Tag Aotearoa New Zealand

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Joe Karam

Jun 5, ’09 1:43 PM

Joe Karam, instru­mental to David Bain’s not guilty ver­dict, after 13 years:

Karam [said] he joined the Bain case in 1996, when he “very naively believed all I would do was take my con­cerns to the author­it­ies who would take over from there. Unbe­liev­ably, they didn’t — they thought I was the enemy.”

“What I’ve really been driven by is an abso­lute cer­tainty that David Bain was rail­roaded — that he never got a fair go. That’s what’s kept me going really.”

He says he’s spent vir­tu­ally all his money on the case over the past 13 years.

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Shattering the myth of egalitarianism in Australia (and NZ)

Apr 26, ’09 12:56 PM

Boris Frankel in Melbourne’s The Age:

Here is some good news. Just as the Great Depres­sion inspired sig­ni­fic­ant social reforms, so the cur­rent “great world reces­sion” is pro­du­cing a spate of over­due reform pro­pos­als. Some of these pro­pos­als have emerged in Bri­tain, one of the most unequal soci­et­ies in the developed world. While Aus­tralia ranks as the fourth most unequal developed soci­ety after the US, Por­tugal and Bri­tain, there is wide­spread delu­sion among Aus­trali­ans that we are an egal­it­arian soci­ety. By con­trast, 80 per cent of people in Brit­ish sur­veys believe that class divi­sion — or birth not worth — determ­ines a child’s life chances.

I think there’s prob­ably wide­spread delu­sion among New Zeal­anders too when it comes to see­ing their soci­ety as egal­it­arian. It used to be for sure, but since the Labour and National party usered in free-market fun­da­ment­al­ism in the 80s New Zea­l­and, too, has become one of the most unequal developed soci­et­ies in the world. One more reason not to vote for Labour or National.

External links:

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National trying to manufacturer a crisis over ACC

Mar 12, ’09 8:51 AM

It’s part of the NZ National Party’s DNA to make demo­crat­ic­ally fun­ded ser­vices appear inad­equate, so that people lose faith in such ser­vices and turn to the private sector.

Once sold to the private sec­tor for a pit­tance such ser­vices can then be used to make profits for their sup­port­ers and donors in the private sector.

It’s for this reason that this unscru­pu­lous group of people is try­ing to man­u­fac­turer a crisis over ACC, New Zealand’s very good pub­lic acci­dent com­pens­a­tion scheme.

The same can be said for their nasty little scheme to privat­ise pris­ons and turn NZ into mini dis­func­tion­ing US of A.

So, thanks again to those who voted National (out of a “mood for change”).

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National continue to gut NZ

Mar 10, ’09 8:56 AM

I see the National Party are kick­ing their little ideo­lo­gic­ally driven pro­ject of plun­der­ing NZ into a higher gear.

This time it’s the privat­isa­tion of ACC and pris­ons.

Thanks again to those who voted National (out of a “mood for change”).

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NZ National/ACT government: slash and burn

Feb 18, ’09 9:19 AM

While the rest of the world attempt to stim­u­late their eco­nom­ies with gov­ern­ment spend­ing, the ideo­lo­gic­ally ham­strung National/ACT gov­ern­ment of New Zea­l­and is arbit­rar­ily slash­ing depart­mental budgets by 10%.1

No Right Turn:

And it looks like the slash and burn has already begun, with con­firm­a­tion that the gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to slash 500 to 1000 people from the Min­istry of Social Devel­op­ment - the very people who are going to be needed to help oth­ers dur­ing the reces­sion. But as usual, they’ll be told to “do more with less”. In the 90’s, that philo­sophy — of impos­ing arbit­rary budget cuts in pur­suit of some arbit­rary fiscal tar­get — led to crum­bling schools, roads, and hos­pit­als, to chron­ic­ally under­paid doc­tors, nurses, and teach­ers, to grow­ing pub­lic health wait­ing lists and high bar­ri­ers to get­ting social sup­port. It also led to a gov­ern­ment which out­sourced core func­tions to highly paid con­sult­ants while let­ting its internal capa­city wither — to the extent that it was even­tu­ally unable to run an elec­tion prop­erly due to the rel­ev­ant people not being budgeted to do it. Even after nine years in power, Labour was unable to heal all of that dam­age. And now it looks like National is going to do it all again…

So, when your local school starts fall­ing down and you can’t find a doc­tor, just remem­ber: that’s the price you pay for elect­ing a National government.

Notes:
  1. Such acts are designed to make any­thing fun­ded col­lect­ively by the tax­payer inad­equate, so that people lose faith in demo­cratic pub­licly fun­ded ser­vices and turn to the private sec­tor. [↩]
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NZ Parliament passes unbelievably crap copyright law

Feb 17, ’09 1:28 PM

Some­how copy­right hold­ers have man­aged to roy­ally trump all other interests in get­ting an unbe­liev­ably crap copy­right law through Par­lia­ment; giv­ing New Zea­l­and the most dra­conian copy­right law in the world, which allows people and organ­isa­tions to be dis­con­nec­ted from the inter­net simply on the basis of accus­a­tions of “copy­right infringe­ment.” No courts involved. “Guilt upon accus­a­tion,” as Juha Saar­inen puts it.

Here’s Rus­sell Brown’s take, and David Farrar’s (although pre­dict­ably defens­ive of National) and Juha Saar­inen for Geekzone.

You can blame both Labour and National for this screw up. It’s a reveal­ing glimpse into the author­it­arian streak that runs through both these parties. The Greens (as usual) and the Maori parties were the only ones to sens­ibly vote against this crap.

Really, if you vote Labour or National take this as a good reason to con­sider other parties when you vote next time.

The best way to deal with this screw up is to repeal the law.

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Free-market ideology is dead

Feb 11, ’09 9:31 AM

Free-market ideo­logy is dead, and none too soon:

The pat­tern is clear: gov­ern­ments that respond to a crisis cre­ated by free-market ideo­logy with an accel­er­a­tion of that same dis­cred­ited agenda will not sur­vive to tell the tale.

I just hope the same can be said for New Zealand.

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A word of thanks to National and ACT voters

Nov 17, ’08 10:45 PM

Just a quick word of thanks to all those National and ACT voters out there in NZ, espe­cially those who were in a “mood for change,” because now you’ve got it. A gov­ern­ment of rad­ical right-wingers, many proven untrust­worthy in the 80s and 90s, ready to turn New Zea­l­and upside down and shake.

Almost everything I said New Zea­l­and can expect is right there in National and ACT’s sup­ply and con­fid­ence agree­ment:

A huge increase in pris­ons and prison pop­u­la­tion, under “three strikes” law, where some­body con­victed three times goes to jail for life. You only need com­pare the U.S. or even New Zea­l­and to some­where like Nor­way or Fin­land, where crime and incar­cer­a­tion rates are well below ours, to know that this is about appeas­ing the sad­ists and the hang ‘em high bri­gade rather than actu­ally redu­cing crime and mak­ing NZ a bet­ter place.

You get Rod­ney Hide as Min­is­ter of Local Gov­ern­ment, which means local coun­cils are going to have Hide’s dis­cred­ited ideo­logy — that all is bet­ter if it’s privately owned — shoved down their throats (think privat­ised water and roads).

You get Heather Roy as Min­is­ter of Con­sumer Affairs, which means in prac­tice that you’ll have a min­is­ter look­ing after the affairs of busi­ness at the expense of consumers.

There’s ACT’s “Tax­payer Bill of Rights Bill,” a rad­ical Liber­tarian policy that would cap gov­ern­ment spend­ing to what it is now and tie it to infla­tion plus pop­u­la­tion growth. This is designed to make any­thing fun­ded col­lect­ively by the tax­payer inad­equate, so that people lose faith in demo­cratic pub­licly fun­ded ser­vices and turn to the private sec­tor. The ulti­mate aim being to trans­fer wealth from the hands of the many to the hands of the few, by way of profits.

The private sec­tor will now get to review gov­ern­ment policy with a mind, no doubt, to privat­isa­tion, luc­rat­ive con­tracts for cronies and the cut­ting of social pro­grammes (edu­ca­tion, health, etc.). Again, all ulti­mately aimed at trans­fer­ring wealth from the pub­lic realm into private hands, by way of profits. You won’t see the pub­lic being able to review the way the private sec­tor spend profits of course.

And, poten­tially the most dev­ast­at­ing, going with ACT’s anti-science pos­i­tion: the killing off the Emis­sions Trad­ing Scheme. As No Right Turn writes:

Look­ing at the terms of ref­er­ence, they’re going right back to the start, includ­ing “hear[ing] com­pet­ing views on the sci­entific aspects of cli­mate change” and look­ing at whether we should do any­thing about it any­way (and of course float the idea of a car­bon tax to fur­ther delay things). In other words, repeat the entire policy pro­cess of the past fif­teen years (which has included sev­eral select com­mit­tee invest­ig­a­tions, as well as a national interest ana­lysis [PDF]), only in a more politi­cised con­text, with a politically-dictated out­come on the sci­ence. After fif­teen years, we’re right back to square one.

Mean­while, energy and indus­trial emis­sions — which were going to be covered by the ETS from Janu­ary 1 2010 — will be free to rise, and pol­luters will con­tinue to be allowed to exter­n­al­ise the cost of their pol­lu­tion. And we will be pick­ing up the tab for all of it.

The only thing left for them to do is to declare that they’d like to send more of our sol­diers off to Afgh­anistan to be killed in another futile immoral war led by the only nation in the world to have attacked another coun­try with nuc­lear bombs.

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Despisers of Democracy: Jenni McManus

Nov 13, ’08 11:25 PM

This is the first in a new series track­ing people who find the whole demo­cracy thing incon­veni­ent1 and would rather those pesky cit­izens just shut the $%!@ up so they can get on with trans­fer­ring the world’s wealth from the hands of the many into the hands of those who are actu­ally entitled to it, the few.2

Jenni McManus is editor for the The Inde­pend­ent, a New Zealand-based busi­ness weekly, and here she is expound­ing her idea of demo­cracy and how the incom­ing Prime Min­is­ter of New Zea­l­and should inter­pret his mandate:

If forced to choose between break­ing elec­tion prom­ises and the country’s eco­nomic sur­vival, voters’ inten­tions are clear. Key wasn’t elec­ted simply to imple­ment his mani­festo but to man­age and lead the eco­nomy out of the crisis.

Trans­la­tion:

We have our Pearl Har­bour Mr Prime Min­is­ter so the choice between a small attack on New Zealand’s wealth and a full out assault to trans­fer every ounce we can into the hands of few is clear. Don’t worry about those pesky voters and their silly ideas about demo­cracy, my psychic abil­it­ies tell me that their “mood for change” is that they actu­ally want to be fucked up the ass.

jenni_mcmanus

She fills out her cre­den­tials by offer­ing this piece of advice to the incom­ing Prime Min­is­ter from one of the ulti­mate des­pisers of demo­cracy, Roger Douglas, writ­ing in his 1993 book omin­ously titled Unfin­ished Busi­ness:

Do not try to advance a step at a time. Define your object­ives clearly and move towards them in quantum leaps. Oth­er­wise the interest groups will have time to mobil­ise and drag you down.

Notes:
  1. Well, in actual fact, these people love demo­cracy, at least by their defin­i­tion of the word. They see demo­cracy as James Madison wanted it to be, speak­ing at the secret debates of U.S. con­sti­tu­tional con­ven­tion in 1787, as a means to pro­duce gov­ern­ments that will “pro­tect the minor­ity of the opu­lent against the major­ity,” i.e. to pro­tect those with prop­erty from those without. For the pur­poses of this series I am using a more pop­u­lar defin­i­tion: that the cent­ral insti­tu­tions of soci­ety have to be under pop­u­lar con­trol. [↩]
  2. They don’t actu­ally say this is their object­ive but even those of them with good inten­tions are so blinded by their ideo­logy that they just don’t care if this is the out­come. [↩]
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‘There’s going to be a lot of hurt for a lot of people’

Nov 10, ’08 12:14 AM

Oh New Zea­l­and, what have you done? Roger Douglas on elec­tion night fan­tas­ising about the man­date he thinks he has:

We have to make some changes and there’s going to be a lot of hurt for a lot of people.

What a cheek, com­ing from the scoun­drel who lied his way into gov­ern­ment in the eighties, unleash­ing an eco­nomic revolu­tion without a demo­cratic man­date, selling off New Zealand’s resources and dev­ast­at­ing our demo­cracy by strip­ping away gov­ern­ment con­trol over the flow of cap­ital, effect­ively hand­ing over the keys of demo­cracy to private investors who can choose at any time to sink the country’s eco­nomy by mov­ing cap­ital out of the coun­try if gov­ern­ment policy is not con­du­cive to their “busi­ness needs.”

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