda. He just doesn't think that way.

When he ran the Trump Organisation in business, I was told he he would never set up a daily schedule. He'd come into the office every day and say, "Well what's going to happen today." Now, that may work in real estate in Manhattan; it doesn't work internationally.

But in many respects, Trump is still that same person.  ...

So in international Affairs other than his affinity for particular foreign leaders, he had no fixed points of reference.

And so, sure, he could adopt ideas, but changed them very shortly thereafter.

I said in my book that of the thousands of decisions that he made in his first term you you could take them all and put them together and they were like a big archipelago of dots out there. Now, you can try and connect the dots if you want to. Good luck. He can't connect the dots.

And, uh, understanding that I think obviously is important. 

Q: How should any of these foreign leaders, whether it's the Canadians, whether it's the Danish, how should should they be interpreting all that Trump is saying and doing, and what would you recommend they do in response?

Well I understand it's very frustrating to have to put up with this. All I can say is I saw it daily for 17 months. ...

But in Trump's world, he doesn't understand how to achieve the objective that he wants, and he may have some idea that it  would enhance his position in history if he could conquer Greenland [say], but it's it's not serious. 

It however shows an erratic, unsteady, and totally transactional presidency that has to unnerve our allies. And the best I can say is just grit your teeth. ...  so we don't do more damage than Trump himself is doing. ... 

From their perspective, they need to try and find ways to work with him. It's hard to predict who will be successful. 

It looks for example like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has so far pretty good relationship with Trump. I wouldn't necessarily have predicted that, but but it looks like it's off to a good start. Prime Minister Meloni of Italy, I think, has a good relationship. So does Victor Orban of Hungary — that's not a pattern we'd like to see repeated. But I think leaders are going to have to think about, uh, how to flatter Trump.

I mean I'm sorry to have to say that, but that's what gets to him.

So my recommendation [to Zelenskyy for example] would be to do what Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan, did in the first term. Nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize — and do it quickly before somebody else thinks of it. 

"In November 2023 a new Govt was sworn in with a promise to 'get our country back on track.' In 15 months, their highlights have been few."

"In November 2023 our new Government was sworn in ... with a promise that they would 'get our country back on track'....
    "In 15 months, their highlights have been few. ...
    "To be fair, they inherited a hell of a mess. ...
    "But the big problems remain. The health system remains a mess which has already taken a minister’s scalp. As Mayor Wayne Brown pointed out this week, the road cones remain. Despite tinkering around the edges of staff numbers, the bureaucracy continues to grow. Government debt continues to escalate and interest is now one of our top five expenditure items. ...
    "The Prime Minister has put his stock in the pursuit of a growth agenda. And he’s right. ... [But] the pace of change is frustrating to watch. ...
    "Argentine economist Javier Milei became that country’s President around the same time as our current Government was sworn in. Since then he’s eliminated 28% of government spending and reduced the number of ministries by half. He’s achieved the first budget surplus in 16 years and reduced monthly, yes monthly, inflation from 25% to 2.4%.
    "And despite the tough decisions, he ... is maintaining and building his popularity. Because the people like seeing action. ... The best thing about Trump and Milei is they are showing a new approach to political behaviour that is giving permission to other countries to follow suit. In our current state, we should be grabbing that opportunity with both hands. ...
    "When compared to similar-sized countries, we have twice as many Government departments as we need. ... We can’t afford to spend $4 million playing sperm whale noises in forests to combat kauri dieback. We can’t afford for the Department of Internal Affairs to spend almost $1m teaching 'indigenous knowledge to become change agents.' MBIE has 30 people focused on grocery prices who haven’t made a 1c difference to the cost of groceries. They have similar teams working on banking and retailing. Why?"

~ Bruce Cotterrill from his op-ed 'Time for Decisive Govt Action to Get NZ Back on Track'

Helen Clark is now *against* corruption!

 

Helen Clark's eponymous foundation has come out against corruption in politics, which is a bit like coming out in favour of apple pie with cream.  

As I outline below, you'd think an organisation using Ms Clark's name might stay quiet on the subject of corruption. What her foundation's report calls corruption however included in one neat package deal the putrid practices of political lobbyists, and the act of people donating to their favourite political party.

These are two very different things.

One has the stench of cronyism. Of peddlers of political relationships forming a parasite class that Ayn Rand once called an "aristocracy of pull." The other is, well, for the most part it is just people donating to a political party because they like the party's policies and/or people.

Yes, cause and effect sometimes goes the other way. There are parties who do sell policies to donors. The ACT party's pathetic capitulations to Auckland council amalgamation and on abolishing the RMA has for years been predicated upon the many consultants who donate to and infest the party, and who never see a trough they don't like. The National Party's silence on China's many misdeeds may be connected to large donations from organisations like the Inner Mongolia Rider Horse group. The link between Winstons First's racing and fishing policies and his racing and fishing donors is oft ignored simply because major parties seek a sweetheart deal with him every three years,  but is tangible, not to mention the link between Labour's policies (education policies for example, favouring teachers unions) and trades union donations of time and money to Labour's campaign. And not to mention all the "green" projects subsidised with taxpayer money to help out the businesses and of Green donors.

But for the most part, donations are small beer. And are fairly transparent. It's the hole-and-corner parasites of political pull who are the biggest evil. And they're everywhere.

PJ O’Rourke used to delight in pointing out that this corruption, the buying and selling of political favour, is simply the price of Big Government — the sort of government that Clark herself has always favoured. Favours for cronies. Jobs for the boys (and girls). Big Government's power and money on sale to the highest bidders.

No one should be surprised. As O'Rourke used to remind us, when legislation proscribes what is bought and sold, the first things to be bought will be the legislators -- and the more legislation is written the higher the demand, and the higher the price.

The answer of course is a separation of state and economy, in the same way and for much the same reasons as the separation of church and state.

But that is not what Clark's foundation prescribes. 

It's not what Clark herself is after.

Helen Clark and her followers have long favoured direct payment of political parties by taxpayers. That's what this is about. Taxpayers forced to donate to parties whose views they may abhor. To political parties whose power would only become more entrenched by the regular involuntary AP from taxpayers' pockets. Clark favours this because her own Red Team suffers by comparison with donations to the Blue Team. (Not that money on its own can win elections, otherwise the ACT Party would have been in power for the last three decades.)

This was the impetus behind then-Prime Minister Clark's infamous user of illegal taxpayer money for her own election campaigns — "illegal" was the Auditor-General's word — passing retrospective legislation to legalise what commentator Chris Trotter called "acceptable corruption." ("Acceptable" because it was his own favoured political regime ransacking the public purse.) And for then-Prime Minister Clark's subsequent passing of the Electoral Finance Act to muzzle her opponents during election campaigns.

Corruption? If there's anyone in New Zealand politics who knows about corruption it's Helen Clark. When I read that Helen Clark's Foundation is "targeting corruption," I immediately searched here at NOT PC for "Helen Clark corruption." It's quite a trove. It runs for three pages. if you feel like diving in, start with the post near the top: ' Cancerous and corrosive and un-democratic and, and, and ...

Or of you want a fuller story, download this PDF copy of The Free Radical from 2006 explaining, as the cover story describes 'How Labour Stole the Election.'

Fiscal responsibility be damned. The trough is now wide open.

"When it has been filled with a swill funded by taxpayers and invitations have been issued to various organisations to come and slurp, it’s fair to suppose it is a trough. This likelihood is increased significantly when we learn the invitation to come and slurp is issued by Shane Jones.
    "As Minister of Regional Development, Jones has invited councils, iwi, businesses and community organisations with infrastructure projects that support regional priorities to apply for funding from the Regional Infrastructure Fund, which opened [yesterday]. ... Jones’s invitation to apply for a place around the trough was among the latest press statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website."

~ Buzz from the Beehive, from their post 'Roll up, oinkers – Shane Jones is calling hogs to a new trough, not as rich as the PGF, true, but a $1.2bn swill must be tempting'

Climate: Revealed preference

"[A] very large number of voters have a great deal in common with those raised-in-the-faith Catholics who genuflect reflexively before the holy imagery of their religion without giving the gesture much, if any, thought. Like conservatives the world over, New Zealand’s Coalition Government is of the view that although, if asked, most ordinary voters will happily mouth environmental slogans, considerably fewer are willing to freeze in the dark for them.
    "Minister Jones’s wager is that if it’s a choice between watching Netflix, powering-up their cellphones, and snuggling-up in front of the heater, or, keeping the fossil fuels that power our extraordinary civilisation 'in the ground,' so that Freddie the Frog’s habitat can remain pristine and unmolested, then their response will be the same as the Minister’s: 'Bye, bye Freddie!' No matter what people may say; no matter how superficially sincere their genuflections to the 'crisis' of Climate Change; when the lights go out, all they really want is for them to come back on again. Crises far away, and crises in the future, cannot compete with crises at home – right here, right now.
   "The Transport Minister, Simeon Brown, knows how this works. Everyone supports public transport and cycle-ways, right up until the moment their holiday journey slows to a snail’s pace among endless lines of road cones, or a huge pothole wrecks their new car’s suspension.
    "Idealism versus realism: that’s the way the [parties of Luxon's Government] frame this issue; and they are betting their electoral future on the assumption that the realists outnumber the idealists. There may well have been 50,000 pairs of feet “Marching For Nature” down Auckland’s Queen Street [the previous] Saturday afternoon, but the figure that impresses the Coalition Government is the 1,450,000 pairs of Auckland feet that were somewhere else."

~ Chris Trotter from his post 'Numbers Game'

"There will not be any more generic open-ended Treaty clauses."

Cartoon by Nick Kim 

"The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty matters.
When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there were at least 50 known Treaty clauses in legislation with about 14 variations in their description of the Crown’s obligations as a Treaty partner.
    "With a growing number of references to the Treaty in legislation and a growing variety of references, it was clearly becoming a legal quagmire for the constitutional relationship between the Crown and Māori. ...
    "[These will be looked at in] the New Zealand First-driven review of existing Treaty principles in legislation later this term.
But what will be left of any new Treaty clauses to monitor is an open question because of a radical direction the coalition Government is taking already, ahead of the review.
    "It is no longer putting general Treaty clauses in legislation. ...
    "The [new] Fast-Track Approvals Bill ... did not have a general clause. 'But leaving out a general Treaty clause is not a one-off,' says New Zealand First’s Regional Development Minister Shane Jones ... 'There will be no more general Treaty clauses in any new legislation,' he said.
    “'If you look at the sentiment in the coalition agreement, it should come as no surprise to anyone that there is not and will not be any more generic open-ended Treaty clauses.'
    "'That would apply to all [new] legislation'."

~ Audrey Young from her column 'No more Treaty clause 'mission creep''

"The challenges facing the new Government ... are ... acute."

"A Government’s legacy is defined by its accomplishments when it leaves office, not by what is written about it at the outset. ... good intentions count for nothing. It is achievements and results that matter. ...
    "The challenges facing the new Government ... are ... acute. There is no point in incremental reform when ... half of our students do not attend school regularly and a similar proportion cannot read and write at an adult level.
    "Incremental reform is not enough when hospitals have long waiting lists and people have difficulty registering with doctors.
    "It is not enough to make incremental reforms when gangs and retail crime plague our inner cities.
    "All these social and economic ills require more than small steps. They require root and branch reform.
    "Future historians will judge the new Government by its results. The new government will only be deemed successful if it fundamentally turns this country around."

~ Oliver Hartwich, from his column 'Reform or Transform?'

Paranoid politics is not going away.

 

It's happened here and, as commentator Robert Tracinski describes below, it's happening over there. 

What do I mean? I mean the morphing of anti-Covid culture warriors into oddly conservative anti-everything zealots.

Tracinski outlines the trajectory.

Moms for Liberty, an activist organisation founded and led by conservative women, has emerged in the last two years to oppose, in the name of “parental rights,” what it sees as leftist indoctrination in public schools.
    There are worthwhile arguments to be had about contemporary gender ideology and about how to respond to the history and legacy of race in America— ... [and] there will be no shortage of controversial examples to be debated.
    But a thoughtful debate is not what Moms for Liberty has offered as its defining contribution. Instead, it has become the driving force behind a sweeping wave of book bans and politicised restrictions on teaching.
    It is a curious outcome for a group with such a libertarian-sounding name. How did Moms for Liberty come to be one of the nation’s chief censors? ...

Turns out it's in much the same way that NZ's 'Voices for Freedom' (anti-'globalist,' anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-trans, anti-science ... ) has always more about freedom from reality than any other kind, and more about keeping their anti-Covid ball rolling: "The origin of Moms for Liberty," explains Tracinski, "was not in the culture wars over race and gender but the Covid culture war." There you go, you see:

It began in Florida as a rebellion against rules requiring masks for public school students. ... It was the pandemic that provided Moms for Liberty with the opportunity to mobilise and radicalise conservative parents. Descovich explained, “If you miss this opportunity, when [parents] are really engaged … it’s going to be hard to engage them in the future.” When the debate shifted from masks to vaccines, Moms for Liberty appealed to anti-vaccine sentiment on the right. ...
    That’s the supposed meaning of “for liberty” in Moms for Liberty: the freedom to ignore mask and vaccine mandates. The group emerged from a combination of dogmatic rejection of any anti-pandemic measures and legitimate frustration with school closures, which in some areas dragged on for a year ...
    The anti-mask cause summoned a great deal of violent fury, but it was perhaps too small and temporary for a national movement that had ambitions to persist beyond the pandemic. Yet this issue established the kind of energy that has characterised Moms for Liberty ever since: an upwelling of anger, a distrust of experts, a volcanic hatred of “the establishment,” and a deep suspicion that the powers that be are out to destroy our way of life.

Sound familiar?

Paranoid politics is not going away.

... except for housing

"A major difference between Winston Peters and Seymour can be summed up by the fact Peters is happy to be seen as a handbrake on a National-Act government while Seymour wants to turbo-charge policy reform."

~ Graham Adams from his post 'Will co-governance drive a counter-revolution?'