The fifth kiwi carnival, highlighting interesting posts in the New Zealand blogosphere, is now up at Random Contributionz. There's some quite good stuff in it, and its well worth popping over and clicking on a few of the links.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Friday, August 19, 2005
Tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for the poor
John Key has outlined National's broad fiscal policy, promising to phase in tax cuts which will eventually be worth $3.9 billion per annum in 2008. How are they planning to pay for it? Cutting the Kiwisaver scheme, which would have helped kiwis save for a first home (or retirement), for one. Reversing the indexing of tax brackets to inflation, for two. Most laughably, there's "a full baseline review of all spending, with a view to cutting low-quality spending" - unspecified savings, a billion dollars worth, they know the money's there, they just don't know where (or else they don't want to say). Then there's running lower surpluses - meaning lower capital spending and a consequent running down of infrastructure - and of course borrowing. Yes, having spent the last twenty years trying to kick that habit, National - the self-proclaimed "party of fiscal responsibility" - is promising to once again live beyond our means. Wonderful.
There's no detail on the tax changes - we'll have to wait till Monday for that - so we can't see exactly who will benefit. But given National's obsession with the top and company tax rates, the answer is pretty obvious: the rich. They are planning to slash services and programs that help the poor, run down our schools and hospitals, and burden the next generation with debt so they can throw money at the wealthy again. We rejected this in 1999, and we should reject it again on September 17th.
A picture is worth a thousand words
While digging for information for this post, I came across the following graph in a Treasury report which makes it abundently clear who were the winners and who were the losers from the Revolution. I've covered this ground before, but this one graph tells the story better than I have ever been able to do:
The graph is in real (1998) dollars, and it clearly shows that 70% of households lost out in real terms from the reform process - they were worse off when they started. Meanwhile, the top 10% made out like bandits, increasing their income by 30% while everyone else's declined or stayed stagnant.
The impact on poorer families of National's 1991 benefit cuts is particularly noticable, especially when compared with the skyrocketing incomes at the other end of the graph.
WIN party loses
The WIN party, established to fight the government's smokefree policy, has withdrawn its name from the ballot, and are now urging their members to align themselves with United Future. I guess they finally realised that they didn't have a hope in hell...
Update: It seems that former WIN party leader John van Buren is now standing as United Future's Christchurch Central candidate...
Getting ugly in Tonga
Tonga's public service strike is getting ugly, with riots and mass arrests in the capital Nuku'alofa. There's more news here and here.
This isn't good news. Tonga's lack of democracy (and domination by kleptocratic nobles) is a strong undercurrent in the strike, and violence or a government reaction could easily snowball into full-on revolution or outright repression.
Gazumped II
Frogblog has posted a very useful table comparing Labour's announced extension of the Working For Families package with a generous estimate of National's tax-cut plans - which shows that families earning up to $75,000 are better off with Labour. A useful statistic to keep in mind when looking at this is the median household income of the target group. According to the latest Household Economic Survey,
Thirty-five percent of 'one-family, couple with children only' households had an annual before-tax household income of $87,600 and over.
Digging through the supplementary tables gives a rough median of around $75,000 for that group (the overall median being around $42,000 with only 30% of households earning over $70,000 - which shows just how skewed an average figure can be).
Of course, if National is not as generous as Frogblog supposes, even more families will be better off. but we'll have to wait until Monday to find out.
Energy: National chooses the brown path
Last month, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment released a report titled Future currents: Electricity scenarios for New Zealand 2005-2050 [PDF]. This laid out two core scenarios for the future of electricity generation in New Zealand: a "green" (or possibly Viridian) scenario, in which we use innovation and technology to "get more from less" while pursuing a sustainable path; and a "brown" one, where we assume demand must increase, and focus on meeting it with large projects. In this scenario, resource management processes are seen as barriers to progress, and
Decision making... tends to be conservative. It favours proven technologies and established approaches that do not fundamentally challenge existing practices. When major projects are delayed, or when people are not prepared for the depletion of energy sources they depend on, important decisions are often made in a reactive way. Decision makers respond quickly to crises (either perceived or real) and the most powerful interests of the day.
Yesterday, National released its energy policy - and they've firmly chosen the brown path. The focus is solely on meeting demand, and the means chosen to meet this goal are gutting the RMA so that large projects can be steam-rollered through over the top of local opposition, and well as repealing the carbon charge, so that generators can avoid paying the full environmental cost of their activities, and thus use the cheapest, dirtiest technology available. This will give us security of supply alright - but at enormous cost to our quality of life and our core values.
As the PCE report points out, another path is available - and in many ways, we're already on it. We are already more than meeting our annual demand growth from wind alone - and this accords fully with our "quality of life" ethic. We're conducting innovative research into environmentally friendly homes, which cost no more than any other house, but use a fraction of the electricity. And as the news last night reported, we're seeing a move towards industrial cogeneration, which is more efficient than centralised generation and distribution (at least for large users). Energy policy should be aimed at accelerating these trends and encouraging this innovation - not trying to stamp it out in favour of the same dirty technology we've been using since the 19th century.
Worse and worse
First we find out that the London Metropolitan Police lied to the public about the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes; now we discover that the commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, also tried to stop an independent inquiry into the shooting. Instead, he wanted an in-house whitewash in order to avoid damaging the morale of the armed police unit responsible for the killing - people's self-esteem clearly being more important than the fact that an innocent man had just been killed under extremely questionable circumstances.
But as if that's not bad enough, it gets worse. Having been overruled, Sir Ian then kept the Independent Police Complaints Commission away from the crime scene for three days. Normal practice would have seen them there within hours. He deliberately impeded the investigation into de Menezes death, while he and his spokespeople tried to lie and spin their way out of trouble by demonising their victim (par for the course for the Met, it seems).
Having this sort of tragic mistake happen on your watch is one thing - but to try and cover it up and prevent an independent investigation from establishing the facts is quite another. Sir Ian Blair is guilty of an extraordinary attempt at a cover-up, and there is only one honourable course open to him: he should resign.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Gazumped
In the wake of a better-than-expected Pre-election financial update, Labour has come out and gazumped National on the tax front - not by cutting tax rates, but by massively extending the already generous Working For Families package. The abatement threshhold has been increased to $35,000 while the abatement rate has been reduced to 20%, meaning that an extra 60,000 families will benefit by around $50 to $100 a week. And it does all of this without breaking the bank, because targetted assistance can deliver far more to those it targets than across-the-board tax cuts. The extension is expected to cost around $400 million a year - compared with $600 million for National's proposed cuts to the company tax rate or almost $700 million a year to flatten the tax scale by cutting the top rate to 33% (neither of which will provide any benefit to the vast majority of New Zealanders).
As with the student loan policy, there's a calculator so you can work out how much you benefit by. I should add that the average net tax rate figure is more than a little misleading, as the calculator does not include the increased accomodation supplement which is a key component of Working For Families. Once this is taken into account, the point at which a family would be paying no net tax whatsoever would be somewhere around the $55,000 mark (depending on family size and location).
This is already being criticised as "redistribution", and yes, it is - and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Taking money from the rich via taxation and giving it to those in need via benefits and services is the foundation of any decent society. As I said when Working For Familes was first announced, if this is "communism by stealth", bring on the dancing cossacks!
Andrew Wilkie in New Zealand
Andrew Wilkie, the former Australian intelligence official who blew the whistle on the Howard government's manipulation of intelligence in the leadup to the Iraq war, will be visiting New Zealand next week. He'll be speaking in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch - follow the link for details.
Pleistocene Park
A couple of years ago I read Tim Flannery's The Eternal Frontier - a full-fledged ecological history of North America from the end of the age of the dinosaurs to the modern era. One of the key themes (also covered in The Future Eaters) was how the arrival of humans around 13,000 years ago had changed the ecosystem. The extermination of North America's megafauna - mammoths, camels, sloths, giant armadillos, lions, cheetahs, and most recently the buffalo - transformed the landscape, and led to a severely unbalanced ecosystem. The lack of natural checks and balances from top predators and browsers has led to some species teetering on the brink of extinction, while others spread like plagues. Towards the end of the book, Flannery suggested an innovative solution for this problem: trying to rebuild the pre-human ecosystem:
I believe that the great question faced by park managers in North America today is whether, where it is suitable, they should reintroduce elephant, camel, Chacoan peccary, llama, panther and lion into their reserves. It is important to consider the truly gigantic species, for as G. Evelyn Hutchinson said in his 'Hints for an Agenda', if one has to prioritise, it's good to know 'how big is it and how fast does it happen?' As far as megafauna is concerned, we could begin with considering the two living species of elephant and their suitability as ecological replacements for the mammoth (the Indian elephant is closest) and the mastodon (the African elephant bears some similarities).
Flannery also suggests that this should eventually spread beyond national parks and conservation reserves to provide land management for humans. Reportedly such a scheme has been successful in the Sonoran Desert, where "a diverse assemblage of introduced browsers and grazers can produce higher yields per hectare to ranchers than can cattle alone".
Now, this idea has gained further support, with scientists at Cornell University suggesting the reintroduction of analogues for extinct species in order to
revitalise ecosystems, generate ecotourism and create land management jobs to help struggling economies in rural areas of the US.[...]
The "rewilding" scheme, outlined in the journal Nature, would unfold in several phases. To start with, small numbers of animals, including elephants and lions, would be released on private land.
Each step would be carefully guided by the fossil record and scientific assessments of the environmental impact. Ultimately, one or more "ecological history parks" covering vast areas of economically depressed parts of the Great Plains would be opened up.
As in Africa, perimeter fencing would limit the movement of elephants and large carnivores that might endanger human settlements.
I think this is an interesting idea and a grand experiment in ecological management. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.
Extradited
Osman Hussain, the suspect in the July 21 London bombings currently being held in Italy, will be extradited to the UK to face trial. Again, this is good news - and a triumph for law in the face of terrorism. And now, he and his co-conspirators can all face trial together...
United Future's constitution policy
United Future has something the other parties don't: an actual constitution policy. They're promising a Royal Commission to follow in the footsteps of the recent select committee inquiry and make recommendations on the Treaty, a written constitution and a republic. This would be followed by a referendum on any proposed changes. They're also proposing greater use of referenda on other issues, suggesting reducing the barrier to initiate a referendum to 5% of eligible voters, and having a successful referendum automatically trigger an inquiry into the appropriate issue. I'd suggest that the inquiry be performed by Parliament, rather than the government, but that's more a technical issue.
On the negative side, United Future are also suggesting not just requiring referenda on "conscience issues", but requiring a supermajority to pass any legislation on such topics. This is a blatant attempt to stack the deck in favour of social conservativism and policy stasis, and a perfect example of American-style gaming the constitution for partisan political advantage. I'd expected better from Dunne than that.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Helping out in North Shore
I've been contacted by the campaign manager for Labour's North Shore candidate, Phil Twyford, asking that I link to his campaign website. I don't live on the North Shore (or anywhere near there, for that matter), but if you're a lefty from up that way and thinking of voting Labour, you might want to check it out. Or if you're in a different electorate, you might want to check out Hamish McCracken (East Coast Bays, and the only Labour candidate to answer a candidate survey) or Ann Hartley (Northcote).
Interestingly, the "take action" page gives a far more concrete idea of what is involved in helping out with a campaign, and points to a couple of other ways you can get directly involved without having to knock on doors: volunteering to host a "meet-the-candidate" evening for your friends, and hosting a sign on your fence. Seeing signs plastered everywhere has got me wondering about how it is organised, and now I know.
(BTW, I am happy to post pointers to any left-wing candidate as time and space permit).
The future of the Revolution
Economist and blogger Tyler Cowen has been visting New Zealand recently as one of the endless series of foreign experts parachuted in by the BRT to praise the Revolution and provide external validation for what they did in the 80's and 90's. On Marginal Revolution, he asks will New Zealand reform any further? I don't think so. While there's now an acceptance that many of the changes were necessary, and certainly no desire to go back to the "Polish shipyard", there's also no desire to continue in that direction. The Revolution was immensely painful for many New Zealanders, who suffered restructuring, strategic unemployment, benefit cuts, corrupt privatisations, market rents, health cuts, and tertiary fees at the hands of governments which lied to get into office and showed no regard for public opinion or their election promises once there. Bluntly, we hated it - and we hated it so much that we changed our electoral system to ensure permanant minority government, so that no-one could ever do that to us again.
And that's the real reason why we're not going to see a repeat of the Revolution: MMP prevents it. Don Brash may be a radical relic of the Revolution, but in order to govern, he will have to rely on New Zealand First - a party deeply hostile to the "reforms", led by a man who left National because of them. This will severely limit his options: he may get some moderate tax cuts, but anything further is likely to be stymied. In particular, the neo-liberal vision of a strategic deficit to provide impetus for asset sales and mass privatisation of education and health will be off the table. And this would hardly be "undue influence" by the junior partner: the consistent polling trend is for around 60% of the electorate to vote for non-Revolutionary parties (as they have done in every election since 1990). There simply is no electoral mandate for further radical "reform", no matter how "necessary" it is in the eyes of neo-liberal ideologues.
This doesn't rule out "reform" entirely, but the political realities mean that any future changes will be piecemeal and far more cautious, rather than the kind of blitzkrieg we saw in the 80's and 90's.
Inappropriate
That is the only way to describe using an Education Ministry seminar to encourage participants to vote Labour. While the person responsible was a contractor, that is no excuse in these circumstances; while actually doing the work, they have a duty to adhere to the standards of the public service, which include strict political neutrality.
Whether they can be fired or not will of course depend on their contract, but this is a gross breach of public sector ethics, and the person responsible needs to be held accountable.
Lies
In the wake of July's summary execution of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell station, London police attempted to justify their behaviour by claiming that he fit the profile of a suicide bomber, and that "his clothing and his behavior at the station added to their suspicions". According to police, he had been wearing a large, padded coat, had run from police when challenged, and even vaulted the barrier to enter the station.
It was all lies. According to documents leaked from the Independent Police Complaints Commission, Menezes
was wearing a denim jacket, used a standard Oyster electronic card to get into the station and simply walked towards the platform unchallenged.It has also been suggested that officers did not identify themselves properly before shooting de Menezes seven times in the head.
The BBC version tells an even worse story - that
Mr de Menezes was being restrained by a community officer when he was shot by armed police.
So, he wasn't challenged, hadn't run from police, and there was no dramatic chase into the station. Instead, the police made a decision that Menezes was a suicide bomber based solely on his address and assumed ethnicity, followed him for twenty minutes, then executed him after he had been restrained. Then, having realised that they made a mistake, they systematically lied about it in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable and cover their own arses. I think the Met has more than earned every bit of suspicion it has had over this killing.
Meanwhile, CCTV footage of the station, the train, the bus, everything, is all "unavailable" as the cameras were "not working". How convenient...
